USA: Viewers at one debate party in Democratic Los Angeles overwhelmingly name Joe Biden the victor in Thursday night's vice presidential debate

Record ID: 346659

  • Title: USA: Viewers at one debate party in Democratic Los Angeles overwhelmingly name Joe Biden the victor in Thursday night's vice presidential debate
  • Date: 13th October 2012
  • Summary: DEBATE ON TELEVISION
  • Embargoed: 28th October 2012 12:00
  • Keywords:
  • Location: Usa
  • Country: USA
  • Topics: Politics
  • Reuters ID: LVA6BVGQP1AIHNUF433ZUZB97JVZ
  • Story Text: STORY Vice President Joe Biden and rival Republican Paul Ryan battled fiercely over foreign policy and the economy in a lively debate on Thursday (October 11), with Biden aggressively defending the administration's policies and dismissing Ryan's criticism.
    Seeking to win back the momentum for the Democrats' campaign after a poor debate performance by President Barack Obama last week, Biden frequently went on the attack.
    At a debate viewing party in heavily democratic Los Angeles, most viewers agree that the vice president's attack dog persistence paid off:
    "I think the Obama campaign made a comeback," says debate viewer Anne Killefer. "I was extremely impressed with the way that Biden handled all of the questions, and I thought he did an excellent job of providing both the emotional content and the factual content that the American public and the global community wanted to hear."
    "I thought Joe Biden did very well, I follow politics pretty closely and I thought he did very well, and I thought it was good of him to actually expose some of the things that Republicans are hiding under," says debate viewer Francisco Marin.
    "I just thought that Joe Biden was a badass and that's it," said debate viewer Jessy Chang.
    Following the widely panned performance of president Obama at the first presidential debate last week, and faced with polls moving in favor of Republican challenger Mitt Romney, many Obama supporters gathered at The Association, a speakeasy-style in downtown Los Angeles, knowing that the stakes were higher for the democrats in the vice presidential debate. For many of them, their fears were wiped away when they saw Biden take a firm approach to Paul Ryan, particularly challenging him on the factual basis of many of his positions.
    Most, if not all of the people gathered at The Association were Obama/Biden supporters, which is to be expected given Los Angeles' and California's heavily democratic leanings. However, many interviewees expressed their disappointment in Obama following last week's debate, and believe that Biden's debating skills turned the game around in the president's favor once more.
    "I think anyone who was paying attention would appreciate that finally, the Obama campaign kind of broke the shackles a little bit," says Andrea Campbell, an Obama supporter. "I think that that will go a long way with people because it did with me. I was scared last time."
    "I'm a pretty hardcore democrat but I thought that Joe hit it out of the park, he was calling Paul Ryan out on everything, all the things that he lied about, or he was fuzzy about, he called him out on those things, I thought it was really important that he did that because it really needed to be done," says Obama supporter Damian Fischer.
    Biden took the offensive early, providing the emotion and passion that Obama was criticized for lacking in last week's debate with Republican challenger Mitt Romney.
    Ryan stood his ground, and the vice presidential candidates for the November 6 election frequently interrupted each other and talked at the same time.
    Democrats were counting on a forceful performance from Biden to reclaim the momentum in the race for the White House after Obama's poor showing led to Romney taking the lead in polls with less than four weeks before the November 6 election.
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