The Biden-Palin VP Debate Last Night

I've just returned from spending 4 days in Lafayette, Indiana where I had no internet access and no TV access so I'm a little pre-occupied catching up on email and such. We did, however, manage to watch the Biden-Palin VP debate last night at the Purdue University Memorial Union, on a very fuzzy but large-screen TV. Our initial plan had been to watch it at the Indiana for Change office downtown where I had spent three days volunteering (in the company of my new-found friends) but their electricity was out. (Indiana for Change is what the Obama campaign in Indiana is called... I'm not entirely clear about why it's called different things in different states but I think -- and I could be mistaken here -- that this one might be run by the Democratic National Committee and not by Obama for America which of course precedes Obama's nomination. Technical).

If you weren't one of the 70 million viewers last night (which, by the way, is more than the number that watched the presidential debate last week), here's a link to the VP debate.

Both have been tutored and trained well: Biden doesn't make any off-the-cuff remarks that could be construed either as patronizing or as just a plain old gaffe, and Palin exceeds our exceedingly low expectations of her. As a result, Biden is on top of his game (though I would have liked even more direct challenges from him) and Palin still reminds us that this B-grade reality show is actually reality. Enjoy the cringe.

On a different note, as I mentioned earlier, I spent a few hours every day in Lafayette at the Obama campaign office where they had me making phone calls to the "undecideds". Let me tell you, that was a whole different ball game from any phone calls I had made in Chicago or any homes I had visited in Gary. I almost didn't go in on Day 3 because it was so... disturbing. More on that later.