The question is why Biden was able to let those attacks slide and get away with it. Conventional wisdom says that you can never let an attack go unanswered, but that's what Biden did, and it seems to have worked for him.

I think it worked because of the transparent absurdity of the attacks. Or perhaps, more accurately, because of the fact that Palin's views are deeply unpopular. If the vast majority of swing voters want to get out of Iraq, and the sole target of the debate is swing voters, you don't dignify that line with a response - because the swing voters are the ones being attacked. Something like that.

Accusing Obama of wanting to leave Iraq is a little like "accusing" him of wanting to continue Social Security. It's problematic to attack people for popular positions.

Good point. I was struck by how well Biden handled her comment about his wife, which I saw a clear attempt to provoke him. It struck me as a sign of Palin's desperation, like she figured she really needed to rattle him. But it ended up just making her look bad.

It was all Biden had to do. Everything else for him must have been pretty easy. He seemed to be quietly assessing Palin's demeanor for the first ten minutes or so, and then he just did his thing.
Palin didn't vomit on her shoes or anything, but let's be real, she wasn't all that great. She was visibly nervous, like a fresh college grad eagerly interviewing for a job she will never get. She rushed through her prepared talking points and was a little to quick with her zingers. Her folksy talk and winking just seemed gimmicky and cheap. Sheesh.
Biden just let it all roll by and grinned.

re:tyro

Nate Silver talked about this a bit after Palin's acceptance speech, and suggested that she lacked the credibility to pull off these sorts of attacks. Sounds plausible to me.

http://www.fivethirtyeight.com/2008/09/cognitive-dissonance.html

It sounds like they were trying to bait Biden into attacking her personally, to engender sympathy.

"""Let the mayor of Wasilla accuse the Chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee of betraying his country and deserting our troops."""

HOW SAID THIS ARGUMENT IS. Like Palin or not, she is the Commander of Alaskan Guard forces serving in Iraq, they are her troops. Biden has never served in the military in any capacity except to be a pain in the ass Senator they have to schlep around for photo ops.

When it was Biden turn to serve, he ran like a yellow coward, first behind education exemptions, which could be somewhat legitimate, but then he claimed the phantom asthma he claimed to have but never seems to actually suffer from..

It was Biden that said cutting off troop funding was abandoning the troops and would get them killed - that was what he said about Obamas policy.

One wonders who the poor soldiers was in Vietnam that took Bidens place because of his horrible swimmer, lifeguard, football player asthma. Probably a poor inner city black man...

What is easy for partisans to forget about debates (and I count myself as an Obama-Biden partisan) is that the purpose for the participants is to make the case for their candidacy with undecided voters.

Obama and Biden both had lots of opportunities to score points off McCain and Palin. But delivering zingers isn't what they needed to do.

Their task was to make undecided voters comfortable enough to vote for them in November.

As much as I want to hear Obama and Biden rip into McCain and Palin, that doesn't win the election, it only makes Obama-Biden partisans happy.

I am really impressed with the discipline Obama and Biden have shown. They know what job they have to do, and they don't get distracted. And by all measures, they will win when it counts.

Patton,

What branch did Sarah Palin serve in?

What I liked about Biden's restraint is that it showed a real lack of respect for Palin, in a way that McCain could only dream about doing to Obama. And I mean this in a good way.

If someone Biden respected had made those comments, he would have gone all Hulk Hogan on them. But the message he put out was Palin is naive, and she just doesn't know what she's saying. And so he let the comments slide. Like when a parent or teacher says to a child, "I'll pretend I didn't hear that."

Biden came out of the debate looking like a statesman. Palin came off like the head of the Wasilla PTA.

Who would you rather have staring into Putin's eyes?

Like Palin or not, she is the Commander of Alaskan Guard forces serving in Iraq, they are her troops.

What strategic (or tactical, I'm not picky) decisions has she made in the course of her command? I mean, assuming you can phone in commands to Iraq from Alaska, since she has never actually been to Iraq.

The thing that impressed me the most was Biden catching himself right before he made some sweeping hyperbolic statement that would come back to bite him the next day. There was one point (I forget the topic) where you could tell he was about to say "John McCain has voted against this every single time it came up for a vote..." Which is exactly the kind of thing Joe Biden likes to say and exactly the kind of thing I was most afraid of hearing because sweeping rhetorical absolutes are so easy to disprove. But, incredibly, he caught himself and instead said, "Well no I shouldn't say that, I know he voted against the two bills I'm talking about though..." You could tell reigning in that kind of stuff was a key to his debate prep and Biden deserves a great deal of credit for setting his instincts aside and staying disciplined. Whoever was in charge of making sure Biden understood the danger of sweeping absolutes deserves a delicious ice cream cone.

Like Palin or not, she is the Commander of Alaskan Guard forces serving in Iraq, they are her troops.

The instant they get called up for duty for a foreign operation, they now serve at the pleasure of the president.

You either have a fundamental misunderstanding or you are lying. Considering what you said about Biden and Article 1 a thread or two ago, I'll take it as the latter.

Like Palin or not, she is the Commander of Alaskan Guard forces serving in Iraq, they are her troops.

Uh, they're hers up until the moment the Federal Government deploys them overseas. Plus, since when does one POW (rumor has it--he's sorta hiding his light under a bushel basket on this one) trumps all the chickenhawks who he's voted with 95% of the time?

Better trolling, please.

Like Palin or not, she is the Commander of Alaskan Guard forces serving in Iraq, they are her troops.

Um, no. She has no command authority over them in Iraq. Try again.

I am a junior associate at a law firm that does a lot of litigation. One of the things they teach us in direct examination of a hostile witness is to give the witness enough rope to hang himself.

If a hostile witness says something stupid, let it ride. Don't point it out, because that gives them a chance to explain it.

Just let the audience hear the dumb, discrediting thing the witness has said. It's especially good when the witness has concluded his statement with something stupid. Then you get to pause and let the words sink in.

That's what I saw Biden doing last night. He stepped back, and let the audience watch Palin being Palin. I guess they didn't like what they saw.

I was watching on CNN where the had some audience rating the speeches with those dial things. When she said her "zingers" or attacks, the audience rated them very poorly. I thought it was interesting that they did this for her faux-folksy stuff too.
People are too uncomfortable with the way things are going right now to be tolerant of any drama, juvenile attacks,or pandering.

I was a tad upset that he left the "white flag of surrender" line hanging out there. Simply asking whether Plain think the American people, the Iraqi people, the head of the Iraqi government, and George W. Bush are all waving the white flag of surrender by agreeing with Obama's Iraq policy would have been sufficient.

he caught himself and instead said, "Well no I shouldn't say that, I know he voted against the two bills I'm talking about though..."

I thought that was a very good moment for Biden as well. After months of unfair attacks coming from the other side, it was a good contrast to make. Biden was going after McCain plenty, but he was making a point to do so fairly.

People are too uncomfortable with the way things are going right now to be tolerant of any drama, juvenile attacks,or pandering.

I have to confess I'm pretty impressed with the fact that mainstream voters seem to be more intelligent and have better judgment than the TV pundits or the McCain campaign staff... or are at least smarter than the pundits and campaign staff perceives them to be.

The problem for the pundits and operatives, and campaign strategists is that their expertise is in publicity and lying not in government, law, or history. Their dumbness is shown by the fact that they nominate someone like Palin or Bush in the first place, thinking they are putty whose message they can manage. Imagine taking debating lessons from Sean Hannity, who is not even a college graduate, and thinking that will play in the real world.

Every time a Republican rants about winning the war I want Obama or Biden to tell them "Iraq is not a war; it's an occupation. You can't win an occupation."

A better question for "Patton" would be, which branch did you serve in, chickenhawk?

I was watching on CSPAN with a split screen nearly all the time. When Palin came up with these whoppers, Biden showed a broad grin. But it was, I thought, a "you're so full of shit" grin rather than a "you're such an idiot" grin, if that makes any sense. It was the grin I would have expected in a debate against an opponent he respected, and I think this worked for him because it showed him to be the nice guy that he really is. CSPAN also showed the after-debate conversation with the families and Ifill, and there was a long and apparently warm conversation between the two candidates (a big contrast from Obama-McCain). If I were an undecided voter with positive feelings for Palin, Biden might well have won my vote.