Ed Kilgore has some salient thoughts about last night’s debate in his post, “Leaving it All on the Field” at the Washington Monthly. From a couple of his article’s nut graphs:

…Biden’s performance, whatever its effect on swing voters, dispelled a dark cloud over the Democratic tribe. And that’s not just because it might have interrupted Romney’s “momentum” or countered the president’s “loss” last week.
In retrospect, what dispirited an awful lot of Democrats about the first presidential debate was that it emblemized the fear that in an intense, high-stakes battle with an ascendant and radicalized conservative movement, progressive elected officials just didn’t have the willingness or ability to make a full and passionate case for their own cause. That was at the heart of criticisms not only of the president’s demeanor, but also of his many missed opportunities to rebut Romney and expose the rickety substructure of the mendacious self-presentation Moderate Mitt was attempting. And this is obviously a complaint that’s been just under the surface of mixed progressive attitudes towards Obama and many other Democratic leaders for years now.
…Biden “won” because he achieved an important objective for Democrats who were beginning to wonder if all the Romney-Ryan ticket had to do to achieve victory for the most radical major-party agenda in decades was simply to change the packaging and play the horse-race-expectations game to the hilt. Whatever ultimately happens, the dynamics have now changed, and Joe Biden deserves the credit.

Kilgore has more to say about what Biden has accomplished and an observation about the victimization bragging rights Ryan’s GOP groupies got out of it. You can read it all here.