Tina just observed that during the debate Sarah Palin sounded like someone pitching beer.  “We’re the original mavericks,” she said relentlessly.  It’s just another hollow platitude, like her bizarre closing remarks warning about preserving freedom.  I know she was trying to pivot into McCain’s war hero record, but it seemed like a vague way to end the debate, especially given the state of the economy.

Although he started out rough, Biden recovered about thirty minutes in and ended up commanding the debate.  I know I’m a partisan, so take that for what it’s worth.  Palin did as well as I expected her to — she was reading from notecards and answering questions with talking points, even when those talking points didn’t actually relate to the question (such as her WTF answer to the “achilles heel” question).

I find her folksiness, her use of phrases like “doggone it,” “hockey mom,” and tendency to substite “ya” for “you” annoying and fake.  I don’t think the vice president of the United States should be cute and adorable, but that’s what she’s shooting for.  She wants middle America to think she’s just an average mom running for an extraordinary job.  It’s the Bush strategy of using folksy jargon to connect with the voters, but I don’t think it’s going to be very successful this year.  Palin overdoes it and seems canned to me.  She’s a hockey mom robot, programmed with a few key soundbites that she regurgitates ad nauseum.

I’ve swung back and forth on how I feel about Biden over the years — he is verbose, and he can be self involved.  His use of his time at the Alito hearings was largely wasted.  But he has a clear understanding of the constitutional limits of the role of the vice presidency, and he’s often been right on foreign policy.

When Palin was talking about her sacrifices at the mom, implying that Biden did not know that burden, I think he felt genuinely offended.  Anyone who knows Biden’s biography knows the tragedy he suffered, which elicited perhaps the most genuine moment of the entire night:

Palin, of course, didn’t know how to react. Instead she turned to the old standby talking points, choosing to ignore the emotional moment that just transpired. It was her chance to show that she could think on her feet, but rather than think, she just went back to the same old well of nonsense.