A Win For Biden as Obama Takes Michigan

Look, Joe Biden won the debate last night.  There’s no doubt about it.  He had more command of the issues, he was blunt and lets be honest, he actually bothered to answer the questions posed by the moderator.  But…

Sarah Palin did use her folksy charm to come across as likable.  She cleared had been well-prepared, and like I predicted two days ago, she didn’t make any large gaffes or have any implosions.  By not being an embarrassment to her party and speaking strongly on several issues, she did fine. Peggy Noonan must have been watching a different debate.

Since the bar was set so low for her, fine then equals great. But the American people thought otherwise.  In two post debate flash polls, one by CNN and the other by CBS, both had Biden winning the debate. 

The debate will end the hemmoraghing of the McCain campaign, although I suspect they will drop a point or two in the national polls.  Still, it gives McCain a chance to move beyond Palin and to get his campaign on track. 

McCain has precious little time left.  As Blogflict discussed yesterday, if the election was held today it would be a blowout.  McCain needs to pull away at least 50 electoral votes from Obama for this to be considered a close race.  Right now, its not.  If McCain doesn’t make a big move after the next presidential debate, Obama can go into run-out-the-clock mode. 

The real news of yesterday, the story that everyone should be talking about today is not the VP debate.  It’s Michigan, Michigan, Michigan.

John McCain has ceded the state, home to the original Reagan Democrats, to Obama.  Why?

McCain needs to spend resources to shore up support elsewhere in places like Virginia, North Carolina, and Indiana.  These are states the GOP never dreamed they would be forced to defend.  Obama has expanded the map and that is giving the McCain campaign resource allocation problems.  So, they threw in the towel in Michigan. If they don’t change the dynamic soon, they will be throwing in the towel in several other states over the next 14 days.  McCain is in trouble and last nights debate and the ceding of Michigan did nothing to change that.