I'm a little surprised that people are so upset over Biden smiling and laughing a lot during the debate. Maybe it's because I do it a lot too, but it's pretty much an involuntary reaction.
When I've debated, if the opponent is saying something that's demonstrably false, or is saying something so ridiculous that it's embarrassing, I've started involuntarily laughing and smiling. It's a mix between feeling embarrassed for them and being shocked at what they're saying. It's not the most graceful problem to have. People are also upset because they feel that Biden was "smug", but I think that's a result of the anti-intelligence feeling that's common in America right now. Biden was very confidently and intelligently arguing his points, doing so, unfortunately, makes a lot of people feel uncomfortable. However, that's their problem.
But enough about all that. What was more important was what each person was saying. Although now that I think about it, the right's reaction to Biden's mannerisms says all that needs to be said. Ryan was a lame duck and almost everyone who actually paid attention to what was said will agree. Ryan said a lot, but he never actually ever said anything of substance, and furthermore, his little "human interest stories" were either sickeningly sweet or just plain inappropriate. First you had his disgusting car crash story told to Biden, WHO LOST HIS WIFE AND KIDS IN A CAR CRASH, which the moral was, "Romney will give everyone money instead of making their problems go away". Then you have the "Bean" story, which as someone who deals a lot with hard science, was laughable. The short of it was that he saw an ultrasound of his unborn daughter and she was the size and shape of a bean, so he KNEW from then on, that life begins at conception. The whole story just confirmed that he knows nothing about science. That "bean" (assuming he didn't make the whole story up on the assumption that fetuses look like their earliest stages up until the actual birth) was actually a small sac of various fluids. It had no awareness at all, could not feel anything, and was not even vaguely recognizable as mammalian let alone living. As a matter of fact, it would be more cruel to kill a worm than a fetus at that stage. But these stories are just meant to manipulate people via their emotions. It was disgusting, but unfortunately, it worked at least to some extent. Furthermore, he completely botched the question about Abortion. His answer was essentially, "I believe in freedom of speech, but ONLY for MY religion". Biden's was near perfect with "I believe certain things because of my religion, but it's wrong to push my beliefs on anyone, so I will never restrict anyone's freedom." Finally, the funniest part of the debate, in my opinion, was Ryan's comment on withdrawing our troops. First he said it's wrong to withdraw the troops in 2014, then he was called out on that, so he changed his mind, when he was called out on THAT he said, "Well, we should withdraw our troops in 2014, BUT NOT TELL ANYONE" If it wasn't potentially ruinous to our country, I would love to see Romney and Ryan win, if only to see what goofy thing they'd say or do next.
The whole debate can be summed up by the closing statements.
Biden's was honest, informal but well thought out, and passionate.
Ryan's was overly rehearsed, void of any substance, and meaningless
As for the moderator, she did a fantastic job. She opened with the ONE question Biden didn't want to discuss, and later on, there was a period where she was absolutely hammering Biden. If anything, she was much harder against Biden. With Ryan, all she did was ask him to explain his answers because he was continuously saying, "We're going to fix (problem)", but he was never even hinting at how.
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