Biden-Ryan Debate, What to Expect

Last week when Mitt Romney ‘won’ the Presidential Debate, everyone knew that the polls were going to shift, the question was: by how much? For the first time since May of this year, Mitt Romney has gone ahead of Obama according the Huffington Post’s poll averages. According to it Romney led Obama by a miniscule 0.1% for a few hours, although this lead is extremely small it has psychological significance. Before the debate began, the Romney campaign was viewed as possibly being dead in the water, that the debate was the last thing that could save Romney from collapse. It was predicted that even if Romney did slightly better than Obama, the campaign would be over. Fortunately for Mitt Romney, the public perceive that he won the debate by a huge 2:1 margin! Not only has Romney kept his campaign alive, his dreams of moving to the White House are now a real possibility!

This means that there is a huge amount of pressure on Joe Biden for his debate tonight; it will take place eight days after Obama’s defeat. Although it will not be as widely watched as the presidential debate, it is an opportunity for the Democrats to begin fighting back. The type of attacks that Biden will receive will likely be similar to the ones that Romney used against Obama. Biden should learn from how Obama handled his opponent’s attacks and craft a better response. Biden also has one big advantage over Obama; he can use last week’s excellent job report to back him up. For many Democrats, Obama was too polite (a point made by Obama himself in an interview with ABC) and he let Romney get away with blatant lies. If Ryan repeats Romney’s “Obama doubled the deficit”, Biden should come down on him like a ton of bricks! It is simply not true, by any way shape or form.

One point that Ryan will likely attempt to make is that the Obama campaign is trying to distract the American people from the economy. One example he may give is the attention the Democrats have paid to Romney’s promise the cut the subsidy to PBS during the last debate. Biden can easily retaliate to this point as it is the only cut to the budget that Romney has specified, other than repealing Obamacare which, according to the independent CBO, would actually add $109 billion to the deficit. 

Another point that Biden can use to attack Ryan is Romney’s promise to sky-rocket spending on the military, giving the Pentagon more money than they’ve asked for. Foreign policy is certainly an area on which the Democrats should be campaigning on, a recent Gallup poll showed the public trusting the Democrats more with foreign policy matters than the GOP. It is also the only area in which Obama’s approval rating has always been higher than his disapproval rating (according to HuffPost averages). Biden should also point out the Republican ticket’s warmongering, Romney has sometimes mentioned how he would support Israel if it bombed Iran. The Republicans as a whole, including Ryan, have often criticised Obama for “destroying America’s reputation abroad”, this is not founded on fact; America’s closest allies have  a far higher approval of the US now that Obama is in charge over George W. Bush.

Joe Biden

Something Biden should really attack Ryan for is his budget. The extreme budget which cuts help for the poor, privatises the highly popular medicare and cuts taxes for the wealthy. Best of all it doesn’t even reduce the deficit, although Ryan claims that it will. When Ryan made the budget proposal he said his budget would slash the deficit, to prove this he had the numbers run by The Heritage Foundation.  This is the same organisation that said that George W. Bush’s budgets would slash the deficit, the reality was that the budgets turned a $200 billion budget surplus into a $1.2 trillion budget deficit. Yeah I don’t think the American people will trust anything that comes out of their mouths, as long as they are well informed.

Paul Ryan

A lot of the media speculation in recent weeks was that Ryan would be the better debater than Biden, after all Ryan is a member of congress and has to frequently take part in debates or debate like events. What people seem to forget is Biden’s ability to connect with the ordinary person, when he speaks people feel that he is sincere. This is quite the opposite for Ryan, one of the only things people remember from the RNC is just how shockingly dishonest Ryan was in his acceptance speech, even FOX accused him of lying! Biden is also one of Congress’ longest serving Senators, he was Senator for Delaware from 1973 until he was sworn in as Vice-President in 2009.

This debate is vital for both campaigns, if Ryan wins then the White House is truly within reach. If Biden wins, then the Obama campaign will have a new spurt of life. Whatever the outcome, this could prove the most important vice-presidential debate in a long time.