Obama campaign manager David Plouffe, speaking to reporters today, inflates the expectations bubble
until it finally bursts:
After repeatedly calling Palin first "an extremely good debater," then a "great" one, at the end he ramped it up to "Gov. Palin is one of the best debaters in American politics," at which point the press gaggle interrupted him with its laughter.
"No, she is! Her 2006 debate, she knew where she wanted to take every question, and so I think she'll be relentlessly on message tonight..."
Dems say they expect Palin to answer literally every question with an attack on Biden or Obama. Plouffe says she's very competent on the attack, and that will probably prove truer than we expect.
But the question is whether that translates into accomplishing a more basic mission, which is to persuade people that she possess the most basic level of overall competence and preparedness, a task which has proven comically elusive for her so far.