Thursday, October 02, 2008

The Wolverine

It was another great debate. I was terribly impressed with the Obama McCain debate last week. I assumed, incorrectly as it turns out, that tonight would be simply terrible. Far from it. Tonight was a very entertaining evening.

My favorite quote of the night comes, not from the candidates, but from Howard Fineman on MSNBC late tonight. Fineman said (and I'm working from memory here), "I've always wondered what a wolverine looked like. Tonight we saw it. Palin was like a wolverine chewing through plywood."

O.K. I thought Senator Joe Biden won the debate. He was knowledgeable, poised and articulate. He also had passion.

And I am so very pleased with Senator Biden's position and support for the people in Darfur. Senator Biden is willing to lay it all on the line. Darfur needs and deserves that kind of support from the United States.

I believe Biden is actually much stronger, more forceful and more committed than Barack Obama on many issues, especially the genocide in Darfur. Obama is very fortunate to have Biden on the ticket.

But, while Biden clearly won the debate, Governor Sarah Palin gained tremendous credibility. She was strong, articulate, forceful and just damned tough. She definitely got the better of Biden on several occasions.

Now I do believe that Obama's victory on November 4th is still on track unless McCain can somehow win landslide victories in both of the next two debates.

But Obama needs to hope the McCain campaign continues to very foolishly keep Palin under wraps. If the Republicans were to turn her loose, she might just chew through Obama's lead like wolverine through plywood.

8 comments:

shoo said...

I was very pleased to see no sign of bias on the part of Gwen Ifill. Even conservatives say she was fair.

Unknown said...

Ifill did a professional job.

I thought both Biden and Palin did as well. Hmmmm, does that mean it was a boring debate?

Stella by Starlight said...

Lee and Shoo, thank you for those comments. I felt the same way and should have posted my comment here from the previous posts. Did you both notice Ifill never once asked, "Governor Palin, will you please answer the question put before you?"

The buzz today: "I like to answer these tough questions.” Then answer the questions, Palin!

shoo said...

Wow. What a shock. Liberal spin about why Palin sucked.

Unknown said...

Gwen Ifill was under the microscope and had to be so careful that she was not a very good moderator.

boring debate.

Stella by Starlight said...

Point taken, Lee. She had to be careful or ultracons would have taken her to task. From that perspective, she did well. The debate didn't live up to my expectations, but I'll shamelessly admit that the candidates' body language spoke volumes.

Shoo, how would you categorize my statement as liberal spin? I give you CNN's readbility statistics. Reuters provides sources from several papers, closing with: Half of all voters in a Washington Post poll on Thursday said they were uncomfortable with McCain taking office at age 72 and 85 percent of them said Palin did not have the right experience for the job. That's a split down the middle.

Even the The National Review did decent, if partisan, job of reviewing the debate. Now shoo, you could hardly call The National Review liberal spin, could you?

And just to show there are no hard feelings, I include a link to Art Daily for your non-partisan amusement to to mitigate any hard feelings.

Wizard, thank you so much for your indulgence.

Vigilante said...

The WIZARD fkap
is no longer a family-friendly site, Stella!

Stella by Starlight said...

Guilty as charged, Vig. But admit it, guys, you know you liked the picture.

:D