Mitchell Reports   |  October 08, 2012

Could the VP debate turn the election around?

Politico’s Jonathan Martin talks about the upcoming vice presidential debate and what the match-up between Vice President Biden and Rep. Paul Ryan could look like.

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This content comes from Closed Captioning that was broadcast along with this program.

>>> in today's politico briefing a vice presidential debate that could actually matter. joining me now, jonathan martin . thank you very much for being with us.

>> hey, andrea.

>> we have both candidates practicing in debate camp . paul ryan spending time in virginia over the weekend and practicing with ted olsson, the former state police tolicitor general and joe biden practicing with chris holland . what does that tell you about how they are trying to prepare?

>> van hollan is the ranking member of the budget committee . he knows ryan well. he knows ryan is a font of information. he can crunch numbers with the best of them and van holland is one of the best republicans in the country to go toe to toe with ryan in the number game . ted olsson is a brilliant courtroom lawyer capable of the rhetorical flourishes we know joe biden is famous for. both are good fits. this is going to be a year y where the vp debate could have outsize importance. there is pressure on biden to deliver after president obama 's poor performance last week. also, this is a campaign where president obama is running as much against paul ryan 's ideas as he is against mitt romney . that elevates ryan as well.

>> it seems clear in choosing chris van holland they will go against the first ryan budget, the first medicare plan and also the ryan book. they will go after the budget cuts and troo to tag mitt romney with the severity, using the term relatively, of the ryan budget cuts.

>> right. rom uh any down played the ryan road map . keep in mind the first ryan budget plan included privatizing social security , at least to a certain extent. that's something ryan then dropped in his subsequent budgets. it was there and he was one of the advocates of the plan to put it in the market. secondly the medicare issue. those entitlements, we'll ha from biden about thursday. a lot of democrats think he dropped the ball not pushing the issues against mitt romney . joe biden will read ryan 's book and go after those entitlements.