I thought Gwen Ifill did a terrible job moderating. She asked easy and predictable questions and never pressed for specifics. Palin was able to get away with avoiding tough questions and resorted to talking points all night.

Why didn't Ifill ask Palin about rape kits in Wasilla, or any questions related to reproductive rights? Why didn't she ask Palin to explain her foreign policy experience? How about Troopergate, and Palin's refusal to cooperate with the investigation? Even on the civil union question, she let Palin get away with a total non-answer about how folks in her family have "different opinions".

Katie Couric showed us how to ask follow-up questions and get answers. Ifill didn't do the job. I seem to remember her doing a rather poor job four years ago too. What a shame.

I wish they had talked more about women's issues in general. Biden barely mentioned VAWA, Palin managed to successfully avoid having to discuss her horrific stances on rape and reproduction, nobody discussed the pay gap, etc. I found it strange, because Palin's whole strategy for suggesting herself to be an agent of change seems to be that she's female, they had a female moderator, CNN was watching people's reactions based on gender, Biden has been such a champion for women's rights, etc. What a missed opportunity.

I agree that Ifill proved disappointing. She asked Palin a question about bankruptcy and allowed Palin to pointedly refuse to answer it and then to redirect the conversation back to a question on energy she had already rebutted. In essence, Palin was able to rebut Biden's argument twice, while Biden was able to only rebut once. Not fair.

I also wished Ifill had asked even one question about women's rights, especially since Palin and the ticket have marketed her so aggressively in terms of her maternity. And I wished more had been said about healthcare, and I'm disappointed to hear Palin get in a barb that mischaracterzed Obama's healthcare plan. She also allowed Palin to dodge the question of whether she supports civil unions for gay people.

Did anyone else notice and find it strange that when Biden took his credit and dues for the Violence against Women act, the ratings of the female undecided voters went DOWN?

I was super excited when I learned that Ifill was to moderate this debate, but she disappointed me greatly last night. She let Palin do whatever she wanted. I kept waiting for her to call her on not actually answering the questions asks, but she did not. Very discouraging.

And I was also very upset that women's rights were not brought up at all. I'm glad Biden mentioned the VAWA (even in passing at least he got it in there) but women's rights NEEDED to be discussed.

I've been so upset that on all of these news websites I've gone on since the primaries started back in January all ask you what you consider the most important issue, then they give you a list to pick from. Well my most important issue, more often than not, has not even been on that list. Have people forgotten about women's rights?!?!

Oh and when Palin even mentioned women's rights last night during the debate (it was also in passing and I forget exactly what she was talking about) I threw something at the tv.

Biden and Ifill were both in situations where they had to take it easy on Palin. Biden's biggest problem is his temper, so he couldn't be seen as condescending to Palin. Thus, Biden spent all night targeting McCain and reserved the teeth for him. Ifill's neutrality is in question because of the book she has coming out, so she, too, couldn't appear to be badgering Palin. I think that if Ifill had pushed Palin on foreign policy or women's rights, the news would have focused on Ifill's pushiness instead of Palin's responses. It's not fair, but I think it's how things would have played out.

Yeah, I also blanched when Palin mentioned women's rights during the debate:

But again, with some of these dictators who hate America and hate what we stand for, with our freedoms, our democracy, our tolerance, our respect for women's rights, those who would try to destroy what we stand for cannot be met with just sitting down on a presidential level as Barack Obama had said he would be willing to do. That is beyond bad judgment. That is dangerous.

I would have thrown something against the TV if I had been at my own house. Oh yeah, Palin, because you clearly stand for women's rights...

I picked foreign diplomacy, but mostly because that was the greatest contrast. Palin's willfully ignorant and/or just plain evil on a whole range of topics, but it really shows when she tries to play foreign policy expert.

I chose equal pay because I thought it was an issue that I care about and that the general public will also care about.

It does not have any ideological weight attached to it (unlike reproductive rights) so it would have shown how the McCain-Palin ticket is against women.

I understand that the economy is affecting women worse, healthcare is affecting women worse, and so on.... But I wish there were a more explicit mention of women's demands in the debate. even if it were about the economy and healthcare.

although Palin was standing there winkinig at the camera, women were invisible

I chose equal pay because I thought it was an issue that I care about and that the general public will also care about.

It does not have any ideological weight attached to it (unlike reproductive rights) so it would have shown how the McCain-Palin ticket is against women.

I understand that the economy is affecting women worse, healthcare is affecting women worse, and so on.... But I wish there were a more explicit mention of women's demands in the debate. even if it were about the economy and healthcare.

although Palin was standing there winking at the camera, women were invisible

sorry about the double post

War in Iraq, certainly, but what about Afghanistan, with US troops crossing into Pakistan and getting shot at there by Pakistani troops? What about war in Somalia? What about establishing this military command for Africa? What about warrantless wiretapping and torture? In other words, war in general. All of which is to say, this 800-pound gorilla of militarism on our backs.

And why weren't these things included in that cute little MicroPoll?

Sorry to echo everyone, but yes, I feel like I was slapped in the face by the MSM in general for letting Palin's coverage of extreme positions die.

When things get back the GOP in particular presents themselves as the "party of life" to Democrats "party of death," party-for-criminals, party-for-pedophiles and deviants (i.e. gay people), etc.

Palin is a living cliche of the ugliest products of typical-yet-shocking American politics (i.e. charging victims for rape kits); Biden has steamed forward trying to fight losers like Palin.

But because Palin has a vagina and is a mother (responsible fathers who actually parent apparently can't compare with a mother who uses HER fertility as a defense for her policy choices...i.e. Trig Palin), she's "feminist." Bitch, just because other women (and men) worked to make it so that women had access to the working world, YOU are not a feminist. You're just a lowlife hypocrite leeching off others' sacrifices when you yourself are trying to cut other women (and sexual assault victims) off at the knee.

I want to strap people into chairs "Clockwork Orange" style and make them listen to one of the few instances where someone (Couric...maybe there ARE more people, but Palin has been shielded from the media so she doesn't have to answer for her idiocy of standard policy issues, let alone issues that are underserved on the radar of federal campaigns, like rape) in the MSM asked Palin how she'd deal with a pregnant rape/incest victim. "I'd counsel her to choose life."

"Choose" life when the state she's living in (once Roe is overturned) may neither allow her to seek an abortion, nor will it help her support her (and her rapists') child if she lacks the means to do so.

And I feel like I've been personally and pointedly insulted that the MSM has failed to DEMAND that this childwoman defend her "fiscal conservative" move to charge rape victims for kits, and how she reconciles THAT with calling herself a "feminist," let alone a supporter of "life" or human dignity.

That's her campaign theme--this woman, potentially a breath away from the presidency, is running on this notion of being a "new type of feminist" when her policies show anything bet, and people are eating it up. I want to punch people when I think about it--I wish I could force everyone who actually buys this bullshit to secede. I don't want to live under Palin and pay for the votes of idiots who think Palin is "pro-woman" and "pro family values" SIMPLY because she is a woman and is capable of geting knocked up. Maybe they'd get a pass if they knew about the rape kits thing and decided to vote for her anyway...at least they're informed about the assholes they're voting for.

THIS IS A NIGHTMARE. The more I think about the rape kit lack-of-scandal alone, the more surreal it seems. Jesus!

I chose Social Security, because I wanted it brought up that if the Republican scheme to privatize Social Security had been put into effect, all of our retirement funds would have gone straight down the toilet this past week.

Biden could have pointed out that the instability of the stock market and banks is the reason that Social Security was founded, and note how dangerously close we came to reliving those bad years before Social Security when we had elderly people in this country literally starving and/or freezing to death because of their extreme poverty.

McCain has and seems to still favor privatizing Social Security:
http://www.aflcio.org/issues/politics/mccain_retirement.cfm

Palin can't go more than about three sentences without using the term "hockey mom" or some other variation on the "sport + mom" theme. This is really, truly annoying.

I wish there was something someone could do to block this "folksy" shit from coming out of her mouth at every turn. I don't care that she can hunt and skin and blah blah blah, nor do I care that she has four or five kids or whatever it is. And I don't care she has a son with Down's syndrome, either, and, like McCain and Biden, she has a kid in the military.

I just wish people would press her for policy, and not let her get away with this personal shit as a political position. Her hobbies and family life are not a resume for the vice presidency of the United States. She's gonna have to do better than "whoo, hockey! You city folks are immoral snobs!"

I don't even really care the specific topic. I just want her pressed. Sex ed would be a great topic to press her on, but anything really relevant would be great. Anything but the holier-than-thou country bumpkin shit.

I wanted them to talk more about "Jobs and the economy." This is because this has been the most frustrating thing for me in the past two years of my life since finishing graduate school.

There is another issue that has not been discussed yet - mental health care. I suffer from severe bipolar disorder, yet manage with the help of medications and therapy to lead a reasonably high-functioning and fulfilling life most of the time. I am not alone, though. There are many others like me - approximately 30% of the U.S. population has complained of mental health disorder symptoms, and up to 50% of the U.S. population will supposedly experience mental health symptoms at some point in their lives.

http://www.mentalhelp.net/poc/view_doc.php?type=doc&id=1132&cn=74

Surprisingly enough, Bush has been reasonably supportive of those with mental illness, as can be seen in his establishment of a "New Freedom Commission on Mental Health," its goal being to investigate the current U.S. mental health service and to resolve the problems that allow Americans to fall through the mental health system's cracks. Although some aspects of this program are somewhat forceful (i.e. overdiagnosis of mental health problems and mental health screening of preschoolers, for example), the overall results have been mostly beneficial to mentally ill Americans, including myself.
I suppose my point here is that I think the way things are going for America's mentally ill is looking up, and I am very interested in learning as much as possible about each candidate's viewpoint on mental health in America, and what changes, if any, they propose to make to the current standard.

I'm surprised that so few people checked Schools and education.
It seems to me that we already have a few sound bites from each of the candidates concerning other major issues.
We know there they stand on women's rights and reproductive choice. We know what they have to say about troops being abroad. We can recite what many of them have to say on many of the common issues.
But it's polls like these, that are popping up on a lot of sites that make me realize that.... for there only being a month left in the game- we REALLY DO NOT KNOW where our candidates stand on a lot of issues. Or at least we know where they stand if we read their web sites but we haven't heard it from their mouths.
As a full time student at an open entry university I'm starting to get a little worried. It used to be that my PELL grant covered my tuition and books. Now I have to take out a Safford loan each semester to cover the outstanding balance to my student account. As the economy fails the country is feeling it in every aspect of function.
Higher education is going to be the first on a lot of people's "can live without" list. And if college isn't an option for the future, there are a lot of kids in high school that are not going to be taking their education as seriously as they ought to.