2016 Postmortem
Related: About this forumRe-watching the debate today, and Tim Kaine comes off rather well on second glance.
In fact, I keep hearing about how Tim Kaine's weakest segments were at the beginning. Apparently nervous, interrupting, and talking too fast. In retrospect, some of his finest work was at the beginning during the discussions about Donald Trump's taxes at the beginning, and was very dignified and not interested in bullshit.
Pence was smooth in the sense that an used car salesman is smooth. Chris Cillizza wrote that Pence showed poise by speaking into the camera, demonstrating that he understood the real audience was the national audience. But re-watching it, he just comes across as fake doing this and other techniques like the knowing smile and head tilt when Kaine was speaking. He's a bullshit artist.
I listened to some of the debate on the radio and the last half hour on TV, and Kaine's performance initially hit my gut wrong. Lukewarm was maybe the way I would have described him, and I kept hating his reliance on some canned lines (such as the "do we want a You're Hired president, or a You're Fired president?" . But I've found re-watching clips to show a man who was ready to get down to brass tacks.
The Clinton team knows how these debates work. Tim Kaine had one mission: To take it to Donald Trump, and he did so. Period. Mike Pence won the debate. But TRUMP-Pence failed miserably.
book_worm
(15,951 posts)OhZone
(3,212 posts)I still don't get the RUSH to declare Pence the winner by some DU'ers.
Oh well.
katmondoo
(6,454 posts)tonyt53
(5,737 posts)Pence did some of all three, and especially the lying. The Clinton/Kaine campaign knew that when the fact checkers were finally done, that Pence would end up looking like an idiot, liar or both. On that measure, I give the win to Kaine.
Coyotl
(15,262 posts)when I saw parts multiple times. He is really intelligent. Pence is more a trained mind, lost without a script. Kaine can function without a script and has a handle on a massive amount of data. Pence had talking points, not thinking points.
Chasstev365
(5,191 posts)alcibiades_mystery
(36,437 posts)ColemanMaskell
(783 posts)Here is the link (others have posted it already here as a stand-alone post).
VP debate excerpts (with fact-check Trump-quote scenes)
-- Mike Pence Couldnt defend Trump
racism_sucks
(11 posts)Saying he 'lost' is overreaction unless your requirement for declaring him victorious was a complete and utter domination like the last debate.
a kennedy
(29,462 posts)He's the secret weapon......people will find out what a great man he is.
blue cat
(2,415 posts)The talking heads agreed that people who don't follow politics would not understand what was said but forgot about people like us who do follow politics. I watched it alone and could not sit still because I could plainly tell that my team was kicking ass royally.