I hope you will join us here for live streaming coverage and live chat of the debate. All things considered, I won't be more than half surprised to see anything from a cancellation from the McCain\Palin campaign , or an outright withdrawal from the VP slot for Sarah Palin, either before, or after the debate.

After all, they are already trying to sow doubt about the moderator Gwen Ifill and her ability to be partial since she's written a book about the changing black political arena with candidates like Barack Obama.

Here's a bit about McCain's whining from ABC News' Rigel Anderson and Ferdous Al-Faruque over at Political Radar, make sure you check out their whole article it's really good.

..the McCain campaign is voicing confidence in moderator Gwen Ifill's professionalism while simultaneously sowing doubts about her ability to be fair after learning that she is working on a book about a new generation of black leaders called, "Breakthrough: Politics and Race in the Age of Obama."........."Does this help that she has written a book that is favorable to Sen. Obama? Probably not," John McCain told Fox News' Carl Cameron on Wednesday.

However, provided there are no surprises, we can expect to see some pretty good action out of the two campaign front line troops. I'm sure Joe Biden will be fired up and ready to go "full Shark" on "The Barracuda" Sarah Palin, whom I suspect has had her head crammed just about as full of facts as one can get over the past few weeks.

For her sake, I hope she performs better than she has every other time she has opened her mouth near a camera in the last few weeks. I'm sure the press and the blogosphere are ready to pounce on her if she can't give clear answers to simple questions.

Ok, on to the meat of things.... This debate will be held at Washington University in St. Louis, Mo.
and will be moderated by Gwen Ifill Senior Correspondent, The NewsHour, and Moderator and Managing Editor, Washington Week, at PBS. I sure hope we don't have another episode like this one in St Louis during the Republican Convention.

Here's a snip from The Gwen Ifill Bio on PBS:

Gwen Ifill is moderator and managing editor of "Washington Week" and senior correspondent for "The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer." She is also frequently asked to moderate debates in national elections, including the Vice Presidential debate during the 2004 election and the upcoming Vice Presidential debate scheduled for October. Ifill is also the author of the forthcoming book The Breakthrough: Politics and Race in the Age of Obama. During the 2008 campaign season, Ifill brought Washington Week to live audiences around the country on a 10-city tour.

MTV has a great article on the VP debate that I thought had a pretty good summary at the end: "What you can expect to see, Palin appealing to her conservative base with tough talk on reforming Washington and by playing up McCain's credentials and war-hero status. Also expect attacks on Biden's long liberal voting record in the Senate and his opposition to drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge."

I really don't think that Palin will be on the attack too much; she really just needs to concentrate on forming coherent sentences rather than speaking in tongues.

Going in, I predict that this is going to be Biden's debate to lose, as there really isn't a whole lot of damage left that Sarah Palin can do to herself in one night (is there?!) Biden's been debating politics since before Sarah Palin got out of diapers and her past appearances on camera have gone badly against her. If she can make sense, I think she will "win" her own battle there.

This debate has a lot of potential to be gaffed up by both candidates, and given Biden's own past history to let his foot get stuck firmly in his mouth, I'm sure the pundits and media outlets alike will get plenty of sound bites and "gotcha" comments. I look forward to live chat with you all here on the blog, along with live streaming of the debate itself.

See ya here around 7ish or so....