http://www.politico.com/politico44/2012/10/pew-biden-viewed-more-unfavorably-than-ryan-138042.html
Pew: Biden viewed more unfavorably than Ryan
A new Pew survey released ahead of tomorrow's debate finds that registered voters are not that hot on Vice President Biden.
Of the 90 percent who expressed an opinion, 51 percent view him unfavorably.
His GOP counterpart, Paul Ryan, on the other hand fared a lot better. Only 40 percent of the 84 percent who expressed an opinion viewed him unfavorably.
The poll also found that Republicans are more confident that Ryan will win the debate than Demcrats are about Biden's chances.
"Nearly eight-in-ten (78%) Republican voters say Ryan will do the better job in the debate," Pew wrote in its analysis. "Fewer Democrats (62%) expect Biden to do better."
The lower expectations could make it easier for the vice president to exceed them, but with his boss's lackluster performance last week, Biden may have to do a lot better than exceed them to reset the race in Obama's favor.
and.....
http://www.politico.com/news/stories/1012/82230.html
Media: Vice presidential debate unlike any other
Many in the media say Thursday’s Joe Biden-Paul Ryan vice presidential debate is all about one word: pressure.
Pundits and reporters told POLITICO that the pressure’s on Biden to deliver the aggressive performance President Barack Obama failed to have at last week’s debate. And the pressure’s on Ryan to keep up the momentum his running mate Mitt Romney created just a week ago in Denver.
Vice presidential debates are often seen as an October sideshow — an entertaining albeit mostly unimportant aspect of the presidential race — but it’s now a different ballgame, according to those in the media. Thanks to the overwhelming feeling that Romney won and Obama lost the first debate, some say this face-off will be an important factor in determining where the momentum of the race shifts in the minds of voters.
“I think that increases the pressure on both of them, Ryan and Biden — and certainly on the vice president to show up because I’m not sure Obama did show up for his debate,” Current TV’s liberal talk show host Bill Press told POLITICO. “Biden needs to show up and be aggressive and assertive and sort of take charge. I think it also increases the pressure on Paul Ryan to put in a good performance, to match the good performance his running mate put in.”
In Danville, Ky., Biden is faced with the task of delivering “the debate performance Obama didn’t,” MSNBC host and Salon senior political writer Steve Kornacki said.
“Every criticism that Democrats had about Obama’s performance, about his refusal, unwillingness, inability, whatever it is, to engage Romney — all the claims Romney was making, all the attacks he was leveling, all of the specifics he wasn’t providing — it’s on Biden, I think, to go after Ryan in those ways and to try to corner him on all these vulnerabilities,” Kornacki said in an interview. “And beyond that, to show some life. Show that he actually has some blood in his veins. The good news if you’re a Democrat is that you know Biden does have some blood in his veins. The risk of that obviously is that whole reputation for being gaffe-prone.”
Although the night matches up Ryan and Biden, what really matters is how the two VP picks pitch the men at the top of their respective tickets to undecided voters, Daily News columnist and MSNBC host S.E. Cupp said.
“Obama needs a good night,” Cupp said. “And Romney needs his ticket to look strong and competent. Both teams will be speaking to those undecideds and soft Obama voters who may be disappointed and looking for a reason to stay or go.”
And after a week in which the media focused on the president’s poor performance, “this really is the first opportunity, certainly for the Obama campaign, to change the terms of the debate, so to speak, to change the chatter,” ABC News political director Amy Walter said in an interview.
Biden will likely be more “aggressive and try to make up for the shortcomings of Obama in the first debate,” Walter said. Ryan, meanwhile, is a “guy who knows his numbers” — and it’s important for him to maintain a very delicate balancing act with those numbers during the debate, she added.
“He is very comfortable with a PowerPoint presentation,” Walter said. “He can’t get lost in the weeds of the PowerPoint. He’s got to take those numbers and make them real, make them mean something to the people who are watching the debate. He also has to defend his record and his running mate’s record while not appearing too defensive. The Romney campaign for the first time in a very long time is on its toes instead of on its heels, and that’s where he needs to stay.”
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As for Biden, CNN’s senior congressional correspondent Dana Bash said there’s no question he’s a very skilled debater and a savvy politician, but there’s always the possibility that the vice president could veer off script and fall into familiar gaffe territory.
“There’s always the expectations game and you hear the spin from each camp. In this case, Ryan happens to be right — Biden is very experienced and the thing about him that I find so interesting is that Biden can really get his points across in a fighting way, but he does it in a folksy way,” Bash told POLITICO. “That’s one of the things that is most endearing about Joe Biden and most scary about Joe Biden for the Obama campaign, because he tends to be so folksy that he falls off the script some of the time. I can’t imagine that happening in the debate because he’ll be so worried about it, but you never know.”
Yet for all of Biden’s years of practice, conservative radio host Glenn Beck said the VP has a lot to fear from the Wisconsin congressman.
“This is a historic debate as it’s the old guard versus the new guard. It’s important to not disregard Joe Biden — he’s been around forever and knows how to play the Washington game. He is the definition of the institution that Americans had hoped we changed. But he has to take on Paul Ryan, who comes armed with facts, substantive arguments and quite frankly, better abs and hair,” Beck said.
But a major concern for Ryan, according to Kornacki, is that the congressman “has not handled follow-up questions well” from the media. Biden’s going to “come after” Ryan on the budget and the question of deductions and loopholes, and the congressman needs to be prepared for that kind of scrutiny, Kornacki said.
“When he’s been asked specific questions — you know, how long is it going to take to balance Romney’s budget plan, for instance, when he’s asked questions about deductions, about the tax plan — he has really been at a loss to answer it and he’s not been good at kind of running out the clock,” he said, later adding, “I’m not sure how good Ryan’s going to be at responding to that and that I think is something he has to work on and be ready for.”
Much like the first debate, this showdown should prove “very substantive,” Bash said — but there’s one dynamic she said she expects to see between Biden and Paul that was notably absent in the Romney-Obama meeting.
“These guys know each other,” Bash said of Biden and Paul. “They served together in Congress. They have worked together since Biden has been at the White House, been vice president. They have dealt with each other on health care, as much as Republicans and Democrats dealt with each other at all, on budgets, on taxes, and they know each other personally. I don’t think you can discount that as a factor in the dynamic that you’re going to see.”
Biden and Ryan may be a “generation apart, but they’re not that different,” Bash noted. For all the policy differences between the two candidates, the millions of voters who tune in Thursday night can expect to witness a “folksy” showdown.
“Biden’s folksy, and Ryan is as well,” she said. “He tries to be the aw-shucks Midwestern guy who hasn’t changed since he left Janesville, just like Biden tries to be the scrappy guy from Scranton. They’re a generation apart but they’re not that different in terms of the ‘I am who I am’ kind of thing.”
http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/OTUS/biden-paul-ryan-brace-debate-polls-tighten/story?id=17432814
http://www.weeklystandard.com/blogs/biden-has-not-sat-camera-nationally-televised-interview-5-months_654033.html
( Let's face it - Joe has the pressure to reverse the trends against the Dems right now .... is he up to the task ? )
Biden Has Not Sat for On-Camera Nationally Televised Interview in 5 Months
1:12 PM, OCT 9, 2012 • BY DANIEL HALPER
Vice President Joe Biden has not sat down for a nationally televised interview in 5 months. The last big TV interview Biden did was on NBC's Meet the Press, when he jumped the gun and came out in favor of gay marriage before President Obama was able to publicly shift his position. Days later, Obama did his own nationally televised interview and expressed his own support for that initiative.
Biden's Meet the Press interview aired Sunday, May 6, 2012.
In fact, it is not just TV Biden has been avoiding. He's done only one print interview since Paul Ryan joined Mitt Romney on the Republican ticket back in August.
"From all we can find, Joe Biden has done one interview since Paul Ryan joined the ticket August 11. One. And it was with John Heilemann for New York magazine. Over that period, Paul Ryan has done 197 interviews, 153 of those on TV (29 National & 124 local/regional). The rest print or radio," says an aide at Mitt Romney's campaign headquarters.
A Republican source explains why Biden is being kept away from the press.
"Joe Biden gets used by the Obama Campaign like Bernie from 'Weekend at Bernie's,'" says the Republican source. "They drag him out to a battleground state, prop him up on a podium in front of a teleprompter, pose him for photos with locals, and then quickly roll him back to Air Force 2 before reporters have a chance to ask him questions. They want Biden to be seen, but not heard in any interviews because they're afraid he might embarrass the president with another one of his hilarious gaffes."
Even President Obama has sat for interviews during this time. Most notably, Obama joined the ladies of The View for a daytime interview when he was in New York City recently for the United Nations General Assembly.
Ying and yang ahead of thursday......
http://www.nationalreview.com/articles/329749/ryan-gets-ready-robert-costa
Paul Ryan may be the first vice-presidential nominee who once prepped a veep nominee.
In late 1996, Ryan, then 26 years old, worked as a policy adviser for Jack Kemp, a former New York congressman and Bob Dole’s running mate. On the trail, Ryan guided Kemp as he prepared for his October debate with vice president Al Gore. The official prep sessions, however, were mostly a disaster. Kemp rarely practiced, and when he did, he lost his temper. At one mock debate, according to writer Robert Draper, Kemp “shot the bird” at Senator Judd Gregg, who was playing Gore, and stormed out of the room.Once Kemp took the stage in St. Petersburg, Fla., he was hardly ready to challenge the Clinton-Gore record. He did not have an array of facts and figures memorized. Instead, he leaned on clunky anecdotes and platitudes. The entire exchange was tepid, and Kemp flopped, even in the eyes of his friends. “Within minutes it was apparent that Kemp was not prepared,” recalls Ed Gillespie, a Romney adviser, in his book Winning Right.
Ryan, of course, was a lowly Kemp aide, and it was not his responsibility to corral his gregarious boss. But 16 years later, as Ryan prepares for his own vice-presidential debate, his mentor’s stumbles are fresh in his mind. According to a Ryan insider, “Paul may be over preparing, just because he knows how important this is” — for the Romney campaign and for his reputation as the intellectual leader of the Republican party.
“Jack was a virtuoso and a genius, but he was not the most diligent student before the debate,” says Bill Bennett, a former education secretary who worked with both Kemp and Ryan in the early 1990s. “I remember Paul had these huge, loose-leaf binders he’d carry around. Afterward, he probably knew that it wasn’t a good night for Jack. But Paul is a different creature, a creature of habit and self-discipline, and I know he will be ready.”
For much of last week, Ryan was at Wintergreen, a sprawling resort in central Virginia. Under the shadow of the Blue Ridge Mountains, Ryan and his advisers quietly reviewed policy papers, held several mock debates, and kept distractions to a minimum. BlackBerries and iPhones were switched off, and Ryan avoided the traveling press.
Yet the Virginia sessions were not the beginning of Ryan’s prep for Thursday’s debate. Soon after the Tampa convention, Ryan convened his inner circle, which includes longtime aides such as Andy Speth and Romney hands such as Dan Senor, and asked them to compile briefing books, much like the binders he used to organize for Kemp. On the campaign plane and at his home in Janesville, Wis., Ryan has been constantly reading the policy books, using his favorite disposable blue pen to make changes.
By mid-September, Ryan had two large books with him at all times. One was for domestic policy and the other for foreign policy. Romney’s policy staff in Boston was helpful in providing information about Romney’s positions, but Ryan took it upon himself to write much of the analysis and talking points. By late September, Ryan, who often vacations in the Rocky Mountains, asked his staff to book him a few rooms at a mountain resort so he could prepare in relative silence and anonymity. The Romney campaign settled on a place in rural Virginia because Virginia is a swing state and its mountains are fairly accessible.
Yet the Virginia sessions were not the beginning of Ryan’s prep for Thursday’s debate. Soon after the Tampa convention, Ryan convened his inner circle, which includes longtime aides such as Andy Speth and Romney hands such as Dan Senor, and asked them to compile briefing books, much like the binders he used to organize for Kemp. On the campaign plane and at his home in Janesville, Wis., Ryan has been constantly reading the policy books, using his favorite disposable blue pen to make changes.
By mid-September, Ryan had two large books with him at all times. One was for domestic policy and the other for foreign policy. Romney’s policy staff in Boston was helpful in providing information about Romney’s positions, but Ryan took it upon himself to write much of the analysis and talking points. By late September, Ryan, who often vacations in the Rocky Mountains, asked his staff to book him a few rooms at a mountain resort so he could prepare in relative silence and anonymity. The Romney campaign settled on a place in rural Virginia because Virginia is a swing state and its mountains are fairly accessible.
Romney’s senior advisers have taken a keen interest in Ryan’s prep. Russ Schriefer, a top Romney strategist, has attended many of the sessions, and Peter Flaherty, a senior Romney adviser, has sporadically played the moderator during mock debates. Kerry Healey, Romney’s former lieutenant governor, has also played the moderator, doing her best impression of ABC’s Martha Raddatz, who will referee on Thursday. Ted Olson, a former solicitor general who has known Ryan for years, has played Biden from the start.
Much of the behind-the-scenes work has been intense but casual. Business suits and ties aren’t always a requirement in Ryan World, and the congressman enjoys keeping things loose with advisers who share his Beltway vernacular. In this sense, late-night conversations in hotel rooms and on the plane have been as important as the mock debates. Ryan, who wakes early every morning to exercise, often prefers to hash things out until midnight with his staff, especially if he is away from his wife and his children.
“I’ve watched [Biden’s] tapes, I’ve watched his speeches, like the one he gave today, and just looked at a lot of their issues, their positions,” Ryan toldThe Weekly Standard last week. “I expect the vice president to come at me like a cannonball. He’ll be in full attack mode, and I don’t think he’ll let any inconvenient facts get in his way.”
The mock debates — excluding the laid-back sessions in jeans in Ryan’s hometown — have purposefully been more formal. From the first mock debates in a Washington, D.C., hotel to the run-throughs at Wintergreen, Ryan and Olson have been seated at a conference-room table, just as they will be in Danville, Ky., under the bright lights. Ryan’s aides are hushed as Flaherty or Healey open the sessions, and the atmosphere, according to a Romney official, is “charged.” Olson has mastered Biden’s mannerisms, down to his long-windedness and hand gestures. Olson’s tactics echo those of Senator Rob Portman, who played the role of President Obama during Mitt Romney’s debate prep and pestered the former governor about his responses.
Ryan has kept his cool. “He’s been in Congress for a long time, so he knows how to deal with weird people,” says Vin Weber, a Romney adviser. There have been bouts of nervousness about various topics and issues, his confidants say. But those moments, they argue, reflect his commitment to preparation and reveal his tendency toward perfectionism. Ryan doesn’t want simply to push back against Biden; he wants to win the argument. His preferred method of communicating with voters is the town hall, and since he won’t have his PowerPoint slides with him in Kentucky, he plans to tinker slightly with his usual presentation because many voters aren’t familiar with his wonky style.
Working with Speth and former House aides Michael Steel, Joyce Meyer, and Conor Sweeney, Ryan has carefully reviewed his House record, ensuring that he is up to speed on all the details of his budget and the Romney economic plan. But according to many of his advisers, the most important sessions have been those with Senor, a former Bush administration official who is an expert on foreign policy. Ryan has traveled to the Middle East and knows more about foreign policy than he’s given credit for, but he acknowledges that it’s the one area that he needs to sharpen. Biden may be gaffe-prone, but he is a former chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.
A handful of Ryan allies are worried. They know he is smart and that he is the House’s ideological leader, but they fret that his youth and upbeat voice may be problems. One longtime Ryan friend tells me that Ryan’s biggest challenge will be appearing to “meet the threshold” for executive office. The friend says Ryan may be president one day, but, for now, in his early forties, he has to make sure he doesn’t come across as too numbers-oriented and distant. Two Ryan advisers tell me that Ryan is aware of this, and he has talked about it with his top aides. To combat that impression, Ryan will probably stick to two or three themes on Thursday instead of bombarding Biden with data.
Mitt Romney, for his part, has largely let Ryan prepare on his own, without any interference. His aides are there are to assist Ryan’s busy traveling team, but Romney and Ryan don’t frequently huddle to discuss strategy. They spoke on the night of last week’s presidential debate and compared notes a few days later on the campaign bus before a rally in Virginia. But other than those fleeting exchanges, they’re operating as partners who trust each other. Romney has told his advisers that Ryan’s core strength is that he knows the issues and doesn’t need to have his hand held on policy.
A handful of Ryan allies are worried. They know he is smart and that he is the House’s ideological leader, but they fret that his youth and upbeat voice may be problems. One longtime Ryan friend tells me that Ryan’s biggest challenge will be appearing to “meet the threshold” for executive office. The friend says Ryan may be president one day, but, for now, in his early forties, he has to make sure he doesn’t come across as too numbers-oriented and distant. Two Ryan advisers tell me that Ryan is aware of this, and he has talked about it with his top aides. To combat that impression, Ryan will probably stick to two or three themes on Thursday instead of bombarding Biden with data.
Mitt Romney, for his part, has largely let Ryan prepare on his own, without any interference. His aides are there are to assist Ryan’s busy traveling team, but Romney and Ryan don’t frequently huddle to discuss strategy. They spoke on the night of last week’s presidential debate and compared notes a few days later on the campaign bus before a rally in Virginia. But other than those fleeting exchanges, they’re operating as partners who trust each other. Romney has told his advisers that Ryan’s core strength is that he knows the issues and doesn’t need to have his hand held on policy.
In the final days, Ryan will do some brief mock debates, but he’ll spend much of his time talking through various debate scenarios. Ryan likes to “game out” things, a Republican operative says, and he enjoys discussing how Biden may react in certain situations. His mood about the entire debate has noticeably changed in recent days, an adviser adds, since Romney’s debate. To Ryan, Romney’s assertiveness signals the campaign’s energy, and it will shape his own attitude and style when he faces Biden at Centre College. “He doesn’t want to be the guy talking about CBO baselines, but he wants to fight,” a Ryan adviser says. “He’s learned a lot on the trail about how to better make his case.”
Ryan hasn’t had a serious debate since 1998, when he first ran for Congress. At the time, he was 28 years old. Running against Democrat Lydia Spottswood, he was tagged as impressive, but too young — much as he is now by his critics. In those debates, Ryan took care to avoid sounding too much like a former congressional staffer. “You just can’t come across as an arrogant young know-it-all,” Ryan reflected a few years ago, in an interview with Christian Schneider, a fellow at the Wisconsin Policy Research Institute.
“He was really very serious, almost dour in those debates,” Schneider chuckles, recalling Ryan’s first run. “Given his youth as a vice-presidential candidate, he may take that same tack, and I don’t expect him to try to be too funny. He’ll let Biden do that. But he’s still the same guy he was back then. He loves talking about the budget and spending. So we’ll probably see that side of him in the debate, regardless of what’s happened in the prep.”
As Tobin Ryan, Ryan’s older brother, sees it, his brother has always been ready to wrangle with the best minds and political figures, ever since he sought out Kemp after he graduated from college. He worked hard for Kemp at his think tank and then helped him during the presidential campaign. “It was Paul’s coalescing moment,” Tobin says.
Ryan hasn’t had a serious debate since 1998, when he first ran for Congress. At the time, he was 28 years old. Running against Democrat Lydia Spottswood, he was tagged as impressive, but too young — much as he is now by his critics. In those debates, Ryan took care to avoid sounding too much like a former congressional staffer. “You just can’t come across as an arrogant young know-it-all,” Ryan reflected a few years ago, in an interview with Christian Schneider, a fellow at the Wisconsin Policy Research Institute.
“He was really very serious, almost dour in those debates,” Schneider chuckles, recalling Ryan’s first run. “Given his youth as a vice-presidential candidate, he may take that same tack, and I don’t expect him to try to be too funny. He’ll let Biden do that. But he’s still the same guy he was back then. He loves talking about the budget and spending. So we’ll probably see that side of him in the debate, regardless of what’s happened in the prep.”
As Tobin Ryan, Ryan’s older brother, sees it, his brother has always been ready to wrangle with the best minds and political figures, ever since he sought out Kemp after he graduated from college. He worked hard for Kemp at his think tank and then helped him during the presidential campaign. “It was Paul’s coalescing moment,” Tobin says.
Kemp may have floundered during his veep debate, but Ryan wasn’t deterred by the congressman’s mistakes. He learned from them, studied them, and remembered them as he made his way through Congress. Now, as he campaigns on the national Republican ticket, those memories — both the good and the bad — are foremost in his mind, even if he doesn’t talk about them in public. In his tight circle, the mantra is clear: Prepare, prepare, prepare.
Vice Presidenital Debate: Biden, Paul Ryan Brace as Polls Tighten
The pressure to "reset" the presidential race is on President Obama's team this time around. With a variety of new polls showing Mitt Romney's riding the wave of his post-debate surge to a near deadlock among likely voters, the Obama campaign is looking for ways to break the challenger's rising tide.
And Vice President Joe Biden is lining up as the man to do it.
"The Obama campaign has lost all the momentum they had and now are in danger of falling behind," ABC News political analyst and former George W. Bush campaign strategist Matthew Dowd said this morning. "Biden is important to stop the bleeding and regain their footing. And as important, Ryan has to not step in it, so the Romney trajectory can continue."
Dowd was reminded of Bush's poor opening debate performance in 2004, which briefly gifted Democratic challenger Sen. John Kerry a similar bump in the polls.
"When Cheney asked me in debate prep what he needed to do after the Miami debacle, I said, 'Stop the gangrene from spreading,'" Dowd said. "Biden has to do same."
Tune in to ABCNews.com on Thursday for livestreaming coverage of the 2012 Vice Presidential Debate moderated by ABC's Martha Raddatz in Danville, Ky. Coverage kicks off with ABC News' live preview show at noon, and full debate coverage begins at 8 p.m.
For his part, Republican vice presidential nominee Paul Ryan says he expects Biden to come at him "like a cannonball."
"They're just going to call us liars for a month, is basically what they're going to do, it looks like," Ryan told Michigan radio host Frank Beckmann Monday, "to descend down into a mud pit and, hopefully, with enough mudslinging back and forth and distortion, people will get demoralized and then they can win by default."
The Wisconsin congressman, though, had an awkward end to his day, walking out of a local TV interview after being challenged by a reporter on whether the country had a gun-violence problem.
Ryan parried the initial question, calling "crime" the issue, not guns, and pointing to the Romney-Ryan economic plan as the means for boosting a "civil society" that would reject all kinds of violence.
"You can do all that by cutting taxes? With a big tax cut?" WJRT's Terry Camp asked Ryan in response.
"Those are your words, not mine," Ryan replied before spokesman Michael Steel cut off the exchange.
"The reporter knew he was already well over the allotted time for the interview when he decided to ask a weird question relating gun violence to tax cuts," another Ryan spokesman, Brendan Buck, said later.
Democrats soon seized on the incident, DNC spokesman Brad Woodhouse tweeting, "You can walk out of an interview if you don't like a press question? This is a game changer -- way to be a leader Congressman Paul Ryan. "
Both vice presidential candidates are off the stump today. Ryan is in Virginia being drilled before his date with Biden at Centre College in Danville, Ky., Thursday night. The vice president is sharpening his steel in Delaware, his home state.
Meanwhile, with polls showing Romney making inroads with women voters, wife Ann Romney has published an essay titled, "The Man I Know"on Blog Her, a general interest website aimed at women readers.
"Last Wednesday night, in a debate watched by nearly 70 million people, America and the world got to see the Mitt Romney I've known for most of my life," she begins, an opening bid to solidify the positive impressions her husband made last week during his first one-on-one with Obama.
"Mitt has always been my hero," she writes. "There have been times in my life when I didn't think I could make it, when I wasn't sure I could take one more step. And in those times, when I couldn't do it on my own, Mitt was always there for me to lean on."
http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/10/09/us-usa-campaign-biden-oct-idUSBRE8981FO20121009
By John Whitesides
WASHINGTON |
(Reuters) - He has been stereotyped as the Obama administration's gaffe-prone sideshow.
But Vice President Joe Biden also is a veteran debater who was in the U.S. Senate for a quarter century and is perhaps the Democratic White House's most passionate defender of the working class.
Now, with his debate against Republican vice presidential nominee Paul Ryan coming up on Thursday, Biden is under pressure to help President Barack Obama's campaign recapture the momentum it enjoyed before Obama was outmaneuvered by Republican rival Mitt Romney last week in the first of their three debates.
That debate trimmed Obama's lead in the polls and raised the stakes for the lone vice presidential debate, which also will be a national debut of sorts for Ryan, the Wisconsin congressman and budget specialist.
With the Romney-Ryan campaign energized, Democrats are in the surprising position of relying on Biden, a perpetual political wild card, to fire up their campaign. Democrats did get a boost in Friday's jobs report, which showed the nation's unemployment rate dipped below 8 percent last month for the first time since January 2009, the month Obama took office.
"This is not about changing minds. This is about changing the momentum," Democratic strategist Chris Kofinis said. "The vice president is going to have to be very aggressive in undercutting Republican arguments. He can't allow Ryan to control the debate the way Romney controlled his debate."
An aggressive Romney went after Obama in their debate, offering what appeared to be new positions - misrepresentations, Democrats claimed later - on taxes, healthcare and other issues.
Obama, strangely passive, left many of Romney's assertions unanswered. It will be up to Biden, far more comfortable than Obama in the role of aggressor, to fill in the blanks on what Democrats say are Romney's shifting positions.
Biden could be well suited to the role.
He was a sharper performer than Obama when they debated as presidential candidates during the 2008 Democratic primaries. The former Delaware senator's blunt-talking style makes him a particularly effective communicator with blue-collar voters.
"Biden has a chance to undo some of the damage from the first debate," said David Steinberg, a debate coach and political communications specialist at the University of Miami.
"The vice president's biggest job will be as a fact checker," he said. "He can come in and say, 'Well, this is what Governor Romney said last Wednesday, and this is why it's wrong.'"
Biden, campaigning in Iowa on Thursday, said he had been studying Republican campaign positions and promised to hold Ryan accountable while sticking to the facts.
"I don't want to say anything in the debate that's not completely accurate," Biden told reporters. "I just want to make sure that when I say those things I don't have the congressman say, 'No, no, no, I don't have that position,' or 'That's not the governor's position.'"
The next presidential debate - the second of three - will not be until October 16, leaving Thursday's vice presidential showdown in Danville, Kentucky, as the next major item on the campaign calendar in the race to the November 6 election.
INTEREST RISES
Vice presidential debates rarely play a role in deciding a White House race, but Romney's decisive win in the first presidential debate has cranked up interest in Thursday's encounter.
Biden, the former chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations and Judiciary committees, fared well in his face-off against Republican Sarah Palin in the 2008 vice presidential debate and proved to be a strong debater during his failed bid for president four years ago.
But he also has a reputation for gaffes, including his recent remark that the middle class has been "buried for the last four years" - the span of Obama's presidency - by a bad economy.
Biden was referring to the fallout from the recession that began under Republican President George W. Bush, but Romney and Ryan pounced on Biden's comment, saying that even Obama's running mate was acknowledging that the president had fallen short in overseeing the economy.
Last spring, Biden forced Obama's hand on endorsing same-sex marriage when the vice president declared his support for it during a television interview.
Biden is portrayed at times as a political buffoon, but his defenders say the mistakes are evidence of a straight-talking style that makes him a hit with many voters - and that can play well in a debate setting.
"Biden has got something going for him in a debate, which is a sense of humor," said Alan Schroeder of Northeastern University's Alan Schroeder, who has written a history of presidential debates.
"Both Romney and Obama are humor-challenged, and Paul Ryan has not shown himself to be a barrel of laughs, so Biden has a chance to bring some theatricality and some show-business energy to the debate that will make it more interesting," Schroeder said.
Ryan, the chairman of the House Budget Committee, is popular with conservatives for his plan to slash government spending and create a "voucher" system for the Medicare healthcare program for seniors. Democrats say that a voucher system could leave some seniors having to pay for much more of their medical costs.
Ryan is an unknown quantity in a debate setting, with his only previous experience coming in a few low-profile congressional encounters in his native Wisconsin.
"This is the big game and Ryan is playing on a stage that he's never had experience with, so he'll be under a great deal of pressure, too," Schroeder said.
A Reuters/Ipsos online poll of 2,367 voters this week found both men have work to do on their image, with "very unfavorable" being the most popular view of each. Biden scored better than Ryan, 39 percent to 33 percent, on the question of who was more qualified to take over as president.
Ryan and Biden have taken time off the campaign trail to prepare for Thursday's debate.
Democratic Rep. Chris Van Hollen has played Ryan in mock debates with Biden; former U.S. Solicitor General Ted Olson has played Biden in sessions with Ryan.
Van Hollen said Obama's performance in last week's debate had not changed the Democratic strategy heading into the vice presidential encounter.
"The focus is on the choice the American people face in this election," he said.
Even if the vice presidential debate is typically less meaningful than the presidential encounters, neither campaign can afford a slip-up before an expected television audience in the tens of millions.
"Every inch matters in this campaign," Republican strategist Ron Bonjean said. "The polls are going to tighten up, and you don't know what Biden you are going to get."
But Biden's reputation for mistakes could lower expectations for him.
"It would be nice to be Biden," Steinberg said. "He's got a wider range of stuff he can say and people go, 'Oh, that's just Biden.' If Ryan said it, they will be looking at him through a microscope."
http://www.breitbart.com/Big-Government/2012/10/07/How-to-Beat-Paul-Ryan-in-a-Debate
VP DEBATE PREVIEW: HOW TO BEAT PAUL RYAN
Rep. Paul Ryan is an excellent debater, having bested President Barack Obama himself and many other opponents besides. But Ryan also has a few vulnerable points that Vice President Joe Biden will try to exploit at their debate at Centre College in Danville, KY on Thursday night. The way to defeat Ryan is to use his intellectual strengths against him, and emphasize the human side behind his abstract numbers, theories and policies.
That is something Democratic National Committee chair Debbie Wasserman Schultz--not the best of debaters, which is why the party has sidelined her during the last critical weeks of the campaign--managed to do during an exchange with Ryan in March 2010 over Obamacare on Fox News Sunday. Ryan arrived at the studio armed with facts and figures--and a portable “Ross Perot” chart--and destroyed the budget pretensions of Wasserman Schultz and her Democrats, who claimed Obamacare reduced the deficit.
Her defense was simple:
And while Paul is in the weeds on economic theory, I'd like to get in the weeds on how health insurance reform impacts everyday lives. And I'll tell you, honestly, folks that I talk to, the 2.5 million breast cancer survivors in America, that I am one of, understand that we're done with insurance companies dropping us or denying us coverage because of — because we have a preexisting condition.
Watching that exchange, I had the impression that Wasserman Schultz came away the winner. She did not really contest Ryan’s analysis--she merely dismissed it as irrelevant to the fundamental problem at stake. There were victims Ryan could have brought up--future victims denied treatment by cost-control boards, for instance--but he did not, and the personal edge Wasserman Schultz brought seemed to have caught him by surprise.
Ryan is a policy wonk, and finds refuge in numbers that make most other people’s eyes glaze over. His natural response to any proposal by the other side can be summed up as, “Okay, but at what cost?” He reminds voters that everything government does must come, at the cost of something else--including the prosperity of American households.
But “prosperity” is an abstract concept, and the personal, human cost of one person potentially benefiting from a government program, or suffering for the lack of it, is much more real and intense to many people in the audience.
Unfortunately for Ryan, that is the kind of argument at which Biden--for all his many flaws--excels. It was the basis for his much-maligned, but effective, speech at the recent Democratic National Convention.
Biden comes into Thursday’s debate with the advantage of low expectations. He doesn’t have to win--no one expects him to; he merely has to make Ryan stumble.
To that end, he will hurl all of the Obama campaign’s worst attacks at Ryan--because only Biden can get away with it--and he will tell stories, making them up if necessary (as he so often does), to argue that while Ryan may have facts and figures, he doesn’t have heart.
That is an argument for which Ryan must prepare. His sparring partner has been litigator Ted Olson--which is good preparation for a policy discussion, but less obviously helpful against a loose cannon like Biden.
The best example for Ryan to follow is that of Romney himself, who deployed a set of real-life anecdotes in his first debate against Obama. Ryan should bring some of his own--along with his charts--on Thursday.
and...
http://www.weeklystandard.com/blogs/biden-takes-6-days-campaign-trail_653879.html
With just about a month until Election Day, Vice President Joe Biden is in the middle of taking nearly a week off the campaign trail. He will return to doing campaign events on Thursday, when he will debate Rep. Paul Ryan in the vice presidential debate.
On Friday, October 5, according to the White House, Biden spent the day working. In the morning, he was scheduled to attend the presidential daily briefing in the Oval Office, with President Obama. That afternoon Biden was to "meet with senior advisors," according to the White House.
For this weekend, the White House provided the following guidance: "The Vice President will be in Wilmington, Delaware. There are no public events scheduled."
As for the next three days, Biden will remain in Delaware. "On Monday through Wednesday, the Vice President will be in Wilmington, Delaware. There are no public events scheduled."
Meanwhile, Thursday, October 11, is a big day for Biden. "On Thursday, the Vice President and Dr. Jill Biden will travel to Danville, Kentucky. In the evening, the Vice President will participate in the Vice Presidential Debate at Centre College. Dr. Biden will also attend. This event is open to pre-credentialed media."
So while Biden is taking 6 days off the campaign trail at a crucial time in the presidential campaign, it's likely that he isn't completely off. He is said to be spending time with David Axelrod and other campaign advisers preparing for Thursday's debate.
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http://www.nationaljournal.com/politics/expectations-run-high-for-ryan-but-biden-in-good-position-ahead-of-debate-20121006
ELECTION ANALYSIS
Expectations Run High for Ryan, but Biden in Good Position Ahead of Debate
Updated: October 6, 2012 | 12:02 p.m.
October 6, 2012 | 10:15 a.m.
AP PHOTO / CHARLIE NEIBERGALL / PHELAN M. EBENHACK
Conservatives have been licking their chops in anticipation of a debate between Paul Ryan and Joe Biden ever since Ryan was announced as the Republican vice presidential candidate. After GOP nominee Mitt Romney's strong performance in the first presidential debate, the pressure is on Ryan to maintain the momentum, and many on the right don't think that will be difficult.
Confidence in Ryan’s intellect is matched only by a sense that the gaffe-prone vice president can’t be taken seriously. "Ryan is going to be a great, articulate spokesperson out there. He is going to wipe up the floor with Biden in the debates," Republican strategist Ed Rollins told Fox News this summer. Former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani has said of Biden: “I think the vice president of the United States has become a laugh line on late-night television.”
(RELATED: Making Sense of the First Debate -- 6 Takes)
Biden’s reputation took another hit this past week, when he told a campaign crowd that the middle class has been “buried” during the four years of President Obama’s leadership. Former New Hampshire Gov. John Sununu, a Romney surrogate, hopped on the phone with reporters to declare, “Vice President Biden finally got something right.” The latest CNN/ORC International poll found that among likely voters, 55 percent think Ryan is likely to do a better job in the debate than Biden. Only 39 percent gave Biden the advantage.
But Biden’s no fool, and the sky-high expectations for Ryan could set him up for failure. The House Budget Commmittee chairman from Wisconsin may be smart, but he struggles to give policy specifics when pressed by journalists. Biden may make clumsy remarks, but he’s a seasoned debater, with a gut connection to the middle-class voters who’d be hit by budget cuts Ryan has proposed.
The vice president is “a really knowledgeable debater,” said former Michigan Gov. Jennifer Granholm, host ofThe War Room on Current TV and Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin’s stand-in during Biden’s 2008 debate prep.
Both Ryan and Biden will need to suppress their inner wonks and avoid speaking “in the acronyms of Washington,” Granholm said. “On the vice president’s side, the benefit for him is he connects with real people better than anybody,” she said. In the first presidential debate, both Romney and Obama had a tendency to slide into policy arcana rather than speaking directly to voters.
There’s a buzz around the vice presidential debate on Thursday in Kentucky because the two candidates know their policy, said Ted Kaufman, Biden’s chief of staff for 19 years. In particular, there’s a sense among Republicans “that maybe Governor Romney hasn’t been the best messenger for what they believe in,” Kaufman added.
Ryan’s reputation as an “intellectual policy wonk” carries real vulnerabilities, said Professor Kathleen Hall Jamieson of the Annenberg School for Communication at the University of Pennsylvania. If Biden “can catch him in an error, he’ll be able to dislodge the dominant narrative about Ryan,” she said.
For a self-described “numbers guy,” Ryan can be oddly hazy on specifics, analysts noted. In an interview with Fox News’ Chris Wallace on Sunday, Ryan wouldn’t say how much the GOP ticket’s proposed tax cuts would cost, just that they’d be paid for by eliminating loopholes in the tax code. “You haven’t given me the math,” Wallace prodded.
“Well, I don’t have the ti—It would take me too long to give you all of the math,” Ryan said. “But let me say it this way: You can lower tax rates by 20 percent across the board by closing loopholes and still have preferences for the middle class.”
“What intellectual policy wonks are supposed to be able to do is clearly communicate policy alternatives,” Jamieson said.
The Obama campaign has been equally hazy on many of their policy specifics, Jamieson said. But Biden isn’t expected to be as adept at explaining policy as Ryan.
Biden isn’t, as Giuliani insisted, “not very smart.” The vice president is a seasoned veteran of the Senate and the president’s right-hand-man. Heading into the 2008 vice presidential debate, the assumption was that Biden would need to rein in his smarts and be patient with Palin. Biden told reporters on Thursday that he's been reading up on Ryan's positions and is looking forward to the debate. "I don't want to say anything in the debate that's not completely accurate," Biden said.
Biden may have a tendency to misspeak when fired up by crowds, but he doesn’t tend to put his foot in his mouth during debates. And while a Biden gaffe during the debate might fire up Twitter, an inability on Ryan’s part to clarify the Romney ticket’s policies would ultimately be more damaging.
“This is a debate that’s not going to be about Biden’s gaffes and Ryan’s marathon times,” said Samuel L. Popkin, professor of political science at the University of California, San Diego, and author of The Candidate: What it Takes to Win (and Hold) the White House. “It’s going to be about who’s kidding who,” he said, and who’s got the best plan for the country.
Popkin said that a vice presidential candidate’s main debate goal is to advocate for the principal’s policies and reassure voters that, should the worst befall the president, the country would be in good hands. If the vice presidential candidate emerges from the debates as the star of the show, that's a problem, he said.
The American people know that Biden may not always say the right thing, but he speaks from the heart, Kaufman said. “His great strength is that people look at him and say, ‘I’ll tell you one thing about Joe Biden: He’ll tell you what he thinks.’ ”
During the Biden-Palin debate, Biden was able to deal a body blow to Palin’s perceived advantage: her down-home, mother-of-five persona.
“You’ve been very kind suggesting that my only Achilles heel is my lack of discipline,” Biden said, responding to a question about his weakness. “Others talk about my excessive passion. I’m not going to change.”
In typical fashion, Biden didn’t stop there. He went on to talk about his hardscrabble childhood and the car crash that claimed the lives of his first wife and baby daughter and badly wounded his sons.
“I understand what it’s like to sit around a kitchen table and have a father who says, ‘Champ, I’ve gotta leave, because there’s no jobs here,’ ” Biden said. Choking up, he continued, “The notion that somehow, because I’m a man I don’t know what it’s like to raise two kids alone—I don’t know what it’s like to have a child that you’re not sure is gonna—is gonna make it.”
Biden will bring his gut sense of middle-class struggle, and the passion that makes him popular, to the debate floor this year. And he’ll be standing beside a man who has pledged to gut many programs middle-class families care about, without giving specifics. Ryan will have more time to prepare, but Biden may have the advantage. Explain yourself, champ.
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Democrats say Biden must make case for Medicare in vice presidential debate
- 10/05/12 12:58 PM ET
After President Obama’s weak debate performance, Democrats are looking to Vice President Biden to make a strong, real-world case on Medicare.
Healthcare was seen as perhaps the brightest spot in Obama’s performance Wednesday night. He hit Republican challenger Mitt Romney harder on Medicare than most other issues, but still missed key opportunities and let some of Romney’s attacks go unanswered.
“Part of the challenge will be to make certain that the clear implications of the Romney policy on healthcare are known. That’s where opportunities were not fully taken advantage of,” said Democratic healthcare strategist Chris Jennings, a veteran of the Clinton White House.
Obama on Wednesday attacked the Medicare plan proposed by Romney and his running mate, Rep. Paul Ryan (R-Wis.), but did not forcefully respond to Romney’s attacks on the $716 billion in Medicare savings in Obama’s healthcare law.
“In all this discussion, one shouldn’t be running away from that policy,” Jennings said. “That policy strengthened Medicare in many ways.”
The president did not note, for example, that Ryan preserved the exact same savings in his past two budgets, both of which passed the House with near-universal GOP support. Some Democrats want Biden to mount a defense of those cuts along the lines of former President Clinton’s line that “it takes a lot of brass to attack a guy for doing what you did.”
Although Republicans say the math is unreliable, Medicare’s bipartisan trustees said the $716 billion in savings would extend the life of the Medicare trust fund — so repealing them would cause the program to become insolvent sooner.
“Obama has been saying this is helpful, it’s positive — how can Ryan say it’s not, when he’s proposed the same thing?” asked Families USA Executive Director Ron Pollack. “How does Congressman Ryan attack ObamaCare in this respect when he’s pretty much taken up this same proposal, and it was adopted on the floor more than once?”
Many Republicans hoped Ryan’s addition to the ticket would usher in a blunt, honest debate about the future of Medicare, which just about everyone agrees is unsustainable. They thought Ryan would be able to explain his Medicare plan to the public, overcoming Democratic attacks that paint it as a “voucher” program seniors should fear. And Ryan often says on the stump that Republicans are eager for a debate on Medicare.
But polls show Obama with a wide — and in some cases widening — lead over Romney on healthcare overall and Medicare specifically. Romney and Ryan’s emphasis on the $716 billion in Medicare cuts is mostly a pre-emptive attack designed to insulate the ticket from criticism of its own controversial plan.
Under Romney and Ryan’s plan, Medicare would transition away from providing defined benefits to a defined contribution — a fixed amount of money seniors could put toward an insurance plan, either a private policy or traditional Medicare. Ryan previously proposed eliminating the existing Medicare program entirely.
Because the plan originated with Ryan, and because Ryan’s budget kept Obama’s Medicare cuts, Democrats are looking to Biden to make their case with particular force.
“Ryan is there and he’s in front of you, and I think that certainly the media gets the hypocrisy and the inconsistency argument,” Jennings said. “So I think absolutely, Ryan being the father of the voucher proposals is going to be very helpful in terms of clear contrast.”
Democrats say Biden’s strengths there are a perfect fit to ratchet up the party line on Medicare — an issue with far more personal resonance than the deficit.
Although Biden's off-the-cuff speaking style can produce gaffes, his political appeal is often deeply personal and he is at ease wearing his heart on his sleeve. His blue-collar roots and affection for the emotional side of politics could pose a stark contrast to Ryan, the House Budget Committee chairman known mostly for his mastery of numbers.
“Hearing more costs for current seniors and for future seniors to come is not a comforting message, and that’s really what the policy prescription is,” Jennings said.
Democrats say that’s the key to the Medicare debate: framing the issue around the real-world experience of seniors and people approaching retirement.
“If you do what Romney wants to do and the costs of Medicare go up because of higher provider payments, it means that out-of-pocket costs for seniors go up,” Pollack said. “It does seem like it’s worthy for the president to come back and hit that.”
Obama made roughly that point during last week’s debate, saying that repealing “ObamaCare” — a label he has come to embrace — would mean higher prescription-drug costs for seniors and higher out-of-pocket costs for preventive benefits. Biden and Obama should hit that point even harder, their supporters say.
“Those messages need to be stated very clearly, in ways and in numbers that seniors and non-seniors really understand,” Jennings said. “To me, those are opportunities based on facts that can really turn people’s sentiments on this issue in very, very quick order.”
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Oct 4, 2012 3:41pm
Vice President Joe Biden Says
Accuracy Is Key at Next Week’s
Debate
Email
COUNCIL BLUFFS, Iowa – In his first comments about his debate next week against Rep. Paul Ryan, Vice President Joe Biden said he’s focusing his prep on ensuring he has all his facts straight.
“What I’ve been doing mostly, quite frankly, is studying up on Congressman Ryan’s positions on the issues, and Gov. Romney has embraced at least everything I can see. I don’t want to say anything in the debate that’s not completely accurate,” Biden told reporters outside a Hy-Vee in Council Bluffs, Iowa.
“For example,” he added, “I’ve been saying to you all that Gov. Romney has embraced the Ryan budget. Well, he has. He’s gone back and said, no, he agrees with it. I just want to make sure when I say these things that I don’t have the congressman saying, ‘No, no, no, I don’t have that position,’ or, ‘That’s not the governor’s position.’ So it’s mainly getting the factual predicates … on key issues on which Gov. Romney has spoken and Congressman Ryan has acted.”
Biden has held two mock debate sessions with Rep. Chris Van Hollen, D-Md., who is playing Ryan, R-Wis., in debate prep.
The vice president praised President Obama’s performance at the first presidential debate Wednesday in Denver and noted that it’s difficult to anticipate what position Mitt Romney will take on certain issues.
“I thought the president did well,” Biden said. “He was presidential. I think that you just never know what game, what position Gov. Romney’s going to come with. I mean, you know, the centerpiece of their economic policy so far has been their tax cut, and last night we found out he doesn’t have a $5 trillion tax cut, and I guess he outsourced that to China or something. I don’t know if that’s offshored. … But it’s hard to figure out what Gov. Romney’s position is on a number of issues.
“But I think as time goes on, meaning days, it’s going to become pretty clear that Gov. Romney has either changed a number of his positions or didn’t remember some of his positions,” Biden said. “And I think at the end of the day, we have two more debates coming up, the president does, and I feel really good about it.”
Asked if Wednesday’s debate raised expectations for his own match-up with Ryan next week, the vice president said he’s looking forward to sparring with Ryan, but suggested such situations are not easy.
“All debates are tough,” he said. “You can sit there and say, ‘You know, I would have done that and I would have done this.’ You hear people saying that. Well, it is nothing like standing up before 20-, 30-, 40-, 50-, 60-, 70 million people.
“All debates are tough, but I am looking forward to it. I really am,” he said. “The thing about Congressman Ryan is he has been straightforward up to now about everything – all the significant changes he wants to make. We have a fundamentally different view on a whole range of issues. So I hope it will be a good debate.”
http://www.kvnonews.com/2012/10/biden-defends-obama-in-bluffs/
Biden defends Obama in Bluffs
October 4th, 2012
Omaha, NE – Joe Biden made a campaign stop in Council Bluffs, Iowa today. The Vice President made an impassioned plea to voters a day after the first Presidential debate.
Listen Now
Biden’s visit to Iowa is a strategic one as Election Day looms and Iowa remains a critical swing state. In fact, early voting is already underway in that state, and Biden urged the crowd to waste no time. “You don’t have to wait to Election Day,” Biden told supporters at the Mid-America Center. “So elect us today. Get out there now and vote. Why wait?”
Biden came out swinging against Gov. Mitt Romney less than a day after President Obama faced off with him in the first debate. The President was criticized for failing to dodge Romney’s punches on stage. But Biden worked to make up for it, bringing up popular campaign trail issues like Gov. Romney’s failure to release more than two years of his tax returns, which Obama did not mention in the debate.
“It’s bad enough that Governor Romney won’t release the details of his tax returns,” Biden said. “Now, he won’t even release the details about what he plans to do about your taxes.”
“Seriously,” Biden continued. “Last night, the Governor walked away from the center piece of his economic plan.”
Joe Biden campaigned at the Mid-America Center in Council Bluffs Thursday before a crowd of an estimated 450 people. (Photo by Robyn Wisch)
Biden referred to Romney’s assertion in the debate that he would not approve any tax cuts that added to the federal deficit.
The Vice President also defended the President’s plan to let the Bush-era tax cuts expire at the end of the year, saying a balanced approach that involves revenue and spending cuts is required to reduce the deficit fairly. “On top of a trillion dollars of spending we’ve already cut, we’re going to ask, yes, we’re going to ask the wealthy to pay more. My heart breaks. Come on, man.”
“We want to let that trillion dollar tax cut expire so the middle class doesn’t have to bear the burden of all that money going to the super wealthy,” he added.
Biden focused much of his speech on Medicare. He accused Romney of planning to turn the popular program into a voucher system, and he took the Governor to task for criticizing the President during the debate for cutting $700 billion from Medicare, another critique Obama did not counter. That’s a claim that’s been rejected as false and refers to savings that are also included in Romney’s running mate Paul Ryan’s budget plan.
“Governor Romney just stood there and said bold-faced that we cut benefits and endangered Medicare,” he said. “Folks, who do you think Americans are going to trust? Governor Romney? Or the AMA (American Medical Association), which endorsed what we said, the American Cancer Society…the American Heart Association…the American Hospital Association and AARP that endorsed what we said.”
The President held a campaign rally in Denver today, while Romney and Ryan headed to Virginia for a campaign stop tonight. Romney’s campaign said President Obama is doing “damage control” in the aftermath of a lackluster debate performance.
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Joe Biden: middle class has been 'buried' during Obama's presidency
Mitt Romney's campaign quick to pounce on gaffe by the vice-president, which comes on the eve of the first debate
Email
Vice-president Joe Biden speaks during a campaign event in Asheville, North Carolina. Photograph: Chuck Burton/AP
Vice-president Joe Biden has given Mitt Romney an unexpected gift on the eve of the first presidential debate: telling supporters at a campaign rally that the the middle class had been "buried" during Barack Obama's presidency.
In a speech to supporters in Charlotte, North Carolina, Biden criticised Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan's tax plan, asking: "How can they justify raising taxes on the middle class that has been buried the last four years?"
The remarks were immediately seized upon by Romney's campaign team, who said Biden's remarks were a "stunning admission". Biden was forced to try and row back from his comments, telling a crowd in Asheville, North Carolina, that the "middle class was buried by the policies that Romney and Ryan have supported".
Biden was attempting to use his speech in Charlotte to attack Ryan ahead of the vice-presidential debate next week. Biden linked Ryan to Romney's leaked comments about the supposed dependency of 47% of Americansand said Republicans would increase taxes on most Americans to fund tax cuts for the wealthy.
"This is deadly earnest. How they can justify raising taxes on the middle class that has been buried the last four years? How in the Lord's name can they justify raising their taxes and these tax cuts?" he said.
The Romney campaign was swiftly into action. "Vice-president Biden made a stunning admission today and we couldn't agree more: the middle class has been 'buried' under the last four years of this president's policies," said spokeswoman Amanda Henneberg.
"Under President Obama, the middle class has suffered from crushing unemployment, rising prices and falling incomes."
Mitt Romney's twitter feed posted: "Agree with @JoeBiden, the middle class has been buried the last 4 years, which is why we need a change in November."
Democrats defended Biden's comments however, with spokeswoman Lis Smith criticising "another desperate and out-of-context attack from the Romney campaign".
"As the vice-president has been saying all year and again in his remarks today, the middle class was punished by the failed Bush policies that crashed our economy – and a vote for Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan is a return to those failed policies."
Still, Biden was careful not to repeat the "last four years" line at his next stop on Tuesday. "The middle class was buried by the policies that Romney and Ryan have supported," he told the crowd in Asheville, North Carolina, according to the Washington Post.
It is not the first time Biden has been criticised for comments made at the stump. In August he told a crowd in Danville, Virginia, that Romney's plans to loosen bank deregulation would harm ordinary people. "They're going to put y'all back in chains," he added.
"This is deadly earnest. How they can justify raising taxes on the middle class that has been buried the last four years? How in the Lord's name can they justify raising their taxes and these tax cuts?" he said.
The Romney campaign was swiftly into action. "Vice-president Biden made a stunning admission today and we couldn't agree more: the middle class has been 'buried' under the last four years of this president's policies," said spokeswoman Amanda Henneberg.
"Under President Obama, the middle class has suffered from crushing unemployment, rising prices and falling incomes."
Mitt Romney's twitter feed posted: "Agree with @JoeBiden, the middle class has been buried the last 4 years, which is why we need a change in November."
Democrats defended Biden's comments however, with spokeswoman Lis Smith criticising "another desperate and out-of-context attack from the Romney campaign".
"As the vice-president has been saying all year and again in his remarks today, the middle class was punished by the failed Bush policies that crashed our economy – and a vote for Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan is a return to those failed policies."
Still, Biden was careful not to repeat the "last four years" line at his next stop on Tuesday. "The middle class was buried by the policies that Romney and Ryan have supported," he told the crowd in Asheville, North Carolina, according to the Washington Post.
It is not the first time Biden has been criticised for comments made at the stump. In August he told a crowd in Danville, Virginia, that Romney's plans to loosen bank deregulation would harm ordinary people. "They're going to put y'all back in chains," he added.
http://qctimes.com/news/opinion/mailbag/i-was-not-calling-ryan-out/article_efd85154-0e9a-11e2-853c-0019bb2963f4.html
I am the woman in the Green Bay Packer jacket at Rep. Paul Ryan’s rally in Clinton who asked him the question about specific plans to fix our economy. Needless to say, I was quite shocked to learn the Obama campaign seized my question, putting out the statement “Even Ryan can’t attend his own rally without being called out.”
I was not calling Ryan out. I had the opportunity to ask a direct question to Paul Ryan and what I got was a complete direct answer with no spin.
Even though 600 other people were attending, I felt Mr Ryan was talking directly to me. I thanked him after the event for answering my question. I left the event feeling satisfied and confident that the Romney/Ryan plan is what our country needs.
Today I am outraged that my question is being misrepresented and used as a political tool against the Romney/Ryan campaign by both media and the Obama camp. The question I asked is what we the citizens want to know: How is the Romney/Ryan plan going to tackle this economy? Paul Ryan answered it with precise clarity.
My next question is to President Barack Obama. What is your specific plan to fix the economy you said you would fix 4 years ago?
Linda Morrison
Fulton
http://www.radioiowa.com/2012/10/02/in-clinton-stop-ryan-questioned-about-specifics-audio/
In Clinton stop, Ryan questioned about “specifics” (AUDIO)
October 2, 2012 By
Republican VP nominee, Paul Ryan, speaks in Clinton.
Republican vice presidential nominee Paul Ryan took questions from the crowd who’d gathered to see him this morning in Clinton — and one woman asked him to provide more details than Ryan shared during a Sunday morning TV interview on FOX News Channel.
“You keep talking about China and jobs and then we talk about the unemployment, but where are the answers?” she asked.
“I mean, why aren’t you more specific? I heard you, was it Sunday when you were on FOX? And you didn’t answer his question about how, you know, what are your plans?”
Ryan responded: “When you get into a math conversation, it can take a little while.”
Ryan then spoke for nearly eight minutes about a variety of proposals, from trade to energy policy.
AUDIO of Ryan’s answer to woman’s question.
Regarding his running mate’s tax plan, Ryan said it was “really simple.”
“The president tries to get away with massive distortions. Look, there’s only one person who has raised taxes and is promising to raise taxes in the future who’s running for president and his name is Barack Obama,” Ryan said. “Now, our plan says this: lower tax rates across the board by 20 percent. How do you do that without losing revenues? By closing loopholes.”
Ryan said deductions for charitable donations and mortgage interest would be retained, but the kind of tax “shelters” used by the wealthy to avoid paying taxes would be jettisoned.
Paul Ryan
“The problem is it just took me about five minutes to go into all of this with you and when you’re on a 30-second TV show, you can’t do it as much,” Ryan said.
Another questioner made reference to the “47 percent” Romney talked about in a speech to donors, asking Ryan if there was some way to make the 47% pay some taxes.
Ryan said he’s not in favor of raising taxes on anybody and the way to end “dependency” is to create more jobs.
Today’s event was staged on the lawn of the Clinton County Courthouse. Ryan spoke for about 50 minutes, using a big screen to show slides of charts and graphs about the national debt, with a “debt clock” nearby.
AUDIO of Ryan’s 15-minute speech to open his appearance in Clinton.AUDIO of Ryan’s 32-minutes-worth of Q&A with audience in Clinton.
Ryan’s wife and kids, plus some extended family members are traveling with him today. He’s due to stop in Muscatine over the noon-hour and in Burlington later this afternoon.
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Woman ‘Outraged’ as Obama Campaign Twists Her Question to Ryan
Friday, 05 Oct 2012 03:55 PM
“I am outraged that my question is being misrepresented and used as a political tool against the Romney-Ryan campaign by both media and the Obama camp,” Linda Morrison of Fulton, Ill.,wrote in a letter to her local newspaper, The Quad-City Times.
“The question I asked is what we the citizens want to know: How is the Romney-Ryan plan going to tackle this economy? Paul Ryan answered it with precise clarity.
“I was quite shocked to learn the Obama campaign seized my question, putting out the statement, ‘Even Ryan can’t attend his own rally without being called out,’ ” Morrison said in her letter.
“I was not calling Ryan out. I had the opportunity to ask a direct question to Paul Ryan, and what I got was a complete direct answer with no spin.”
“Even though 600 other people were attending, I felt Mr. Ryan was talking directly to me,” Morrison wrote. “I thanked him after the event for answering my question. I left the event feeling satisfied and confident that the Romney-Ryan plan is what our country needs.”
Morrison’s question at the town hall meeting in Clinton was widely reported because she told Ryan that he hadn't answered a question Chris Wallace posed in a Fox News Sunday appearance the day before the event.
She asked Ryan: "You know, we keep talking about China and jobs and then we talk about the unemployment. But, where are the answers? I mean, why aren't you more specific? I heard you, was it Sunday when you were on Fox, and you didn't answer his question about how we're going to, you know, what are your plans?"
Ryan responded with a lengthy description of the campaign's five-point plan to create jobs, CBS News reports. When he finished, the Wisconsin congressman said that he would never have that much time on a television program.
Obama campaign spokesman, Danny Kanner, had responded to the town hall meeting by saying, "Congressman Ryan can't attend his own campaign rallies without being called out for failing to provide specifics about what Mitt Romney would do if elected."
The Obama campaign did not immediately respond to a request for comment from CBS News on Morrison's piece.
Morrison ended her letter with this question for President Barack Obama: “What is your specific plan to fix the economy you said you would fix four years ago?”
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