I watched Wall Street Journal Review, Chris Matthews, ABC Sunday Morning, part of Meet the Press, and Face the Nation. None of the shows really stood out. Of course, the VP debate was the main topic, along with the presidential campaign.

The catch phrase of the day regarding the debate and Palin was that she "stopped the bleeding." That was heard repeatedly. Everyone thought Biden had delivered a strong performance also, and like all the pundits the night and morning after the debate, no one believed that this was going to swing the election.

There was also general agreement that Obama had a more than narrow lead in the polls, and had cracked the 50% mark in most polls. Also, Obama was close or ahead in polls in a number of states which Bush carried. McCain wasn't challenging seriously in any state that Kerry carried.

Joe Scarborough, on Chris Matthews, had the quote of the day. He said, at one point, that the McCain campaign didn't care about principles or issues (I'll get the exact quote when Matthews posts the transcript), they only cared about winning. Doesn't that just about define the republican's "values?"

There was also a quote from a (Bill?) Gross, on the Wall Street Week in Review, in which he said that he expected the unemployment rate to rise to 7% in the next 6 months to year. That's pretty sobering, to say the least. Everyone agreed that these negative economic reports favored Obama.

Of course, everyone agreed that McCain and the republicans are going to go super negative in the next month. Palin started yesterday, saying that Obama hung out with terrorists, referring to Bill Ayers. We'll see the Rev. Wright "goddamn America" quote soon on republican ads. We'll probably see worse as the republicans get desperate. George Will, on ABC Sunday morning, had the best advice for the Republicans - campaign on the need for "divided government" in order to keep the Dems in check. I think that is McCain's best argument, but he's wasting his efforts on all this other stuff, and probably the "split government" argument isn't enough to win this year on its own, because people are so desperate for some action to make things better, and split government always means less action and not more, at least most of the time. We'll see what happens, but get your slime meter ready!