Originally Posted by
JoshInKC
My suspicion is that Biden's relatively underwhelming performance last night is part of a larger debate strategy - For the first two, he acts like somebody's reasonable uncle - answering the questions, defending himself against direct attacks, occasional snark, etc. This appeals to people who just want things to return to normal sanity and stability, and ideally gets trump to let his guard down. Debate 3, he shows up loaded for bear and tries to play trump's own game - being an asshole, cutting him off, throwing his tax returns in his face, trying to bait him into saying something even more over the line than normal, etc and generally trying to dominate him - With the intention of showing trump voters "Your big man isn't so tough after all," and trying to undercut his support.
That would be my strategy, anyway - pretty much everybody thinks he won this debate anyway, and if he'd come out too strong trump might have bailed on the later debates.
This way, he gets his centrist "I'm an adult, I can bring the nation back together. Oh, and by the way, I used to work with a guy you might have heard of- his name is Barack Obama."-stuff out, and then afterwards come out with stuff that makes twitter go "Oh shit! Joe pwned him!!! and then he started crying and pooped his pants on tv!"
But what do I know? I'm just a chump out here trying to reduce the amount of misery in the world and getting drunk every night.