You just got Biden’d

I should probably start with the fact that I am a huge Joe Biden fan.  Joe is snarky and funny and his “gaffes” are usually just him being too honest rather than anything else.  Plus he destroyed Robert Bork.  Plus he’s really smart.

But Joe Biden knocked it out of the park today.  He was not only fired up in a way that could almost make you forget Obama’s lack of energy last weekend, he consistently called Ryan on his lack of specifics, flip-flops, and lies.  I’ve never heard someone call someone a liar in as many ways as Biden did tonight.  Truly well done.

Martha Raddatz was a superb moderator as well, really pushing for specifics from both candidates — something that will probably be called liberal media bias because Ryan didn’t have any specifics to offer.

Highlights:

“Oh now you’re Jack Kennedy?” – Joe

“Biden leveled the playing field alright, leveled it right through Paul Ryan’s milkshake. Which he then drank.” – Ana Marie Cox

“FACT: Ryan has opposed abortion access for rape victims since 1998 http://thkpr.gs/OXi9fE” – Think Progress

Biden mentioning Bork.

“The CNN panel of floating women voters hated that Ryan answer on abortion. It stayed flat as a pancake” – Guy Adams

“Ryan reiterates that secularism – the distinction between politics and religion, between state and church, cannot and should not exist.” – Andrew Sullivan

Stepdad: Well, he’s better than Sarah Palin. #damningwithfaintpraise

“Hello 9 1 1? There s an old man beating a child on my tv” – Bill Maher

Paul Ryan bringing up a car accident story in an attempt to connect on a personal level… to Joe Biden… whose wife and daughter died in a car accident…

Malarkey, Sarah Palin, 47%, Osama Bin Laden… so much things

Let’s look at the — let’s take a look at the facts. Let’s look at where we were when we came to office. The economy was in free fall. We had — the Great Recession hit. Nine million people lost their job, 1.7 — $1.6 trillion in wealth lost in equity in your homes, in retirement accounts from the middle class.

We knew we had to act for the middle class. We immediately went out and rescued General Motors. We went ahead and made sure that we cut taxes for the middle class. And in addition to that, when that — and when that occurred, what did Romney do? Romney said, no, let Detroit go bankrupt. We moved in and helped people refinance their homes. Governor Romney said, no, let foreclosures hit the bottom.

But it shouldn’t be surprising for a guy who says 47 percent of the American people are unwilling to take responsibility for their own lives. My friend recently, in a speech in Washington, said 30% of the American people are takers. These people are my mom and dad, the people I grew up with, my neighbors. They pay more effective tax than Governor Romney pays in his federal income tax. They are elderly people who in fact are living off of Social Security. They are veterans and people fighting in Afghanistan right now who are, quote, not paying any taxes.

I’ve had it up to here with this notion that 47 percent — it’s about time they take some responsibility here. And instead of signing pledges to Grover Norquist not to ask the wealthiest among us to contribute to bring back the middle class, they should be signing a pledge saying to the middle class, we’re going to level the playing field. We’re going to give you a fair shot again. We are going to not repeat the mistakes we made in the past by having a different set of rules for Wall Street and Main Street, making sure that we continue to hemorrhage these tax cuts for the superwealthy.

They’re pushing the continuation of a tax cut that will give an additional $500 billion in tax cuts to 120,000 families. And they’re holding hostage the middle-class tax cut because they say, we won’t pass — we won’t continue the middle-class tax cut unless you give the tax cut for the superwealthy. It’s about time they take some responsibility.

The Republican spin machine is amazing, they’re already trying to turn this into Joe Biden was condescending because he laughed at Ryan too much.  I think that as soon as the only defense you have is that someone laughed when your man told lies, you’ve confessed that you’re losing on substance.  But Republicans are so much better at staying on target and on topic with these things.  Remember, fact-checking someone when they’re talking is disrespectful.

But the fact remains that Biden’s number one goal is to get the base fired up.  The reality is that if all registered voters were to vote, Democrats would win in a landslide.  And there’s no way to watch the performance he just gave and not be fired up if you agree with him.

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You just got Biden’d
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19 thoughts on “You just got Biden’d

  1. 1

    I am also a big Joe Biden fan. I think it’s horrible that he’s known mostly as the gaffe guy, but it worked in his favor tonight. Expectations could hardly have been lower for him — at least among those who aren’t familiar with his style.

    Meanwhile, Paul Ryan is supposed to be the conservative wunderkind, but he is really an empty suit, and he got exposed.

    I don’t know what effect this has on the election, but in the event that Romney/Ryan lose, this debate loss may hurt Ryan’s political future more than the election loss does. To Republicans, this must look like Muhammad Ali losing a fight to a speed bag. They’ll put it aside for the sake of unity right now, but in the long run they’ll have trouble forgetting it.

    1. 3.1

      Could you give me some examples? I mean, I could give half a dozen things Ryan said that was dishonest. Could you do the same for Biden? I’ll even go first!

      Off the top of my head…

      1. Ryan claimed that Obama’s administration tried to water down and block sanctions on Iran.

      2. Ryan trotted out the death panel meme by saying that an appointed panel of people that didn’t have to be doctors would be making medical decisions for seniors.

      3. Ryan said that the ACA cuts medicare benefits by 716 billion.

      4. Ryan made the same claim that Romney did about the six studies that back up their tax plan approach.

      5. Ryan claimed that they support exceptions to the abortion ban that they want in the case of rape, incest or live of the bother. Last time Romney said that, the campaign walked it back.

      6. Ryan claimed, again, that they could cut all taxes by 20%, increase defense spending, and balance the budget and pay for it with removing deductions only on high-income filers.

      7. Ryan claimed that the stimulus didn’t create or save jobs.

      8. Ryan claimed that the economy is getting worse.

      Those are the ones that stuck with me over night, although I feel like there were several others.

      I can only think of one thing which was more of a conflation issue rather than a lie on the Biden side, and that was on the topic of Benghazi. The administration knew about the security request, but it’s possible the President and VP didn’t know about it specifically. Secondary facilities might have been handled by lower ranking administrators.

      Biden was addressing the latter, but Ryan was talking about the former and the whole thing is confused.

  2. 4

    @erica
    I must be a delusional crackhead then, along with quite a lot of other people. Paul Ryan did not appear to have a firm grip on the actual truth though.

  3. 5

    Biden overplayed his hand tonight. Too arrogant. Too snarky. Too condescending. Polling will show that his smirking won’t fly with the general public. No matter the point of view, others should be treated with respect. Joe represents the quintessential politician, who knows best, because he is, after all, a career politician! Dude needs to step aside and let sanity clean up the massive crap load he and his cronies have left us with.

    1. 5.1

      Dude needs to step aside and let sanity clean up the massive crap load he and his cronies have left us with.

      Could you be more specific? In my view, we we shit on by the Bush administration, and the last four years – domestically – have been a fairly continuous effort by the Obama administration to pass legislation that would help turn things around. Early on, some of it got passed and it has helped, but the Republicans have filibustered everything even to the point of damaging our credit rating.

      Obama has been cleaning all the excrement up, and the Republicans are doing their best to pile more on.

      What ‘massive crap’ has Obama left us with? Who are you talking about when you say ‘cronies’?

    2. 5.2

      Perhaps you can tell me why Biden smiling and laughing whenever Ryan told a falsehood (but was serious when talking, especially when talking about the military and his personal beliefs and even when Ryan was supposed to be talking about his personal beliefs) but Romney smirking the entire debate (and after talking about the dead State’s Department folks in Libya) is not?

      I believe that it has been said that ‘you get the respect that you earn’ or to respect the office one holds. With the number of un-truths that Ryan has told, not just in this debate, I too would not take him seriously because he cannot seem to tell a truth to save his butt. He can’t even tell the truth about his personal life!

      Do you also feel that people who disagree with you are not respecting you?

  4. 7

    duanedarnauer #5

    Polling will show that his smirking won’t fly with the general public.

    Your crystal ball may need recalibration. My guess is different from yours. I think Biden will be seen as the clear winner of this debate.

  5. 8

    @5,

    I refuse to accept the framing, used by everybody from creationists to anti-vaxxers to Republican electoral candidates, that it is less disrespectful to lie right to someone’s face than it is to call someone out for the same.

    1. 10.1

      Okay guys, this Ryanbot is used up. Wipe it clean, send it back for reconditioning. We’re going to need an upgrade.

      The truthiness unit in the Ryanbot is burned out from too much use. We need to install one of the truth bypassers from the Romney series, so we don’t get a short every time the unit is confronted with facts that refute its claims. We might also need to dial back on the arrogance – when combined with the truthiness settings we’re already using we have to hit the manual override every time the Ryanbot is about to claim it was the first man to walk on the moon.

  6. 12

    Uncle joe lied his ass off. Only an delusional crackhead could think Biden did a good job.

    Whereas a more sober person would note that you didn’t specify what Biden said that was wrong or a lie.

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