Last night I had a drink in hand, and watched as much of the debate as I could.  But I will admit, I didn't watch the whole thing.  Here are my reactions of what I did see, in combination with reviewing the transcript this morning.  First some general comments.  Call me sexist, or a misogynist, or ugly libtard if you must, but I don't like how Sarah Palin speaks.  By the time I turned off the TV, I wasn't sure if I was watching a vice presidential debate, or had accidently put my Fargo DVD in the player.  I know plenty of people like that they can relate to her as a hockey mom, but listening to all those "doncha knows" and "hey ders" made me want to drink more.  I don't think it suits a President, or Vice President.  In all fairness though, I've mentioned several times here that I can't listen to George Bush speak publicly anymore either.  I think his speaking style grates on me more, but not by much.

Biden for the most part was what you would expect from Biden, though creepier.  Every time he gave that smile at Palin, it just seemed weird.  Wiggy theorized it was because he was picturing her naked so he wouldn't be as nervous.  Maybe there is something to that.  He certainly did come off as condescending more often though.

As far as Gwen Ifill is concerned, I think she did a very good job as moderator.  I'm sure there are people who still think she's biased, who will comb through the debate and find bias where they want to see it, but I think she did a very fair job.  She called both candidates on things, did a good job of trying to figure out where there were differences, and also did a good job of showing where consensus existed even when the candidates were trying to paint themselves as different.

If you don't want to finish reading my blow by blow commentary, I'll give you the conclusion first.  On pure debating points, I think Biden won this (though it certainly wasn't a knock out).  That's not to say that I agreed with him more... hardly.  But I think he explained his positions better than Palin explained hers.  Compared to expectations, I think Palin won.  Biden did exactly as well as I expected, and Palin did better than I expected.  In the end, as Elliot correctly pointed out, the goal of a Vice Presidential debate is generally not to lose (as opposed to trying to win).  However, in this case, there was more pressure because McCain is using his Vice President more to win than any other presidential candidate in recent memory.  By that measure, I don't think Palin did well enough.  She needed to knock this one out of the park, and I think she merely hit a standing double.

Megan McArdle was also live blogging the debate and has some good commentary as well as some pretty witty commentary.  With all of that out of the way, let's hit the topics they went over.

Palin: Nice to meet you.  Can I call you Joe?
Me: Awe shucks golly gee.

On the Financial Meltdown:  I almost turned off the television right here when Palin started speaking.  Not because of how she was speaking, but because of what she said.  Right off the bat she failed to hit the Democrats where they were weakest.  Biden said exactly what you'd expect him to say, but what did Palin talk about?  "Predatory lenders" and Wall Street greed.  She sounded like a f*cking Democrat... which is fitting, because John McCain practically is one.  She could have hit Democrats hard here on the Community Reinvestment Act, or how much money Obama got from Freddie and Fannie.  Instead she decided to tell people who bought homes they couldn't afford that they were victimized.  What about the people who lived within their means who will now be victimized by government to help keep people in homes they don't deserve?  F*ck 'em?  Fail!

Biden then came back with all this talk about how deregulated the industry was, but failed to mention any specific regulation that was removed.  The reallity is that Gramm-Leach-Bliley, which allowed commercial and investment banks to merge (in essense) is one of the things that's made this crisis not as bad as it could have been.  Palin didn't have an opportunity to really respond to this, which is unfortunate, but I don't think she would have hit it anyway.

On Taxes:  Pretty standard fare.  Democrats say they want to tax the rich and give to the poor while they claim that Republicans are going to tax the middle class to give tax cuts to the rich.  Palin does a good job here talking about her individual record, but not so well when translating that to policy under a McCain presidency.  Biden does a great job here though when countering the tax raising record by pointing out how McCain does under that same standard.  That really shut down that attack.  The whole thing is bogus because both records suck, but on debate points, Biden nailed that.  I don't think Palin's come back regarding small business resonated.

On Spending:  Big Kudos to Ifill for talking about how neither Obama nor McCain answered the question on reduced spending in the first debate, and bringing it up here.  And once again, neither of these candidates could do it either!  What did Biden say?

Well, the one thing we might have to slow down is a commitment we made to double foreign assistance. We'll probably have to slow that down.

Wow, we might have to slow down the doubling of foreign aid?  Gee... is that all it's going to take to be able to afford $700 billion in bailout commitments?  And what is slowing down the doubling mean?  Only one and a half times what we currently give?  And what did Palin say?

IFILL: So, Governor, as vice president, there's nothing that you have promised as a candidate that you would -- that you wouldn't take off the table because of this financial crisis we're in?

PALIN: There is not.

That just about sums it up doesn't it?  This is from the party of small government and fiscal restraint.  Fail!

On Climate Change:  I like Palin's approach here, to talk about a combination of effects from man and cyclical planetary changes.  But then she launches into the "energy independence" jive which frankly, I know plays well, but is totally bogus.  The stronger response would be to talk about what costs of many climate change policies would be to the average American.  The problem with that is that McCain supports cap and trade systems, which would cripple our economy, so her hands are tied there.  Biden went right where you'd expect him to go... it's all our fault, and then more about different technologies.

On Gay Marriage:  I think Ifill did a good job here at the end bringing the two together to show that they actually agree on everything.  But Biden ought to be ashamed of himself for once again bringing up the straw man regarding hospital visitation, contracts, etc.  I disagree with the bans on gay marriage, but even I would not claim that Republicans believe in those types of restrictions.  Palin does a good job responding to this as well.  And then Ifill does a good job at getting them to both say that they don't believe in same sex marriage.  This hurts Obama more, especially after Biden spent the first part of his answer talking about equal rights.  How can you be for equal rights, but not be for same sex marriage?  Isn't that also an equal right?

On Iraq:  To be honest, I'm not sure anyone said anything concrete here.  Palin: Surge good, terrorists bad.  Biden: Timetable.  Ironically enough, Biden then talked about how much money we give Iraq and how bad that is.  I thought they originally wanted to double foreign aid?  Is Iraq not a foreign country?  Palin: They're talking about surrendering.  I'm not sure that resonated.  My own views on Iraq are so mixed right now, it's hard for me to put this in any sensible terms.  Next topic.

On Iran:  I think the whole thing is a loser.  Everyone is arguing about whether they'd talk about sitting down with them with no preconditions, but the whole argument has become so nuanced, about what "level" of dignitary we mean, that it's become a loser for McCain.  People don't get the difference, but he still hangs onto it like it matters.

On Israel:  Yeah Israel!  As McArdle said: "Big hugs for Israel!  I'm waiting for one of them to break into Havah Negillah."  Nobody knows what to do about Israel.  If we knew how to fix it, then we would have done it by now.  How long have we been trying to broker peace there?  And suddenly you have the solution that nobody else thought of?  Right.  Next topic.

On Nukes:  I have no clue what Ifill was expecting to get at here.  When would you use nukes?  You honestly think either one of them is going to answer that?  And not surprisingly, neither one of them did.  Points to both Palin and Biden for finding good ways to sidestep a tough issue.

On Interventions:

IFILL: You argued for intervention in Bosnia and Kosovo, initially in Iraq and Pakistan and now in Darfur, putting U.S. troops on the ground. Boots on the ground. Is this something the American public has the stomach for?

BIDEN: I think the American public has the stomach for success.

And you think it's successful if we pull out of Iraq?  Huge missed opportunity by Palin.

On How Your Presidency Would be Different:  That's like when you're sitting in an interview and the HR person asks you about your biggest weakness.  How do you respond?  Well, my biggest weakness is that I'm a workaholic, or something like that.  Basically Ifill just asked them to gush about their running mate for a while.

Say it ain't so, Joe, there you go again pointing backwards again. You preferenced your whole comment with the Bush administration. Now doggone it, let's look ahead and tell Americans what we have to plan to do for them in the future.

This is where I turned off the debate.  That was one too many "doggone it's" for me.  Next topic.

On What a Vice President Does:  First Palin:

I'm thankful the Constitution would allow a bit more authority given to the vice president if that vice president so chose to exert it in working with the Senate and making sure that we are supportive of the president's policies and making sure too that our president understands what our strengths are.

What Constitution are you reading?  You have no Constitutional authority to do any such thing.  With regards to the Senate, you get to break a tie, and certify the electoral college vote count.  That is it.  Fail!  Biden get's points for only talking about personal agreements between him and Obama over what his role would be.  What any one individual President allows his Vice President to do in that regard is up to them.  He then actually correctly says what a Vice President can explicitly do according to the Constitution.  Congratulations Sen. Biden, you pass high school civics class.  Time to go back to summer school Governor.

The rest was just fluff for the most part.  The closing statements were relatively bland.