I think the snap polls confirmed what most here at Kos and in the progressive blogosphere saw, and that was a convincing case made by Joe Biden for Barack Obama and against John McCain.
Clearly Palin saved herself as a candidate and temporarily staunched the bleeding the Republican ticket has experience over the past 10 days. But she did not do anything to actually help that ticket move forward.
What I will be interested in watching over the coming days is the breakout of those polls. If the reactions I heard are indicative, Palin actually did more to hurt McCain over the rest of the campaign than help.
More after the jump...
Ten minutes before the end of the debate, my 76 year old mother called me to tell me she could not "listen to that bitch for another second." My mom voted for Nixon.
Three times.
I talked to another woman who was just viscerally turned off by Palin, from her attitude to her non-answers to her tone of voice.
Another woman, a flaming independent, simply said: Bush. The "nuk-u-lar" thing put her over the edge. Eight years of stupidity was linked to Palin with that and I don't know if the pundits have picked up on that.
I have the feeling Palin only scored with voters that McCain already has. By not falling on her face, she kept conservatives from continuing to run for the exits, but nothing was done to close the gap.
I think the numbers are going to either stay the same or slightly increase for Obama/Biden. Then watching the GOP shit storm of freaks will be very fun to watch.
Lastly, I will also be very interested in seeing the actual numbers of who watched this debate. If the numbers are low, it is a sign that people have already made up their mind, which means pretty much the end of the campaign.