October 12, 2012 04:36 PM UTC

Joe Biden Kicks The "Stuff" Out Of Paul Ryan--And Why It Matters

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• by: Colorado Pols

A roundup of post-veep debate coverage, starting per usual with FOX 31’s Eli Stokols:

Less than four weeks from the end of an election that will likely be determined by which party’s base shows up, Vice President Joe Biden did something essential in a 90-minute debate with his GOP challenger Paul Ryan – he fired up a beleaguered base.

It’s unclear, however, if Biden did Democrats good or bad with undecided voters – as television networks’ undecided voter panels offered different conclusions about who won the debate.

While this debate isn’t likely to change the dynamics of the election to the degree last week’s incredibly flat performance by President Barack Obama has fueled a sudden surge for Mitt Romney, Biden’s performance offered distraught Democrats the energy and emotion and punch they wanted to see last Wednesday night from the president.

Politico’s Alexander Burns:

The debate was a head-snapping role reversal from last week’s first presidential debate in Denver, which featured a subdued Barack Obama and a combative, insistent Mitt Romney…

The substantive flashpoints of the debate tended to play to Biden’s strengths, more than to Ryan’s. With much of the evening devoted to foreign policy, Biden – a former chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee – touted the administration’s record of fighting terrorism and heavily underscored its commitment to withdrawing troops from Afghanistan by 2014.

Ryan was at his most sure-footed on domestic policy, though there, too, an almost-hectoring Biden forced him on the defensive on the issues of entitlement reform and taxes. Pressed by both Biden and the moderator on how Romney’s pledge to cut taxes while balancing the budget might add up, Ryan pledged it’s possible to “cut tax rates by 20 percent and still preserve … important” deductions for the middle class.

Over and over, Biden’s tactic of choice was a gut-level punch at the GOP, turning to the camera at one point in an exchange over Medicare and asking viewers: “Look, folks, use your common sense: who do you trust on this?”

And Ezra Klein of the Washington Post:

Biden succeeded tonight. He had a simple job: Stop the bleeding. Buck up the troops. Make all those Democrats out there who’ve been fighting for the Obama campaign feel that the Obama campaign is also fighting for them. And so Biden came out tonight and picked a fight. He did everything Democrats wished Obama had done a week ago. He called out Ryan’s “malarkey” early and forcefully. He returned again and again to the 47 percent comments. He fought for core Democratic issues like protecting Medicare and Social Security.

The post-debate spin told the tale. The Romney campaign argued Biden was too aggressive, too bullying, too mean. The Obama campaign argued that Biden had destroyed Ryan. Judging from my Twitter feed, most Democrats agreed. They saw the fight in Biden that they’d wanted to see in Obama. They felt the Obama campaign had learned from last week and changed their strategy. That was Biden’s job tonight, and he did it.

Our view: we commented yesterday that the overwhelming judgment by viewers and pundits that Mitt Romney won last week’s debate against Barack Obama–by almost 4-to-1, an historic margin–masked a large segment of Democrats who acknowledged Romney’s rhetorical victory over a passive Obama, but reject Romney’s underlying agenda. There is consensus that Romney won the debate, which includes a large number who will never vote for Romney.

Those are the people Joe Biden needed to rescue from despair last night.

And so while Biden’s feisty, even a bit combative performance will be panned by partisan Republicans in total game-face mode now as the election nears, Biden’s domination of Ryan on both style and substance is certain to have a profound rallying effect on base Democrats. This is, as everyone reading our blog today knows, a base turnout election. And there’s no question that, coming out of last week, Democratic morale had taken a hit.

Now, at least until Obama’s chance to even the score against Romney–a chance Obama absolutely must not blow–Democrats have a standard-bearer on the ticket to rally around. This is why it doesn’t matter if the flash polls say Biden and Ryan fought to “a draw.” Last night, the job was to restore the confidence of the Democratic base at a critical time; and that he managed to do so may well go down as the greatest moment in Joe Biden’s political career.