Initial impression, right after I finished watching: I can’t really evaluate this debate any kind of meaningful objective way.
Biden came across as solid, substantive, and liberal, but a liberal who had plans to improve things in America in a specific way. He stumbled at times, and missed some opportunities, but made no major gaffes and just seems substantively sound. In a conventional evaluation, I’d give him a B or maybe a B+.
The problem is Palin. Palin, I have no fucking idea how to evaluate. To me she sounded seriously full of shit for the entire 90 minutes, a shallow person who has memorized a set of talking points and buzzwords and rammed out her position points in a highly energetic way, hoping that aggression and artifice will make up for lack of substance. I have absolutely no idea how that plays with America. As a litigator, I apply the old saw “If the law favors you, pound the law; if the facts favor you, pound the facts; and if the neither the law nor the facts favor you, pound on the table.” She just seemed to me to be doing the corporate-market-droid-talking-points-buzzword-spam version of pounding on the table.
I dunno how that plays. Assuming Americans have something of a clue, you have to score this as a joke of a showing by the Republicans. You can’t take her seriously as a candidate. You really can’t. But she’s pretty, and has a lot of energy and spams out nice sounding phrases really really realy fast. So who the fuck knows.
Bottom line: I don’t see how this helps establish her as a legitimite candidate to be the President of the USA, if the necessity arises. Will the public agree? I dunno.