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There’s an old jpeg, or maybe it’s a gif, floating around the Web.

It says: “Arguing on the internet is like competing in the Special Olympics. Even if you win, you’re still retarded.”

The same could be said for “debating” Sarah Palin.

I’m not faulting poor Joe Biden. He did the best he could under difficult circumstances — those circumstances being that he could not just grab her by the shoulders and shake vigorously without being accused of misogyny and assault and evil meanie stuff like that — but to say that he “debated” Palin (in any true sense of the word, which implies a coherent argument back and forth) is silly.

He offered answers to some of the questions that were asked (which is why he “won” according to the undecideds, because Lord knows Palin didn’t answer shit). He railed against John McCain. He pushed for Barack Obama and added, hopefully, a little bit of grey-haired gravitas to the public perception of the ticket.

And he’s a more patient man than I, because if Sarah Palin took a few seconds in the middle of her hailstorm of bullshit to inform me that my plan for Iraq was “a white flag of surrender” … and if I was reduced to trying to battle phrases like ” Just everyday working class Americans saying, you know, government, just get out of my way” … I would have likely stopped right there, apologized to Gwen Ifill and to every American with more than twelve functioning brain cells and quoted the moderator from Billy Madison:

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wKjxFJfcrcA]

But as I say, Joe Biden is a more patient man than I.

Regardless of Sarah Palin’s mental difficulties however, Joe Biden was able to accomplish something important that hints upon the greater truth of this election:

Americans are a frightened people right now. They’re scared because their economy is crumbling and they barely even understand what’s really happened to the money. They listened to the ads from credit companies that told them they could manage these crazy mortgages and loans, and it really didn’t work. Now the whole system is starting to crumble and they’re freaking out because they never knew what it was built on in the first place.

This has brought about what I see as — and I think we’re all going to recognize it soon enough — a fundamental change in the way a significant chunk of America votes. Slowly but surely, America is getting ready to elect a professor.

This is the opposite of the Bush selection and reselection, obviously, but it’s also a departure from the Clinton administration, the HW Bush choice and probably even Ronald Reagan.

It’s completely antithetical to the GOP strategy of choosing of Palin as a running mate and the ensuing departure by the McCain campaign from the “trusted experienced hand” approach to the world of “outsider folksy Mavericks.”

And I think that’s why McCain’s campaign is floundering right now, Palin’s simpering cluelessness aside.

Americans — regardless of whether they do or not — feel that they really do ‘get’ and ‘understand’ the War on Terror and the fight against evil, so they’re willing to elect someone like themselves to fight it; someone courageous and brave and more than a little insulated, reactionary and xenophobic.

But now, as well as knowing that perhaps that wasn’t the best idea, Americans are also being asked to vote on the economy, which they have recently realized, much to their chagrin, they do not understand at all.

If you are a politician, this is not the time to come off as ‘Awww Shucks’ and ‘Doggone it, Joe.’

Now is the time to lecture these poor masses crying for information on what’s been going on. Joe Biden did a decent job of that last night, and was likable in the process. For the Obama campaign, that’s a job more than well done.

The average American will come away from that debate thinking, ‘that Sarah Palin sure is down-home and folksy and a nice enough gal with purty gams, but she don’t seem to understand the economy any better’n I do.’

And for the first time in a while, I don’t think that’s good for the McCain campaign politically.

And Joe Biden, at the cost of coming across (for the most part — though the speech about his wife and kids was brilliant and heartfelt) as a career politician, displayed an intimate understanding of ‘how the gawddamned economy works.’

That’s what frightened Americans are finally willing to look for in a leader now.

We saw this in the last Presidential debate, where Obama moved into “Constitutional Law Prof” mode, lectured the hell out of a stuttering old man who is also a war hero and still managed to score a “win” from undecided voters, who were (whether they knew it or not) being edjumacated on the realities of their situation.

So Biden deserves a lot of credit, not only for not reaching over there and grabbing that nasty, slanderous bitch by her hair when she mentioned the white flag of surrender, but for recognizing that laying low and coming across as infinitely more knowledgeable was far more important to his ticket’s chances than getting off a few good one-liners.

So good job, Joe Biden.

(Bonus free campaign strategy advice: If you’re the Dems, now that Biden played nice with the poor little woman candidate so as not to face criticism … now you take the gloves off Hillary and let her chew this simpering, gosh-darning, insult-to-female-politicians-everywhere slimebag up. You know she wants to. She’s not gonna get the presidency. Let her have the lipstick pitbull. Hillary is HUNGRY, dammit.)