During primary season, I had some interesting discussions where I contended that Joe Biden had performed truly well in his two potentially tricky VP debates.

On the eve of the first of the POTUS #debates , I’ll try to explain what I meant.

2008, Palin: This was a trap.
It was a trap because she’s a glorious fool.
(If you won’t acknowledge she’s a fool, this thread isn’t for you.)

Biden, at times in his career but especially early, had been both testy and arrogant in response to confrontation. I was a fan of who he had become by ~2004, and was happy Obama picked him, but I worried that he might veer into caustic condescension, confronted by such

extravagant ignorance.
Then it would be all about how he was mean to the lady, and that the Democrats were the real sexists, and hypocrites to boot.

But that isn’t what happened. He chilled and spoke to the audience. He kind of ignored her answers, which were nonsense of course.

He gave her permission to use his first name, which she asked for in order to use her canned line, “Say it ain’t so, Joe.”
He chuckled when she said it.

I’m working from memory here, but I think this is the first time he sorta stepped to the left of Obama on same-sex marriage.
Surely the biggest stage where he did.

Anyway the debate was largely uneventful. Palin said some stupid things, but that wasn’t any different than what she’d been doing in the days before, and that’s what she continued to do, because that’s what she does.

Easy Dem win.

2012, Ryan: This is where it gets good.

Remember, Ryan was a “wonk.” If you asked serious conservatives who their “intellectual” leaders in D.C. were, Ryan would be the first guy named.

The Romney campaign also wanted him to be charming. I think they considered him handsome? They told us he was fit!
So he wasn’t entirely free to be mean, though I doubt he could pull that off anyway.

The policy knowledge contest was ... kind of a wash? Biden elided some things in a Biden-y way; and Ryan distorted things in an institutional Republican way, just like the Club For Growth newsletter explains how to do.

But here’s the thing: Biden repeatedly laughed at Ryan. Not with; AT.
It was a bit arrogant. It was condescending.
And it worked.

Here’s our intellectual, our think-tank guy, our wonk.
Everyone in the supposedly liberal MSM took him at face-value as a real attention-to-detail “policy guy.”

Biden’s laughed as if to say, “I’ve heard this crap before. You’re just the latest slick salesman for some, like, Laffer Curve bullshit.”

Ryan could not charm OR “wonk” his way out of it. He looked like a salesman who couldn’t defend his wares.

Anyway I’m not sure how tomorrow night is gonna go. I have worried that Joe has “lost a little off his fastball.”

And obviously Trump can’t even make sense talking to a fluffer like Hannity. So people are gonna hear what they wanna hear.

But I trust Biden is studied up.

/end