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(CNN) -- Vice President Joe Biden met his challenger, Rep. Paul Ryan, Thursday night in Danville, Kentucky, for the vice presidential debate. CNN contributors and analysts offered these assessments of the evening:

Timothy Stanley: Pugnacious Biden took on a wonkish Ryan

This was a strange debate, even an ugly one. The two men looked like they were taking part in separate discussions. Ryan was speaking in the economics seminar at some obscure think tank. Biden was shouting answers in the middle of a loud sports bar.

The tone was so uneven that the candidates seemed to find each other's presence a nuisance -- Biden laughed his way through Ryan's answers and Ryan was often visibly irritated. The most surreal moment was when Biden picked a fight with the moderator, Martha Raddatz, about the Afghanistan War. We've never seen him this pugnacious.

Overall, it was a draw. Liberals will probably appreciate that Biden did what Obama failed to do last week: He took the debate to the Republicans and called out their "malarkey." But moderate voters might take offense at his combative tone, which often bordered on rude. By contrast, Ryan's softer, more wonkish style might strike floating voters as weak. But he could also score among those looking for calm and reason rather than heated rhetoric.

Biden excelled when attacking Ryan on Romney's flip-flops and failure to commit to specific spending cuts. Ryan excelled when talking about his beloved Medicare and tax plans. Both men displayed thoughtfulness and humanity in the question of abortion, which pitted different traditions of Catholicism against one another.

Ryan said his faith and his public policy were inseparable; Biden refused to compel others to adhere to Catholic doctrine. Again, how the voter reacts to those answers will depend on their prejudices. This debate wasn't about persuasion. It was about drawing contrasts and playing to the cameras. As a result, it probably wasn't the game changer that either side was looking for.

Timothy Stanley is a historian at Oxford University and blogs for Britain's The Daily Telegraph. He is the author of "The Crusader: The Life and Times of Pat Buchanan."

Paul Begala: Biden's "malarkey" line sums it up

I sometimes think the definition of a Democrat is someone who is afraid to take his own side in a fight.

Malarkey.

With that one word, spoken in the opening minutes of the vice presidential debate, Joe Biden signaled he was fighting back. Biden gave the Democrats the debate they needed. He grabbed Paul Ryan by the scruff of his neck and gave him a thorough thrashing.

Biden pounced on Ryan for seeking to cut funding for embassy security, even as he played politics with the terror attack on our consulate in Benghazi. The Malarkey Moment surprised Ryan and energized Biden. Perhaps smelling blood in the water, Biden kept Ryan on his heels for the rest of the evening.

Ryan gulped water as Biden spoke, and Biden smiled (sometimes you could tell it was forced) as Ryan talked. And for all the times they called each other "my friend" and said, "with all due respect," both candidates had a tone of exasperation at times.

Biden hammered Ryan and Romney for sneering at a giant percentage of Americans. Ryan has called as many as 40% of our fellow citizens "takers." Yet he more than once spoke of his family's dependence on Social Security and Medicare. Biden wouldn't let him get away with it. Finally, it got to Ryan, who snarled, "I know you're under a lot of duress." Whoa, sonny-boy, watch the snark. You're getting your butt kicked, and it shows.

The Obama campaign released a photo of President Obama watching the debate. Good. The president was criticized for being too passive in the first debate. Some may criticize Biden for being too aggressive in this one. So be it. But I loved his performance, and I bet the president did as well.

Paul Begala, a Democratic strategist and CNN political contributor, is senior adviser to Priorities USA Action, the biggest super PAC favoring President Barack Obama's re-election. Begala was a political consultant for Bill Clinton's presidential campaign in 1992 and was counselor to Clinton in the White House.

William Howell: Ryan's challenge was bigger, and he met it

No great surprise, Joe Biden delivered tonight. On the heels of his boss' withering performance last week, the vice president demonstrated his deep knowledge of domestic and foreign policy issues, fluidly maneuvering between minutiae about tax policy and the draw-down in Afghanistan on the one hand and meta-arguments about the stakes involved in this election on the other. He also scored his share of style points.

Though all that laughing through those big pearly whites proved a bit unnerving at times, Biden exhibited his relish for a good debate and his conviction in essential liberal principles. The Democratic base is surely pleased.

It was Paul Ryan, though, who faced the bigger challenge. Ryan had to prove his commitment to ideas and principles that are not entirely of his choosing. During the primaries, when Romney was brandishing his conservative credentials, this task would have been easily met. But going into this debate, it was not clear that the darling among the conservative right would be able to square his views with those of the more moderate incarnation of the former governor of deep-blue Massachusetts. But well he did.

Disciplined, substantive and on point, Ryan effectively thwarted efforts by Biden to drive a wedge between the congressman's former voting record and the policy positions of the Romney-Ryan ticket. He performed as well as his party could possibly have hoped.

This debate is not likely to move the polls much at all. But that is not to say that it is entirely inconsequential. For at least the coming week, Democrats can now talk about something other than their president's detachment. And Republicans generally, but Romney in particular, can rest assured that the GOP presidential ticket is in order as they settle on a consistent message to push through Election Day.

William Howell is the Sydney Stein professor in American politics at the University of Chicago.

Julian Zelizer: Something for both sides

Vice President Joe Biden and Rep. Paul Ryan engaged in a vigorous debate, with a moderator who kept pushing the discussion along.

Both sides will find something in the debate that they can boast about. Ryan demonstrated he could debate policy areas where he is not as experienced, particularly foreign policy, and he handled himself well before the television cameras. He remained calm under fire. Ryan was also able to tell a few personal stories that he used to try to humanize the image of his running mate.

For Democrats, who needed a much bigger boost, Biden came through in that he was much more aggressive than Obama was in last week's debate, hammering away at Republican economic policies, warning voters about his opponent's Medicare plan and defending the administration's actions overseas. Biden consistently raised questions about whether Ryan and the Republicans are even telling the truth when they speak. During the last segment of the debate, Biden seemed to be at his strongest, a Democrat who was tough on national security and someone who was on firmer ground than his opponent with regard to understanding these challenges. Biden said what many Democrats wanted President Obama to say against Romney, showing the enthusiasm and the fire that was absent last week.

There are some viewers who might have been turned off by Biden's tendency to laugh and shake his head in dismissive fashion as Ryan was speaking. The danger for Democrats is that some swing voters read this as arrogance and partisanship rather than a sign of Biden's comfort before the cameras.

Like other vice presidential debates, this one probably won't have much of an impact on the electorate, though it will help curb some of the media discussion about Obama's poor first performance and generate some excitement among Democrats who were left deflated after Denver. Finally, both candidates handled themselves well enough that it probably won't have any major effect on their fortunes if they choose to run for the presidency in 2016.

Julian Zelizer is a professor of history and public affairs at Princeton University. He is the author of "Jimmy Carter" and of the new book "Governing America."

Aaron Carroll: Debate shed little light on Medicare, Medicaid

No one will confuse this debate and the last one. Both participants came prepared to fight. There are many who will say that Vice President Biden was too forceful, or was disrespectful, but for supporters of the president who wanted to see a more energetic response to the Republican campaign, Biden's performance was likely a balm.

The polls will tell us in the next few days, but if Biden's actions tonight inspire the base as I think they likely will, then the president will see some benefit.

Of course, my main interest is health policy, and in that respect, tonight was a bit disappointing. The entire discussion centered on Medicare. For all the bluster between the two campaigns, the differences between them on that program for the next decade are small.

For all the talk about the financial risk Medicare holds, neither wants to cut it severely soon. On Medicaid, however, the differences are stark; that program didn't come up at all.

I also was appalled that raising the Medicare age of eligibility was tossed off as an obvious thing to do. That's a terrible idea.

Dr. Aaron E. Carroll is an associate professor of pediatrics at the Indiana University School of Medicine and the director of the university's Center for Health Policy and Professionalism Research. He blogs about health policy at The Incidental Economist and tweets at @aaronecarroll.

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The opinions expressed in this commentary are solely those of the authors.