President Obama advised Vice President Biden to go out and "just be Joe" and it wasn't the best of advice in my opinion.
Sure, Biden voted both on the use of force following 9/11 (War in Afghanistan) and on the Invasion of Iraq and repudiated those votes in the debate, but this wasn't so much about the facts as it was a performance before the electorate.
VP Biden: An old politician with a lot more experience bullshitting people than Congressman Ryan has. But he has a gift of gab and he is usually an affable guy. The mugging and smirking made him look like a bush league Tammany Hall machine politician.
Congressman Ryan: A young, aggressive, passionate man who came off as younger and more inexperienced than VP Biden. To be fair, Biden has been the vice president for four years.
VP Biden is stuck with four insipid years of American malaise with high unemployment, massive government spending and intervention which was largely ineffective in turning anything around.
Congressman Ryan stuck to the message and while he wasn't particularly charismatic, he didn't screw anything up.
VP Biden and Congressman Ryan can argue numbers but the bottom line is that America is NOT better off now than we were four years ago. I conducted an informal poll among Mexican American friends of mine post-debate. These eight friends live between Orange and San Diego Counties in California. I haven't spoken to them about politics before now. Each said that they planned to vote for Romney/Ryan because they felt that President Obama was not credible and they felt that he didn't serve their best interests personally or the best interests of the nation.