How Joe Biden and Sarah Palin failed to debate each other as McCain gives up on Michigan

I've only seen a few highlights of the Vice Presidential debate at this stage, but it's interesting to note that most seem to be calling it for Joe Biden over Sarah Palin.

It sounds like neither candidate really debated each other. Determined to avoid looking like a bully, Biden didn't attack Palin, he went at John McCain. Much smarter. After her initial bump got McCain back into the game a few weeks ago, she's faded badly. The Washington Post has reported:

A Washington Post-ABC News poll released this week found that six in 10 voters believe Palin is not qualified to be president, and a Pew Research survey similarly found that a majority of respondents thought she lacked the experience necessary for the top job. Palin's favorability rating has also plummeted since early September.

Palin didn't really debate Biden either. As Post columnist Tom Shales puts it rather nicely in this piece, Palin was debating her own public persona rather than her opponent.

As US political poll website FiveThirtyEight.com reports, the focus groups and instant-polls broke for Biden 2:1. But the really significant data is in the polls further down on the right-hand side of the page. They look at the state-by-state polls and it ain't good news for the McCainster. The most recent polls, as McCain gets sucked into the disaster that has been Republican economic policy, show Obama pulling away in several battleground states, such as Pennsylvania, Florida and Minnesota. McCain had hopes for Michigan, the New York Times reports he's waving the white flag in the Motown state.

Ceding Michigan is a major blow to the McCain campaign, which had spent heavily on television commercials there and where Mr. McCain had campaigned repeatedly in the hopes that he could appeal to enough blue-collar voters, so-called Reagan Democrats and independent voters, to bring the state back into the Republican column in November.

If this goes on for another week or two, McCain's toast.