I’m scrambling to work my way through an RSS reader stuffed with well over 100 posts, trying to pack, and get to work at the same time, so please forgive me for not having a direct link to polling results last night. You’ll have to live with Ezra Klein’s quote:
At the end of the day, it wasn’t about expectations. Palin surpassed hers. Shattered them, in fact. The stumbling, tongue-tied, intellectually uncertain novice who withered before Katie Couric’s steady questioning was absent this evening. Palin was confident, on-message, and at times, sharp. But it didn’t matter. The polls were clear: CNN showed 51 percent for Biden, 36 percent for Palin. CBS, restricting their sample to undecided voters, showed 46 percent for Biden, 21 percent for Palin. Like McCain before her, Palin performed at the top of her game, and it wasn’t enough.
I saw Chuck Todd talking on Morning Joe sort of incredulously remarking that the public might feel that legitimate events in the world (the banking meltdown, War in Iraq, etc.) call for legitimate leaders, not a trained monkey who can recite talking points. Go figure.
