With the lowered expectations I had, I thought Palin did OK in that debate. She wasn't asked hard questions so she kind of glazed over all of them, and did her folksy shtick fairly well. I think Biden did good as well, he actually knew what he was talking about, and he refrained from being condescending, which was what I was more afraid of.
I know an older woman landlord from Connecticut, who was in the John Birch Society decades ago, she voted for Joe-mentum last time around. Joe-mentum massively won the Republican vote (just like Gavin Newsom in San Francisco did).
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2009/11/02/politics/main5501457.shtmlJoe Lieberman, a veteran of a previous vice presidential debate, had been brought in to give Palin an idea of what to expect. The stifling air shortened everyone's patience, and tensions were running especially high between debate prep coordinator Mark Wallace and foreign policy adviser Randy Scheunemann. It was the note cards that had first led to the longstanding feud between Wallace and Scheunemann a couple of weeks earlier. One of the aides wanted Palin to memorize them, while the other thought it better for her to learn conceptually.