I understand that. You prefer Pence to Trump. But all anybody got out of that debate is that Pence sold his soul to be on the ticket. He has no principles he wouldn't jettison for a chance to be on the ticket. That's no statesman.
Aĺl I know is, if, heaven forbid, Donald Trump were to win the election, I'd feel slightly better given that he has someone sane to check him on the ticket.
All I got out of that was the knowledge that Pence is shrewd enough to know that, when Trump goes off the rails, there's no salvaging that trainwreck.
Why are you worried? Pence spent most of last night whitewashing Trump's insanity. For which you're calling Pence substantive and statesmanlike. So obviously you agree the whitewashing and denial was warranted. Because otherwise Pence was straight up lying. Which last I checked is pretty much the opposite of being a statesman. And pretty much the opposite of disseminating substantive information.
Both guys in that debate had the same major objective-- to make sure this election continues to be a referendum on Trump. Pence had the secondary objective of positioning himself as his party's next frontrunner, and Kaine didn't particularly care about that. Or so it seemed to me.
It was absolutely warranted to salvage some semblance of adult conversation about real issues in that debate.
Because by ignoring Trump's childish miscues, Pence was able to try to have a real debate about issues instead of a debate about Donald Trump's blooper reel.
I've been unable to take Pence seriously since he was advocating for privatizing social security but didn't understand moral hazard. https://thinkprogress.org/mike-pence-2d484a554a54#.pj6vixmck "There are very few members of congress with whom I’ve ever had the opportunity to discuss a substantive matter of public policy. But as it happens, one of them — the one with whom I’ve had the second-longest exchange — is Mike Pence (R-IN) who I’ve seen on television today repeatedly discussing the Republican Study Group’s “plan” for the financial crisis. And I can tell you this about Mike Pence: he has no idea what he’s talking about. The man is a fool, who deserves to be laughed at. He’s almost stupid enough to work in cable television. Specifically, way back in 2005 I got to talk to him about Social Security privatization at a Heritage Foundation event. Obviously, I have my perspective on this and conservatives have theirs. But Pence had a truly peculiar idea. His idea was that the government ought to reassure people about the risks of losses under a privatization plan by having the government guarantee a minimum annuity level pegged to what’s promised under current law. This plan would, according to Pence, save money relative to current law because most people’s stock/bond portfolio would outperform the level needed to provide such an annuity, so the government would only need to kick in for a minority of people. I said I thought this would create a moral hazard problem for bad investors. He had no idea what I was talking about. Seemed unfamiliar with the term. Then I tried to explain it to him, I said that if the government guaranteed to bail you out in case of losses, then investors would make riskier investments and the number of people who need bailing out would rise. He just flat-out denied this, said the presence or absence of a guaranteed bailout would have no impact on investor behavior. He seemed unaware that some portfolios are riskier than others, or that higher average rates of return are associated with greater risk taking. He didn’t know anything at all, in short, about investing, financial markets, or, seemingly, the basic terms of public policy. And yet there he was speaking on the topic at Heritage. He’s a total fraud."
Donald Trump. I'm just saddened by how low Mr. Trump, with an assist from the Clinton campaign, has brought discourse in this country. We've resorted to talking about Trump's latest stupid tweet instead of talking about the competing visions for America's future and what that means. It is simply beyond tiresome. Past elections used to be about issues, now they're about personalities.
Well, I needed to check because I think it's pretty bizarre that you seem to think it's great that Pence was in total denial of the reality at hand. Because that reality would seem to me to be the real issue in this election.
Problem solved. Kardashian/Cowell in 2020. Reality buffoon? Check. Business man? Check. Twitter following? Check. Birth questions? Check.
Yes, the reality of Donald's twitter feed and the stream-of-consciousness bullcrap that spews from his mouth. That's really going to solve so many problems if only we could fix that. That's the only thing of genuine importance in this election.