Agreed, though I do wish she would have allowed more opportunity for free discussion after the frontline questions - there were a number of times where I could tell Biden was itching to contradict a point Palin made, and vice versa (to a lesser extent).

But I'm getting nit-picky, Ifill did well and destroyed any further question of bias.

I've noticed complaint on the right-wing blogs already...about how Palin "never got the last word" and how the gay marraige question was awkward.

With the last word thing...I don't think it would have mattered so much. Maybe that's why Biden seemed even more dominant, but even if Palin got the last word, she might give a shout out to 4th, 5th, and 6th graders.

A lot of people have criticized Ifill for her soft-pedaled moderation, but apparently don't realize that the rules said she couldn't ask follow up questions. Really, when you think about it, what Ifill did was to give Palin enough rope and Palin went on to hang herself. The McCain campaign has been crowing over the Palin performance but Palin was unlikely to have reached the independence. (And did you hear McCain literally squawking over Palin when he introduced her today - it had the sound of thinly veiled desperation about it.)

I've read that Palin's comment - that she had decided simply not to answer some of Ifill's questions - although the RW base probably loved it, didn't go over so well with moderates. And maybe she not only doesn't know much about foreign policy, but also doesn't know what an "achilles heel" is. I think Ifill's questions, although seemingly soft, really exposed who was being straight with the viewers and who was just BSing.

I watched CNN and they had the graph of how their panel of independents were reacting. Although sometimes they seemed to respond positively when Palin went into what Andrew Halcro calls her "glittering generalities," often they didn't seem to be buying it. And the panel overwhelmingly voted afterward that Biden was the winner.

Maybe Ifill was a lot smarter than some of the pundits have given her credit for.

(Biden really did shine - I don't think he could have done better.)