VP debate thoughts

First, regardless of my being liberal, yet my being a third-party voter who cares not a tremendous amount for the Obama Administration, let me stipulated that Biden kicked Paul Ryan’s butt on both style and substance tonight.

That all said, in both “chess match” and real politics terms, even as people like Nate Silver have now put both Colorado and Florida (slimly, in both cases) in Mitt Romney’s camp, can Preznit Kumbaya actually learn something from Biden’s performance?

Odds? About 50-50. You see, despite his own self-delusional belief, Obama’s not our first post-racial president. Now, his fervent wish is that he could be our first post-partisan president, and that’s even less true. But, he still has trouble leading, not just governing, but leading, as a partisan leader. He’s not the monarch of a constitutional monarchy, sitting above it all while passing out vague policy guidelines, as much as he might wish.

And, Mitt Romney is no crotchety John McCain, specific to debate issues.

That said, a few observations.

One, because Biden pretty thoroughly waxed Ryan on both style and substance, this Veep debate may move the public needle more than the typical one.

Second, there’s a few observations I have about debate content and questions.

A. Besides letting third-party candidates into debates, we need to have them "moderated" by somebody outside the mainstream media, especially re the bipartisan foreign policy consensus and its MSM enforcers. I mean, Iran is NOT, NOT, NOT American's top current foreign policy issue, unless you're a Zionist, a Zionist neocon, or a Christian "amen corner" neocon. Period. Food shortages globally, the effects of climate change are just two of several more important issues.

Let's add that someone like debate moderator Martha Raddatz either knows better or should know better that all the claims about how near Iran has been to nuclear weapons have been first, miscalculations, then, lies, for 25 years. (Andrew Rosenthal at the NYT is a fluffer.)

Off the top of my head, I can name several issues more directly impending on US national security than Iranian possible (and lied-about) nuclear arms development.

They include:

• Chinese cyberwarfare and cyberespionage

• Global warming and possible fallouts, including food shortages and mass migrations

• Possibly other industrial espionage issues

• And, facetiousness and sarcasm aside, but given where it led us in Iraq — Zionism.

B. I loved, or “loved,” both Ryan and Biden tap-dancing around refusing to admit the difference between Libya and Syria is that one has oil and the other doesn't. And, that Raddatz refused to call out both of them on a follow-up. The bipartisan foreign policy establishment’s hypocrisy on oil is ridiculous.