TOLEDO, Ohio -- Continuing the argument he voiced on network morning news shows today, Vice President Joe Biden said Tuesday that GOP nominee Mitt Romney is vacillating between saber-rattling and dovishness on foreign policy.

"Last night you saw Gov. Romney rushing to agree with President Obama," Biden told a crowd of over a thousand at the University of Toledo, adding a "whoa!" for good measure.

J.D. Pooley / AP

Vice President Joe Biden gestures while speaking during at a campaign rally, Tuesday, Oct. 23, 2012, at The University of Toledo in Toledo, Ohio.

The vice president said he was "stunned and pleased that Gov. Romney had disavowed so many things he's said in the past and acknowledged that the president was right on so many things."

"Some days they go out there and rattle the sabers, some days they are doves carrying olive branches," he added. "The only thing consistent ... about the way they talk about policy is that they are inconsistent."

The argument echoes his comments to NBC's TODAY that he was "surprised" to hear so much agreement from the GOP nominee.

Biden also won cheers from the friendly crowd for knocking the Republican ticket's "foreign policy out of the 80s, a social policy out of the 50s, and an economic policy out of the 20s."

The rally coincided with the Obama campaign's new push to publicize its vision for the next four years, condensed in a glossy packet that awaited the traveling press arriving at the event. Brandishing a copy, Biden conceded that it "sounds so trite to hold up a plan" but that "it's all here" in the 20-page brochure.

Biden's next event today is a joint rally with the president in Dayton.

CANTON, OH -- Vice President Joe Biden has begun to take a different tack toward GOP presidential nominee Mitt Romney, taking aim at Romney's lurch toward the center on some issues and refusal to answer specifics on others.

Biden declared that the GOP ticket wasn't "hiding the ball" when it came to their agenda while campaigning earlier this year, but has begun to deliver a new message since the first presidential debate.

Seeking to hammer that message home in all-important swing state Ohio, Biden told a boisterous crowd Monday that "we are seeing the remaking of Mitt Romney right before our eyes."

Speaking to about 800 supporters at a Canton gymnasium, Biden cited women's rights and Afghanistan as policy areas where Romney's agenda is "etch-a-sketchy."

"This guy is out of touch on most of the fundamental issues," said Biden. "America's moved beyond where these guys are."

Biden's trip to Ohio marks his ninth visit there this year and the 23rd trip to the state of his vice presidency. He will hold five campaign rallies over three days, including a joint appearance with President Barack Obama on Tuesday.

While Biden's events are attended almost entirely by supportive and high-interest voters, they've become a barometer of how the campaign's new campaign attacks are resonating with the Democratic base. In Florida last week, voters chanted "malarkey!" in recognition of the vice president's uncorking of a favorite Irish colloquialism at the Danville debate. In Ohio Monday, supporters shouted "Romnesia!" even before Biden mentioned the new Democratic label for Romney's alleged malleability.

Republicans said momentum is on Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney's side as a new NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll showed Romney drawing even with President Barack Obama.

As the 2012 election enters its home stretch — 16 days and one final presidential debate remain before Election Day — Obama and Romney were tied at 47 percent among likely voters nationwide.

"I like what I see, because the trend is in our direction," said Ohio Sen. Rob Portman, a top surrogate for the Romney campaign. "The enthusiasm and energy are on our side."

NBC/WSJ poll: Presidential contest now tied

Romney has closed the gap versus Obama in a series of national and battleground state polls released since the first presidential debate earlier this month, when the Republican presidential nominee was generally acknowledged to have bested the president. The momentum for Romney has spurred Republican optimism that they may be able to defeat Obama, who's led his Republican challenger in most polls throughout the year. 

"We feel good about where we are. We feel we're even or ahead in these battleground states," said senior Obama campaign adviser David Axelrod about the new poll numbers. 

RELATED: Obama and Romney each emphasize early voting

The Romney resurgence must play out in a series of crucial battleground states — Florida, Ohio and Virginia, in particular — if the Republican challenger is to subsume Obama on Nov. 6. 

"We like the way Florida's going," said Florida Sen. Marco Rubio (R) of the movement in Romney's direction. "We've always predicted it would go this way."

Both Obama and Romney have barnstormed these battleground states in recent weeks, encouraging supporters to vote early and trying to persuade a winnowing sliver of undecided voters. 

Each campaign had evidence for optimism as of Sunday. Republicans circulated an editorial from the Columbus Dispatch of Ohio, which called the president "unsuited to a second term." Axelrod pointed to state-level polls — including the NBC/WSJ/Marist polls this Thursday, which showed Obama leading by eight points in Iowa and six in Wisconsin — as evidence of the president's Electoral College firewall. 

NBC/WSJ/Marist polls: Obama holds lead in Iowa and Wisconsin

The candidates will get their next opportunity to shake up those poll numbers on Monday evening, when they meet for their third and final debate of the election. That debate, which will be hosted at Lynn University in Boca Raton, Fla., is supposed to focus primarily on issues of foreign policy. 

Obama and Romney have sparred most intensely on the topic of how the president and his administration have managed the Sept. 11, 2012 attack on a U.S. diplomatic outpost in Benghazi, Libya, which resulted in the deaths of four Americans, including U.S. Ambassador Christopher Stevens. 

Axelrod unleashed a harsh attack on Romney, accusing the GOP nominee of "disgraceful" behavior for releasing a statement shortly after the events in Benghazi, which essentially accused the administration of sympathizing with the attackers, and apologizing for American values. 

"There's only one candidate here who's tried to exploit it from the beginning," Axelrod said. "Even while the flames were burning in Benghazi, Mitt Romney was sending out political press releases."

The Republican nominee has latched onto the administration's shifting explanations for the attack to make the case that Obama was essentially caught off-guard by the attacks. The administration at first said the attacks were the spontaneous outgrowth of protests related to a controversial video, but has shifted to acknowledge the attack in Libya was coordinated by terrorists.

Romney has also argued the administration has been insufficiently tough toward Iran's nuclear program, an assertion that might be colored by a new New York Times report that the administration and the Iranian government had agreed to one-on-one negotiations after the election. The administration called the report untrue, and both Portman and Rubio declined to hit Obama on that basis. 

But, in anticipation of tomorrow's debate, Portman said: "I think what you're going to see is Gov. Romney lay out a clear agenda for how to get Iran to do the right thing."

"They're feeling the heat, and that's what the sanctions were meant to do," Axelrod said in defense of the administration's handling of Iran. The Obama campaign adviser also ridiculed Romney's foreign trip this past summer as a "Dukes of Hazzard  tour of international destinations."

The Obama campaign has also sought to reignite a battle over women's issues in the last week to bolster the president's advantage among women voters. Obama led Romney, 51 to 43 percent, among women in the new NBC/WSJ data, but that was a narrower advantage for Obama than in past editions of the poll. 

The president's campaign has sought to remind voters of Romney's promises to eliminate funding for Planned Parenthood, or his promises during primary season to sign legislation to curb access to abortion, should it cross his desk. The Obama campaign also seized on Romney's remarks during last Tuesday's debate that he had "binders full of women" prepared for him as governor to help increase gender diversity in his office.

Rubio argued those attacks masked a bereft second-term agenda from Obama, and that Romney had begun to close the gender gap by focusing on issues of jobs and the economy.

"You just read a poll that the gender gap is narrowing," Rubio said. "The reason why is because Barack Obama is not offering anything."

GREELEY, Colo. -- Nearly a week after a feisty debate performance, Vice President Joe Biden is still displaying a high level of energy on the campaign trail.

Campaigning in swing state Colorado for the first time this year, an energetic Biden -- punctuating his remarks with "whoa"s and "c'mon"s -- came equipped with zingers about GOP presidential nominee Mitt Romney's statements about equal pay and immigration during last night's presidential debate at Hofstra University.

"You heard the debate last night," the vice president told a crowd of about a thousand at a warehouse-like expo center in red-leaning Weld County. "When Governor Romney was asked a direct question about equal pay, he started talking about binders. Whoa! The idea that he had to go and ask where a qualified woman was, he just should have come to my house!"

Repeating a criticism from this morning's interview circuit, Biden said that Romney was "a little sketchy" on details last night, as was Republican VP candidate Paul Ryan during the two men's mano-a-mano in Kentucky last week.

"The answers are always the same: 'Maybe. It depends. We'll let you know after the election,'" Biden said of the Romney-Ryan ticket.

In Greeley, where the 2010 Census estimated the Hispanic population was 36 percent, Biden also took aim at Romney's January embrace of "self-deportation" as a solution to address illegal immigration.

"I mean, I don't care what your position is on immigration. Self-deportation?" Biden said to laughter. "Whoa! Every 13-year-old, get up and move, man!"

While he issued a broad salvo about Romney's grasp of foreign policy, Biden did not mention the controversy that erupted after the two candidates tussled over Obama's use of the word "terror" to describe the September 11 attack on the American consulate in Benghazi.

Instead, he poked fun at the Romney team's occasional reference to "the Soviet Union" as well as Romney's expressed concern about Russia as the nation's top geopolitical threat. "Whoa!" he exclaimed. "These guys are kind of in a time warp!"

The vice president travels this afternoon to Reno, NV for another campaign event.

Updated 4:22 p.m. - MOUNT VERNON, IA -- President Barack Obama seized on Republican nominee Mitt Romney’s rhetoric and record on Wednesday with the same aggression he displayed during his second face-to-face meeting with Romney at last night's town hall debate.

Speaking this afternoon in Iowa, the president was quick to revive Romney's response Tuesday night to a question about pay equity between the sexes, in which he touted his record of hiring women as Massachusetts governor by saying he had “binders full of women” who were qualified to be hired.

“I’ve gotta tell you, we don’t have to collect a bunch of binders to find qualified, talented, terrific young women ready to work and teach in these fields right now!” Obama exclaimed as a crowd of 2,800 at Cornell College, outside Cedar Rapids, cheered.

Related: Sharp exchanges at second debate

He also hit Romney over his sales pitch for lowering taxes, saying Romney’s plan is not to be trusted because it contains so few specifics.

“Iowa, you know, everybody here's heard of the New Deal, you've heard of the Fair Deal, you've heard of the Square Deal. Mitt Romney's trying to sell you a sketchy deal,” he said, using the same adjective – “sketchy” – that he premiered last night at Hofstra.

Many of Obama's attacks were similar to those he voiced during last night's debate. That differed from Obama's post-debate appearance after his first debate versus Romney, where the president's attacks seemed as thought they came a day late.

One such attack was ridiculing Romney’s “five-point plan” as a “one-point plan” given its lack of specifics and goal of, as Obama says, raising taxes on the middle class to pay for a tax cut for the wealthy. 

Despite deploying lines Wednesday that he seemed to believe succeeded the night before, Obama still played down his own performance, telling the crowd that he’s “still trying to figure out how to get the hang of this thing, debating it.”

“But we’re working on it. We’ll keep on improving as time goes on. I’ve got one left,” he told the crowd.

And he has one campaign event left Wednesday, in the thick of the swing state of Ohio.

The Romney campaign responded to Obama's event with a response that noted Obama said at the debate, that "there are some jobs that are not going to come back" because of the uneven economic recovery.

"President Obama has no new ideas, no vision for the future, and is simply giving up. The choice in this election couldn’t be clearer. Mitt Romney has bold new ideas that will cut taxes for middle-class families, create 12 million new jobs with higher take-home pay, and cut spending to put our nation on a course toward a balanced budget,” spokesman Ryan Williams said in a statement.

CHESAPEAKE, VA -- Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney was eager to play up his Tuesday night showdown with President Barack Obama, accusing the president of failing to outline a second term agenda in their debate.

With only one debate with Obama remaining, Romney mockingly said that Obama had better hurry up and develop his plans.

Emmanuel Dunand / AFP - Getty Images

Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney holds a campaign rally at The Grove, in Chesapeake, Virginia, October 17.

“Now I have to be honest with ya, I love these debates. You know, these things are great. And I think it’s interesting that the president still doesn’t have an agenda for a second term," Romney said. "Don’t you think that it’s time for him to finally put together a vision of what he’d do in the next four years if he were elected? I mean, he’s gotta come up with that over this weekend because there’s only one debate left, on Monday."

"I just think the American people had expected that the president of the United States would be able to describe what he’s gonna do in the next four years, but he can’t," Romney continued. "He can’t even explain what he’s done in the last four years."

Romney reworked the top of his stump speech today, re-litigating several points from last night's debate -- referencing specific questioners by name.

"Let me mention Philip – Philip was the first question of the night, you may recall, and he asked a question about the gasoline prices, and I pointed out they’ve gone well from roughly $1.86 a gallon when the president was elected to $4 a gallon," Romney said, quickly dismissing President Obama's argument that a rise in gas prices was tied to an improving economy. "I think it’s pretty clear, that when it comes to his policies and his answers and his agenda, he’s pretty much running on fumes."

Romney left unmentioned the issue and moment widely considered to be his weakest of the debate: the 9/11/12 attack on the US consulate in Benghazi, and the timeline over which the president declared the attack an act of terror.

The overwhelming enthusiasm for Romney's first debate performance appeared to be muted at the candidate's first event today, with a crowd 3,500 cheering, but less wildly, for Romney's commentary on the debate.

"It was a little chaotic," Jennifer Broussard, a full-time mom from Chesapeake said of last night's showdown in New York.

"He did fair," Broussard said, by way of reviewing Romney's debate performance Tuesday. "He did wonderful in the first debate."

INDIANAPOLIS, IN -- After Thursday night's vice presidential debate, former President Bill Clinton said he now sympathizes with Paul Ryan, the man he said had the "brass" to criticize President Barack Obama's Medicare savings in health care reform.

Stumping here for the Indiana Democratic party on Friday, Clinton said Republican vice presidential nominee Paul Ryan "let the cat out of the bag" when he squared off against Joe Biden in Kentucky last night.

"You know, I kind of sympathize with Congressman Ryan, he has to defend now Gov. Romney's position that the $716 billion in Medicare savings in the president's budget -- that the congressman voted for -- is somehow a ripoff even though it was in his budget too."

Fact checkers have debunked GOP claims that Obama cut $716 billion from Medicare, and on the stump Clinton has vigorously attempted to defend Democrats record on the hot button issue, most notable at the Democratic National Convention, when he satirically quipped that Ryan had "brass" for critiquing cuts so similar to ones proposed in the budget he authored.

Romney campaign spokesperson Amanda Henneberg countered that "[Obama] has done nothing to reform Medicare for the long haul and prevent it from going bankrupt. Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan have a plan that protects Medicare for current seniors and preserves and strengthens it for future retirees."

Related: Biden plays aggressor in debate as Ryan argues GOP case

But it was more than just Ryan's stance on Medicare that stood to Clinton during last night's debate.  He used his stop in Indiana, where the auto industry plays an important role, to take a jab at Ryan's answer to a debate question about Romney's opposition to the auto bailout.

"When Mr. Ryan said last night that Gov. Romney was a car guy, I thought 'Well if having an elevator to stack them counts, I guess he was,' Clinton said. "Let me tell you something about this car thing, it was not a bailout, it was a restructuring that we as taxpayers participated in because the banks were unwilling to save the automobile companies."

The high profile Democratic surrogate was here for the "Hoosier Common Sense" rally for Indiana Democratic senate candidate Joe Donnelly and gubernatorial candidate John Gregg. Both races have garnered plenty of national attention and give the Hoosier State a rare chance to elect both a Democratic senator and governor in the same year.

Clinton, who stressed the need for bipartisanship in Washington, sought to paint Donnelly's opponent, Republican Richard Mourdock, as an extremist unwilling to work across the aisle.  It's a position Mourdock himself has seemed to at times endorse, like in May when he told NBC's Chuck Todd that "bipartisanship ought to consist of Democrats coming to the Republican point of view." The Republican senate candidate unseated 36-year incumbent Sen. Richard Lugar in a primary where one of his main attack lines dealt was Lugar's history of bipartisanship.

Related: Ryan wades deep into lengthy Afghanistan argument

"I was raised to believe that nobody's right all the time. Now, maybe Mr. Mourdock is, I don't know. He's way right all the time, I know that," Clinton said to loud applause at North Central High School.

Clinton painted Rep. Mike Pence, campaigning against Gregg for governor, as an equally partisan politician largely void of a record of accomplishment. "It would be like a cold shower for Congressman Pence if he were to become governor, because in the statehouse, you don't have an option of arithmetic rules. And you can't not pass bills. you can't get re-elected like you can to Congress, apparently you can get re-elected for a dozen years and never pass a bill," said Clinton.

Also joining Clinton on stage in the Hoosier State was was former Sen. Even Bayh. Clinton told the crowd that all four men were more fiscally conservative than both Romney and Ryan "because, as I said in Charlotte, we believe in arithmetic."

The former president has had a packed schedule campaigning both for Obama and Democratic congressional candidates around the country. From Indiana, Clinton headed to Iowa to help raise funds for Democrats in the Hawkeye State.

"I didn't expect to be quite so involved in this campaign. I have now a daughter who's working for  television network and a wife who's got one of only two jobs in the government, the other being secretary of defense, that are prohibited from participating in electoral politics, so you're stuck with me," Clinton said.

Mitt Romney seized Friday on Vice President Joe Biden's characterization of the administration's handling of last month's terrorist attack in Libya, accusing the administration of contradicting itself and "doubling down on denial."

The Republican presidential nominee praised the performance of his running mate, Wisconsin Rep. Paul Ryan, at an early afternoon rally in Virginia, Romney's first since last night's vice presidential debate.

Steve Helber / AP

Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney waves to the crowd as he arrives for a rally in Richmond, Va., Friday, Oct. 12, 2012.

Republicans have homed in, though, upon Biden's explanation last night of the Obama administration's handling of the Sept. 11, 2012 attack on a U.S. diplomatic mission in Benghazi, Libya, which resulted in the deaths of four Americans including Ambassador Christopher Stevens.

The vice president said "we did not know" that the post in Benghazi had asked for more security that day, the 11th anniversary of the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks on New York and Washington. But that assertion differs from the testimony of State Department officials, who told lawmakers this week that they had, in fact, asked for increased security resources.

On Friday, Romney pounced.

"The vice president directly contradicted the sworn testimony of State Department officials," Romney said at a rally in Richmond, Va. "He's doubling down on denial."

Related: Biden plays aggressor in debate as Ryan argues GOP case

The Republican ticket has sought to turn the incident in Benghazi into an opportunity to distinguish itself from President Barack Obama on matters of foreign policy. Obama has led Romney on most issues of foreign policy and national security in the polls, though the GOP nominee has been able to gain traction on Libya due to some of the administration's own missteps.

The Obama administration, for instance, had initially maintained that the attack in Libya was the spontaneous outgrowth of protests related to an American video that portrayed Islam in an unflattering manner. But that explanation shifted in the weeks following the attack, and the administration eventually acknowledged that the mission in Libya was the target of a coordinated terrorist attack.

"As they learned more facts about exactly what happened, they changed their assessment," Biden explained of the evolving explanation during last night's debate.

The vice president also accused Romney of reacting haphazardly in the immediate aftermath of the attack, when the Republican nominee appeared on-camera hours after Stevens's death to accuse the administration of sympathizing with the attackers and apologizing for American values by way of condemning the video on Islam.

"Gov. Romney, before he knew the facts, before he even knew that our ambassador was killed, he was out making a political statement which was panned by the media around the world," Biden argued yesterday evening.

Related: Ryan wades deep into lengthy Afghanistan argument

But the Obama campaign's deputy manager, Stephanie Cutter, also invited Republican attacks -- including an indirect reference from Ryan during last night's debate -- for telling CNN that Romney and Ryan were to blame for turning the Libya incident into a political hot potato.

Romney, at his Virginia rally today, argued that voters are entitled to answers.

"We need to understand exactly what happened as opposed to just have people brush this aside," the Republican nominee argued. "When the vice president of the United States directly contradicts the testimony -- sworn testimony -- of State Department officials, American citizens have a right to know just what's going on. And we're going to find out. And this is the time for us to make sure we do find out."

Romney otherwise lionized his running mate for his debate performance, describing Ryan as "thoughtful and respectful and steady and poised" versus Biden's more visible mannerisms and aggressive style of debating.

Vice President Joe Biden has worked to cultivate an identity as an accessible guy-next-door who can effortlessly pivot from lamenting unfair foreclosure practices to reminiscing about the cars he borrowed from his auto salesman dad in his youth.

The son of Scranton cultivated his trademark folksiness over the span of a national political career that started when he was just 29 years old, and endured four decades of Capitol Hill's brass-knuckled floor debates. The experience has yielded a Biden a set of verbal habits that run the scale from being touchingly relatable to being fish-in-a-barrel fodder for Saturday Night Live's writers.

Here's your pre-debate guide to BidenSpeak:

"Literally" = The Tiffany blue, the Nike Swoosh, the Harry Caray specs... His reliance on the "literally" adverb is a Biden trademark so pronounced that its hashtag raced to the top of the Twitter trending list during the vice president's DNC address. At its best, his utterance adds urgency to his message that inspires audiences to fiery activism. At worst, it can be, well, cause for head-scratching. Biden used the word 10 times in his convention speech, at one point uttering it twice in one sentence. His usage ranges from accurate (adv. "In a literal manner or sense; exactly:") to a substitute for near-antonym "figuratively" (adv. "Based on or making use of figures of speech; metaphorical"). An example of the latter: "And the direction we turn is not figuratively, is literally in your hands."

"My neighborhood"= An often-used reference from the Pennsylvania native turned Delawarean, Biden frequently talks about his "neighborhood" as a prism for how middle class Americans view fancy talk from politicians. Example: "A thousand bucks? That's a lot of money in neighborhood!" The list includes Scranton, Claymont, Del. - where his family moved when his father couldn't find work in Pennsylvania - and his current hometown of Wilmington, Del.

"Show me your budget"= Joe Biden's family has, as followers of the vice president well know, a lot of "expressions." His mother Jean favored "God love ya," which Biden often uses on the road. His brother was a fan of "go figure." But the most religiously cited family Bidenism is his father's saying about an organization's priorities. "Don't tell me what you value," he frequently quotes his father, Joe Sr., as saying. "Show me your budget, and I will tell you what you value." In this scenario, Biden's father is often speaking to a fictional friend named Charlie, whose voice closely matches Biden's "generic Republican" impression.

"I love it when these guys..."= Prefacing a statement of perceived hypocrisy by his opponents, Biden will often sarcastically profess his affection for their policy positions. Example: "I love it when these guys say they're looking out for the middle class!" Hint: He does not actually love it.

"A backbone like a ramrod" = Merriam-Webster says the definition of a ramrod is "a cleaning rod for small arms." The vertebrae of the president, per his second in command, is similar.

"Southern Delaware" = Biden is fond of pointing out that his small state of Delaware is a wealthy one that's home to many giants of the banking industry. But he also feels a connection to America's more rural communities via bucolic Southern Delaware, a land of agriculture and country hospitality. After he was accused of making a racially-tinged contraction by saying that Republican policies would "put y'all back in chains," Biden was quick to reference the dialect of the southern part of his home state as the origin of the twangy pronoun. "He's got a new idea for y'all, as they say in Southern Delaware," he said of Romney during a rally in the distinctly un-Southern city of Detroit.

"Caspy the Ghost" = The cherub-like specter who's long delighted children made its debut in Joe Biden's stump speech during a campaign swing in mid-August in North Carolina and Virginia. Referencing his young granddaughter, evidently a fan of the cartoon, Biden often uses the friendly ghost to illustrate why that Republicans fail to understand the policy origins of the 2008 fiscal crash. "As my little granddaughter would say, was it Caspy the Ghost who came along and did this?" says Biden. "Who did it?"

Vice President Joe Biden is “fired up and ready to go” for the debate with Republican vice presidential nominee Paul Ryan, Obama campaign spokeswoman Jen Psaki said Thursday.

Traveling with reporters to Miami for President Barack Obama’s campaign events, Psaki said the president and campaign has “great confidence in the vice president’s performance.”

She added later that the president called Biden on Air Force One during the flight to wish him luck tonight.

Psaki pushed back, however, on the notion, that it’s up to Biden to blunt the momentum Mitt Romney built up after his performance in last week’s presidential debate, from which he emerged, by most accounts, the winner.

Indicating, perhaps, Biden’s line of attack against Ryan, she said the real question was “which Paul Ryan will show up this evening,” saying he has a tendency to be misleading about his positions on Medicare and tax cuts. But she also noted that, as the opponents will be sitting down, the debate will likely be "more of a conversation" than the first presidential debate, which featured both candidates sparring from podiums at opposite sides of the stage.

At the president's campaign event later in Miami, Democratic Sen. Bill Nelson was much more bullish when previewing the vice president's debate performance, saying he would make "mincemeat" of Ryan Thursday night.

NBC's Shawna Thomas contributed to this report.

As Vice President Joe Biden and Republican vice presidential nominee Paul Ryan square off in their first and only debate, NBC News and the NBC New Political Unit gauge the temperature and take you behind the scenes with Storify.