John Cassidy in The New Yorker:
The reason I think Biden got the best of things is straightforward. For the first hour, at least, he dominated the debate, pushing Ryan onto the defensive. Many of the points he made were telling and substantive ones—not merely bluster. Identifying a key weakness in the Republican platform, he repeatedly challenged Ryan to explain how he and Romney could pass a five-trillion-dollar income-tax cut without raising the deficit or increasing other types of taxes on middle-income Americans. “It’s mathematically impossible,” he thundered. Ryan didn’t have a convincing answer because there isn’t one. He cited six “studies” that he said had concluded that the Romney math adds up, but, as Justin Wolfers, of the University of Pennsylvania, quickly pointed out, these weren’t exactly all peer-reviewed analyses: four of them were blog posts or op-eds. Eventually, Ryan fell back on the largely discredited supply-side argument that the tax cuts would unleash growth and generate more revenues, saying that Ronald Reagan and John Kennedy had proved it could be done. To which a dismissive Biden replied. “Oh, now you’re Jack Kennedy?”
More here.
