Woo-hoo!  She exceeded expectations!  She was “spunky” (which meant something entirely different growing up in the East Midlands in the 80s)!  She used the word “maverick” 73,928 times in 90 minutes!  She probably sent Tina Fey in her stead!

I’ll reserve judgement until I see the debate for myself – it’s being shown in full on More4 tonight – but, as Oliver Burkeman’s live blog demonstrated, it’s clear that it’s easy to “exceed expectations” when the only expectation is that you don’t soil yourself on live national television.

9.02pm: A question, first to Biden, on the last few days of the financial crisis. He gallops through a list of Obama policy proposals. Palin’s answer: go to “a kids’ soccer game on a Saturday” and ask them how the soccer moms feel, and “you betcha” they’ll be afraid. She’s looking directly at the camera, which Biden didn’t, and answering perfectly coherently, though she probably shouldn’t have reminded everyone about John McCain’s “campaign-suspension” antics of last week, since, well, he didn’t really suspend his campaigning. Biden brings it back around to McCain’s “fundamentals are strong”, to which Palin’s response seems much less good. She’s part of “team of mavericks”, she explains: time for a drink! “I do respect your years in the US Senate, but I think Americans are craving something different.”

9.12pm: A spectacular explosion of populist folksiness from Palin in response a question about who should be blamed for the subprime mortgage crisis. We’re less than 10 minutes in and we have soccer moms and now “Joe Sixpack”: DRINK! Oh dear, I’m going to be intoxicated very soon indeed. Biden repeats his “John McCain is a good man, but wrong” line, and brings up McCain’s recent article that seemed to call for deregulation of the health industry, following the example of the banking industry. “I was recently at my local gas station,” he begins. Biden can play the folksiness game, too.

9.15pm: Palin is sticking hard to her talking points, including a now-notorious (and false) charge about Obama having voted to raise taxes on families — as opposed to individuals — earning more than $42,000. Biden comes back strongly, and with his emerging basic attack on Palin, which is that she isn’t answering any of the questions. “I’m still on the tax thing,” Palin responds — “I may not answer the questions the way you or the moderator want to hear, but I’m going to talk to the American people.” Wow! Biden, who has the best cosmetic dentistry in America, despite having no money, can only grin broadly (condescendingly?) in response.

9.20pm: This tactic of not even really pretending to answer the question might prove to be very clever indeed. Palin’s back onto Biden’s statement about paying taxes being patriotic. No, Palin says — “Patriotic is saying: ‘Government, you know, you’re not always the solution, sometimes you’re the problem.’” Biden can only grin as she now says (did she really just say this?) that tax breaks don’t cost the government money. “Gwen, I don’t know where to start,” Biden says, and goes on to hammer McCain’s healthcare funding proposals, under which, Biden says, 20m people would lose their coverage. “I call that the ultimate Bridge to Nowhere,” he says, and looks across at Palin. The audience — instructed to keep quiet — laughs loudly.

9.24pm: “What promises will your campaign not be able to keep because of the bailout?” Palin spins off into how she broke the power of oil companies in Alaska while Obama supported tax breaks for them, which has nothing to do with the question. She talks about companies and governments like they are little children. “The oil companies, bless their hearts, are doing what they need to do…” Ifill picks her up on — did I mention this? — totally failing to answer the question.

9.28pm: Now we’re arguing about who predicted the subprime mortgage first. Oh no, we’re not! “I just want to talk about energy,” says Palin, midway through a segment on bankruptcy. Energy independence! Now she’s on solid ground. “Energy independence is the key to this nation’s future.” Ifill picks up the energy theme and moves to climate change: what is true and what is false about the cause of climate change? “I’m not one to attribute every activity of man to changes in the climate,” Palin says. And who could argue with that? I made spaghetti bolognese for dinner last night, and I can confirm that it wasn’t because of changes in the climate. Biden: “If you don’t understand what the cause is, it’s virtually impossible to come up with a solution.”
[...] 10.07pm: It’s the heartbeat-away-from-a-presidency question. Pretty tough to ask the candidates to speculate on the possibility of their running-mates’ deaths; Biden handles it in the most obvious fashion by saying he’d implement Obama’s policies — which enables him to reel off a long list of Obama’s policies. The CNN dial-twiddlers love this speech. Palin: “As for disagreeing with John McCain… what do you expect? A team of mavericks! We’re not going to agree on everything.” She winks at the camera: seriously. If McCain died, Palin would bring “wisdom from Wasilla Main Street to Washington.” Sorry, but there’s really no distinction at this point between Palin and Tina Fey’s impersonation of Palin.
[...] 10.13pm: Let the record show that Sarah Palin just said “doggone it”, as part of an excruciating schoolteacherly telling-off of Biden for mentioning the failings of the Bush administration. Then a shoutout to the school where one of her family members teaches. The debate-as-local-radio-phone-in.