whether or not the 47% comment would come up. it did in fact. what the showdown over medicare would look like between these two men. let me play one of the exchanges, ann. what we re saying is, no changes for anybody 55 what mitt romney is proposing the kinds changes we re talking about for younger people like myself is don t increase the benefits for wealthy people as fast as anybody else, slowly raise the retirement age over time. look, these guys haven t been big on medicare from the beginning. their party has not been big on medicare from the beginning and they ve always been about social security, as little as you can do. folks, use your common sense. who do you trust on this? and that is a heck of a question, looking square into that television screen. we know about 5% of the people out there, ann, identify themselves as undecided. who was most effective, particularly on this medicare debate? well, look, it presented a very stark choice.
and he saw paul ryan who if he s not the vice president come january, will be the conservative standard bearer for at least the next four years. that s probably what drives huckabee s comments. look, the contrast last night was stunning. i don t mean between ryan and the vice president. i mean between biden and obama. because biden last night was everything that the democratic base wanted barack obama to be in his first presidential debate. the answer to your question really is, did he push the envelope too much? and i would say he did not push the envelope too much. i ve been taking phone calls for the last two hours from a lot of folks who were in the gop base and they think that he did. i find it interesting that they re not saying anything about his substance. all right. ann, let me bring you in. you re far too beautiful for michael toll ever pull off anything close to you. let me bring you in on this. it s the truth. i want to talk about the medicare. we had high anticipation of
i thought he was solid, did himself no harm. established his conservative bona fides for the future which is going to be important to him. so what biden really did is he reset the table for tuesday night. he s now handed that ball back off to the president and it s now his to do with it as he can. all right. ann, thank you very much. i ll have to join you for a relaxing cup of tea after what we witnessed between david and jonathan. we ll mark it that joe juice. thank you all. greatly appreciate it. will president obama as you just heard, take a cue from vice president biden in four days when he faces off against mitt romney in the town hall debate? a town hall format, questions from the audience. it is the next big planned event that could shake up the race. we always know that things are unplanned can certainly happen. politico courthouse editor rachel smolkin and keith boykin will join us.
panel, michael smerconish, talk show host that could be michael smerconish, not ann cornbluth. you d make a lovely ann, we ll talk about that for halloween. nevertheless, michael, let me start off with you. governor mike huckabee just gave an interview. he described joe biden as coming off as an obnoxious drunk. senator marco rubio referred to biden as a heckler, very few of the comments coming from republicans have to do anything with perhaps the substance of what he said, meaning he lied or biden didn t tell the truth on this or that. it s all about this tone. what do we make of the assessment, particularly referring to him as someone who came off as an obnoxious drunk? well, i think that s over the line. totally out of the box and over the line. in fact, probably the disappointment from mike huckabee is in the fact that he looked at that screen last night