Posted by Jed Lewison on Sat Aug 30, 2008 at 1:39 PM Pacific

The Vice Presidential Debate

Most of the media chatter about the vice presidential debate has focused on two things. (a) Joe Biden is way more qualified than Sarah Palin; but (b) if he directly attacks her qualifications, he'll be seen as beating up on a woman, and it will backfire on him like it did for Rick Lazio.

I don't mind this spin because it lowers expectations for Biden, but I do think that it makes a fundamental error: Joe Biden isn't going to attack Sarah Palin because this election isn't about Sarah Palin. It's about whether or not we want to change direction from the past eight years, and it's about the fact that John McCain embodies more of the same.

So when Joe Biden debates Sarah Palin, he's going start out by saluting her. He's going to say every American should be proud that the Republican Party has nominated it's first female vice presidential candidate, but also that Alaska has its first major candidate for either party.

And then he's going to turn his attention to George W. Bush and John McCain. When he challenges Palin -- which he will -- it won't on anything to do with her or her record. (The media and the blogosphere will be taking care of that.) Biden's focus will be entirely on McCain. And for Palin to win the debate, she's going to need to succesfully defend the Bush-McCain record, or somehow prove that John McCain is a real change.

I don't think she'll be able to do either.