So much to say about this debate, much of which has already been said. The wonder of low expectations, on both left and right--of course Fox is ECSTATIC that she managed not to collapse (and thus SHE WON THE DEBATE), but I've seen and heard lots already from our side that shows how easily one forgets how to properly make sense of this kind of thing when one is expecting one of the participants to simply run off stage screaming and that doesn't happen.
One quick point from late-ish in the debate.
Biden has just finished talking about how the middle class will benefit under Obama-Biden, which is certainly right. Palin then gets into one of her folksy moments, and talks about "working class Wasilla" and her OWN "working class American family."
Around the country, the REAL working class threw up a little in their mouths.
She did not do this explicitly, I'm sure. It would have been a truly cynical move to try to convince one of the groups at the BOTTOM of the American class hierarchy that the McCain/Bush tax cuts for the rich plan was actually in their best interests. No, it was not intentional. She just doesn't know the difference. She also doesn't know what every other politician in the country does, which is that in this strange country, for a bunch of reasons that would take too long to list, even members of the objective working class tend NOT to identify themselves as such, and the catch all category EVERYONE tries to fit themselves into rhetorically (whether they make $10,000/year or $1,000,000,000,000/year) is the middle class.
She is, in other words, ignorant of the most basic information about political discourse in the country.