U.S. Elections: Is Keeping The SC Worth Risking A Dictatorship?

[Jaxom 1974]

I think Kaine has been fine.  Pence certainly cam stay calmer when he's not actually answering anything.

 

[Lany Freelove Cassandra]

2 minutes ago, The Great Unwashed said:

I think Pence didn't understand the question about struggling with his job when it's in opposition to his faith. 

I think he understood, I just think he feels his faith trumps my rights

[Martell Spy]

Very strange. Pence is apparently under impression that Trump has a foreign policy. Did Trump share the secret plan to defeat ISIS with him?

Also Trump and Pence disagree on the nature of Putin. 

[Castel]

31 minutes ago, SkynJay said:

Both sides are interrupting, changing to the topic they want to talk about rather than the topic at hand, and generally annoying the hell out of me.  I miss Uncle Joe already.

I mean..Joe Biden was outright disdainful of Ryan and basically heckled him from the sidelines. If interrupting is a problem then Biden isn't the solution.

[drawkcabi]

And ~ 50% of the voting public will still vote for him.

[Shryke]

1 hour ago, The Great Unwashed said:

Eh, they're veeps, and both are trying to fulfill their attack dog roles. Kaine is excitable and is interrupting too much, but he's also made the more substantive attacks. Pence hasn't been able to effectively counter because the top of his ticket is insane.

Yup. In this election more then any, no one gives a single shit who the VPs are. Hell, I bet most people forget they exist on the ticket most days. Kaine went out there to make this about Trump and I think he may have ultimately succeeded in that by making Pence essentially deny Trump at every turn. He could have been better at it maybe, since I think Pence came off "better" by lying very calmly the entire time. Pence is clearly just better at this format, as he knows how to present himself. But I think Kaine ultimately achieved his goal and it'll work out as a win long term.

[James Arryn]

11 hours ago, Mlle. Zabzie said:

If he does know what it is, I'm afraid of the answer.  I think I know what it would be, and that terrifies me on a moral and ethical level.

I'm like 95% sure he'd say something like 'terrorists don't abide by it, so why should we?'

[Ordos]

I'm probably not going to add much to the discussion, but I'll give my two cents about the Vice Presidential debate. I did not like it. Limited subject matter and frequent interruptions and jumping from subject to subject often not directly related to the question asked.

It seems there is a split over who did better in the debate. My opinion is there was no clear winner because the direction of the conversation did not really get anywhere.

[Shryke]

Rumour flying around Twitter is that Trump is pissed that Pence was viewed as doing better in the debates then him.

Which is totally believable.

[lokisnow]

3 hours ago, Shryke said:

Yup. In this election more then any, no one gives a single shit who the VPs are. Hell, I bet most people forget they exist on the ticket most days. Kaine went out there to make this about Trump and I think he may have ultimately succeeded in that by making Pence essentially deny Trump at every turn. He could have been better at it maybe, since I think Pence came off "better" by lying very calmly the entire time. Pence is clearly just better at this format, as he knows how to present himself. But I think Kaine ultimately achieved his goal and it'll work out as a win long term.

When we turned it on at work the first few comments in passing each separated by a few minutes as people went by as they were leaving work were:

1: which one is Tim kaine?

2: I have literally never seen either of these people before.

3: the blue tie is the democrat right?

4: that one looks like a vampire with Botox on his forehead. 

The last was referring to pence.

[OldGimletEye]

Well, I didn't watch the debate last night. Just reading the CNN insta poll it seems the gist of the whole thing was that Kaine had better knowledge of the issues, did a better job of defending his running mate but Pence was just a "nicer" guy. Hence one reason, Pence "won" the debate.

http://i2.cdn.turner.com/cnn/2016/images/10/05/vp.poll.pdf.pdf

Also, one thing I'd note is that Pence seemed to do better than what most people expected. Perhaps another reason Pence "won" the debate is because he did better than expected.

[Dr. Pepper]

Kaine's performance, however, resulted in getting Pence to deliver what should be a lot of sound bytes good for ads, which is probably the better win.  Pence denying everything Trump has said, Pence saying "that Mexican thing", Pence trying to explain that a black person cannot have bias.  I missed much of the debate but those were just a couple of the stand outs when I was able to tune in.  I imagine there is much more. 

[Mexal]

6 minutes ago, Dr. Pepper said:

Kaine's performance, however, resulted in getting Pence to deliver what should be a lot of sound bytes good for ads, which is probably the better win.  Pence denying everything Trump has said, Pence saying "that Mexican thing", Pence trying to explain that a black person cannot have bias.  I missed much of the debate but those were just a couple of the stand outs when I was able to tune in.  I imagine there is much more. 

This was clearly Kaine's goal. He just wanted to attack Trump, in public, over and over. He didn't really care about how he looked and he didn't really care about hitting Pence. And I think that was the right move even if he "loses" the debate in the moment because he's going to win the post debate discussion.

Also, Pence couldn't and didn't defend Trump on anything he said. That's a bad look. And some of the policies he talked about, like foreign policy, had absolutely nothing to do with Trump. As I saw put, looked like Kaine was debating for Hillary and Pence was debating for Pence. Definitely trying for that 2020 nom.

All that being said, Kaine's inability to shut the fuck up when Pence was talking pissed me off to no end. I thought when he got a chance to answer (minus terrorism and military to trump's taxes), he had some pretty good answers but man did he need to stop interrupting Pence and just let him talk. There was plenty there to hang himself with.

Here's the mashup.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/mike-pence-trump-didnt-say_us_57f49732e4b015995f2c171a?ncid=engmodushpmg00000004

[OldGimletEye]

1 minute ago, Mexal said:

All that being said, Kaine's inability to shut the fuck up when Pence was talking pissed me off to no end. I thought when he got a chance to answer (minus terrorism and military to trump's taxes), he had some pretty good answers but man did he need to stop interrupting Pence and just let him talk. There was plenty there to hang himself with.

Perhaps this pissed off other people too. And maybe that's another reason or the only reason why Pence "won" the debate.

It will be interesting if Trump would be willing to take a lesson from this. Probably not.

[The Marquis de Leech]

7 hours ago, Shryke said:

Yup. In this election more then any, no one gives a single shit who the VPs are. 

Not to mention that if VPs mattered, Michael Dukakis would have won 1988 in a landslide. Probably the only time in the last century the VP made a difference was Lyndon Johnson in 1960.

[OldGimletEye]

Will the real tax genius in the Trump family  please stand up.

Please stand up.

And  it is, evidently, Ivana Trump.

Quote

Trump’s own former accountant, Jack Mitnick, told the Times that it was always Trump’s ex-wife Ivana who asked probing questions about the couple’s taxes. Trump himself, Mitnick said, was disengaged, and less detail-oriented than his father, Fred.

https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2016-10-03/searching-for-the-truth-in-trump-s-1995-tax-return

[Castel]

53 minutes ago, OldGimletEye said:

Perhaps this pissed off other people too. And maybe that's another reason or the only reason why Pence "won" the debate.

It will be interesting if Trump would be willing to take a lesson from this. Probably not.

It almost certainly did. There was a real-time look at focus group numbers during the presidential debate and one of the things noted was that everyone hated interruptions and talking over the moderator.

Which is odd since it seems like everyone does it.

[Maithanet]

I only watched about ten minutes of the VP debate.  My takeaway was that Pence is a liar and Kaine is an asshole.  Maybe the reverse is also true, but I got bored and frustrated really fast and turned it off. 

[OldGimletEye]

6 hours ago, Shryke said:

Rumour flying around Twitter is that Trump is pissed that Pence was viewed as doing better in the debates then him.

Which is totally believable.

Yep, seems there is some stuff out there to that effect.

Also, it seems Pence might have had a real dilemma there. He could defend his hopes for the presidency or he could give a full defense of Trump, but could not do both. So perhaps he choose to not give such a great defense of Trump.

http://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2016/10/5/13170838/pence-trump-unhappy

[aceluby]

Just now, The Great Unwashed said:

So I'm not usually one to complain about the moderators, but what was up with Elaine Quijano asking the question about the national debt and implying that the Trump plan and Clinton plan will both equally add to the national debt and then stating that this would be "disastrous"?

For context, Clinton's plan would add about $200 billion to the debt over the next decade. Trump's plan would add $5.3 trillion. Source

She was a pretty terrible moderator.  She couldn't keep either of them under control, they were all 3 talking over each other (which made it basically impossible to listen to on the radio), and after stating that they would move on she kept on letting one of those asshats interrupt her and then give them 'a short 20-30 seconds'.

I also wish Pence would actually answer the questions asked and Kaine would just shut the fuck up every once in a while.  Let Pence lie, and then call him out on your rebuttal.