Katrina Trinko, who is doing a wonderful job of covering the presidential race for National Review Online, used Twitter to ask women to send her their reactions last night’s debate.
Nothing scientific about Tinko’s poll, but the results were illuminating. Most of Trinko’s respondents thought the veep was pretty awful, employing words like “jerk” or saying they were “repulsed.”
But the saddest response came from a woman who was worried about the future and had tuned into the debate hoping to learn about issues that will affect her life:
There were 4 women at my house last night and we decided to watch the debate rather than play cards. We are all a “little older” but still in the workforce. We were anxious to hear about solutions to high gas and food prices. One woman wanted to understand premium support. It was like watching an obnoxious talk show host worse than Matthews or O’Reilly. It was disappointing and we were shocked by our vice president’s behavior. We spent 30 minutes talking about his laughing after the debate ended because it was such a shock. Even the solidly liberal woman among us was mortified. We wanted to hear a traditional debate. Oh well. The 2 leaners are leaning more toward the Romney Ryan ticket which made me happy even after such an appalling night.
Imagine that–wanting to learn something from a political debate.
I think one of the reasons Mitt Romney won the first debate is that listeners actually learned about him. Biden's goal was to prevent listeners from learning from Paul Ryan, and he achieved his goal. But I'm not sure this tactic was really such a good idea for Obama-Biden.