Salon.com > 2012 vice presidential debate

Biden “was on, like, 18 lines of cocaine or something”

Mon, 15 Oct 2012 22:58:00 +0000

Via Media Matters:

Ill Doctrine on the debates’ towering stupidity

Mon, 15 Oct 2012 19:48:00 +0000

Ill Doctrine: Laughing to keep from crying from ANIMALNewYork.com on Vimeo.

Substance-free Republicans default to lazy mendacity

Fri, 12 Oct 2012 20:30:00 +0000

The hallmark of Republican thinking these days, especially as expressed in Romney/Ryan rhetoric, is just the sheer laziness of it. That’s presumably a consequence of having developed an amazingly efficient partisan press. There’s just very little incentive remaining to develop actual policies or even a real critique of Barack Obama’s administration. After all, if the president is a Kenyan socialist intent on destroying the United States, it’s hardly necessary to explain exactly where his policies are going wrong or why.

That often shows up in the way that Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan dissemble. Every presidential campaign lies, but what distinguishes this crowd is a lazy mendacity in which there’s not even an attempt to make their falsehoods plausible (here’s another recent, excellent example).

Joe Biden’s secret weapon: laughter

Fri, 12 Oct 2012 14:53:00 +0000

Joe Biden doesn't just get mad. Joe Biden gets ridiculously entertained.

Though the vice-president's performance in Thursday's debate with Paul Ryan wasn't quite as meme-worthy as Paul Ryan's aspiring juicehead pictorial, which appeared earlier in the day, his sustained and undisguised amused contempt for the man across the table from him rightly proved one of the most memorable elements of a spirited evening. There was barely a moment when Biden wasn't speaking that he wasn't smiling ruefully or flat out chortling at every word coming out of the mouth of his opponent. Sorry, I mean his "friend." Hahahahaha.

It was a bold strategy — and make no mistake — that contemptuous, "You have got to be kidding" shtick had to have been well thought out. Predictably, a fair amount of the spin promptly painted Biden, the would-be funniest thing to come out of Scranton since "The Office," as a man whose permanent, preternaturally white smile was "unsettling," "inappropriate" and "a disaster." And, it's true, the image of our country's vice-president looking like he was having entirely more fun than many of his fellow Americans have had in the last several years was a mite disconcerting.

Joe Biden gets the job done

Fri, 12 Oct 2012 04:05:00 +0000

Joe Biden wiped the floor with Paul Ryan at Thursday night's debate, but we might have to spend a day debating whether he laughed too much while doing it.

On Medicare, on taxes, on abortion, on middle class opportunity and on foreign policy, Biden made Ryan look like he was trying out for the college debate team, and on substance, he pinned him to his and Mitt Romney's least popular policies.

With an assist from tough, informed moderation by Martha Raddatz, who actually asked whether preventing Iran from getting a nuclear weapon was worth another Middle East war – Ryan said yes – Biden did everything President Obama didn't last week. In some of the debate's best moments, he hung Ryan and Romney with Romney's 47 percent remarks replying to a question about unemployment. This is my favorite:

Liveblog: VP debate

Fri, 12 Oct 2012 00:00:00 +0000

Salon’s Alex Pareene will be live at 8:30 eastern time this evening to begin liveblogging tonight’s vice presidential debate -- live from the Salon debate party in New York. Come back then for his inimitable take on Joe Biden, Paul Ryan, moderator Martha Raddatz's questions -- and for an update on his debate drinking game. Watch a live stream of the debate below.

[liveblog id=29]

Debate fact check

Fri, 12 Oct 2012 00:00:00 +0000

Salon’s Alex Seitz-Wald will be live at 9:00 Eastern time this evening to begin fact checking the vice-presidential debate. Come back then to get the truth behind the distortions, exaggerations and outright lies we'll no doubt hear tonight. Research help from our intern Zachary Bell.

10:20 -- When are we getting out of Afghanistan? Biden emphatically states that the U.S. will be out of Afghanistan by 2014. "We are leaving. We are leaving in 2014. Period." Well, sort of. While the vast majority of the troops will be gone, the U.S., NATO, and Afghanistan agreed to leave and "enduring presence" of perhaps 10,000 troops to help train Afghans past 2014. The troops will not play combat roles and the Afghan government will assume full security of the country, but Biden exaggerated a bit.

10:15 -- Taxpayer funding for abortion: Ryan says Democrats support taxpayer funding for abortion, pointing to Obamacare. That's completely false. The bill never contained taxpayer funding for abortion, but it was nonetheless held up for months to appease pro-life Democratic Rep. Bart Stupak and the bloc that he lead.

Quote of the day

Thu, 11 Oct 2012 21:45:00 +0000

Reporters approached Vice President Joe Biden about his strategy in tonight's debate against Paul Ryan. The vice president left them grasping: "You ever see me rope-a-dope?"