Flop sweat in the donkey pen?

I've already said that Senator Biden did not embarrass himself or the Democratic ticket in last night's debate, and explained at some length why I thought Governor Palin did well. Imagine my surprise on scanning headlines today at finding Barack Obama's campaign strategists saying that Palin won because she winked, or because (per the consensus of aggressive progressives at Slate) moderator Gwen Ifil did not ask a sufficient number of followup questions.

What's amusing is how many Democratic partisans insist that followup questions would have hurt Governor Palin. They don't seem to realize that followup questions would also have hurt Senator Biden (whom Charles Krauthammer says "made seven errors in 60 seconds" with respect to the Middle East). Thirty-five years in the "greatest deliberative body in the world" is not sufficient gaffe insurance for a man as voluble as he is. See, for example, Michael Totten, who writes in astonishment: "Nobody – nobody – has ever kicked Hezbollah out of Lebanon. Not the United States. Not France. Not Israel. And not the Lebanese. Nobody.

Joe Biden has literally no idea what he’s talking about. It’s too bad debate moderator Gwen Ifill didn’t catch him and ask a follow up question: When did the United States and France kick Hezbollah out of Lebanon?"

Lebanon wasn't the only foreign reference that Biden fumbled. He lied about spending in Afghanistan, too. And Iran-- don't forget Iran.

Postscript: Yuval Levin fact-checked Senator Biden's criticisms of the Republican health care plan. And "Baseball Crank" sums up with a nice quip: "Of course, Palin's tendency to use generalities will come in for fire from the people who spent months swooning whenever Barack Obama read the words "hope" and "change" off his TelePrompter, but that can't be helped."