DANVILLE, Ky. (MCT) — Whether Thursday’s debate between Joe Biden and Paul Ryan moved the needle in the presidential contest may have been the only major question left hanging at the end.

The vice presidential showdown was everything the first presidential debate was not: wide-ranging and lively, with very different sorts of passion from each side. It was, in short, 90 nonstop minutes of political theater of a kind that rarely materializes in these high-profile, and often stiff and predictable, televised encounters.