Here’s my take on the Vice
President debate. Hands down Mike Pence won. Pence is the Republican far right
evangelical running mate of Donald Trump. I pass this along because people
might not know who the candidates for Vice President are.
I would have given the debate to
Pence just because Kaine was so incredibly rude, repeatedly interrupting and
talking over Pence. Regardless, Pence still won the debate. Mike Pence is a
professional Washington Republican politician with years of service and was
unflappable. He maintained his poise and decorum for the most part. His
responses were measured and well delivered.
Tim Kaine, Hillary Rodham Clinton’s
running mate, mainly needed to avoid shooting himself in the foot like Trump
did several times in the first Presidential debate. He also needed to avoid
doing any serious damage to the ticket when debating Pence.
Before watching the debate I spent
some time checking out whether or not the VP debates had ever made much of a
difference in the polls or outcome of elections. I was surprised to find that
by and large they had little effect since they are the number 2 spot on the
ticket. It seemed that there have been indications that they could stop a
trend. Polls for the next week or so will provide an indication of what effect
if any the VP debate between Kaine and Pence had.
I loved this sentence about the
debate from a Washington Post article written by Abby Phillip: “But Clinton and Kaine had a larger goal in
mind than winning the debates themselves: to create a series of compelling
sound bites that they planned to weaponize for the reminder of the campaign.”
Isn’t that great? They spent hours
upon hours figuring out how best the debates could be used to advance the
election in their favor. Kaine made his points, interruptions and all, in order
to get Pence’s response or non-responses on video. Since the debate they have
been releasing campaign videos of Pence lying repeatedly, playing his denial of
saying something and then video of him and Trump making the comments he just
denied that either of them said. I’m not sure if I’ve ever watched an ad that
effective.
When it comes to debates there’s
winning and then there’s winning. It turns out that Tim Kaine was a good
soldier and did his one job.