Tuesday, October 4, 2016

What to Expect When You're Not Expecting Much: Preview of the Vice-Presidential Debate

The only conventional thing about the 2016 race is that both major party nominees picked safe, solid, dull running mates.  Trump chose Pence to shore up his bona fides with the Christian conservative base.  Hillary chose Kaine to put Virginia out of reach and to strengthen her ability to reach Spanish speakers.  By November 9th, Tim Kaine will know the name of every morning DJ on every Spanish language radio station in the country. That same day, Mike Pence can begin to daydream about being a top tier contender for the 2020 Republican nomination.  But first they have  a job to do tonight.

Pence's first job is to stop the bleeding.  At the start of the first presidential debate, Predictwise.com had the race at 68% Hillary, 32% Trump. Eight days later it's up to 81% Hillary, 19% Trump. Almost every poll since the debate has moved in a Democratic direction, and the news this week has been about Trump (probably) not paying income taxes for 18 years and his ill-considered comments implying that getting PTSD has something to do with a lack of strength.  (For the record I think that off-the -cuff comment was less egregious than some of his other gaffes this year, but it will hurt him with some demographics that he can't afford to lose.)

Pence has to convince people that voting for Trump is not insane.  He must be the voice and face of reason. I expect that he will use words like "conservative" and "responsible" a lot.  He will also hit the high notes when trying to scare people about refugees from Syria and the "dangers" of the world we live in. He can lean pretty far to the right, because that's where his credibility is deepest and even far-right is better than the unstable mess of a half-personality at the top of his ticket.

Kaine is playing with the lead and he's on his home turf of Virginia.  He's also a pretty cagey debater and I expect him to be very well prepared.   A couple days ago the Republican party released a video implying that Kaine was some how to blame for the crimes committed by his clients when he was a public defender.  I'm very curious to see if Pence brings that up because I remember watching one of the debates when Kaine ran for governor of Virginia.  His idiot opponent, George Allen, brought up this line of attack and walked right into a trap.  Tim Kaine's response was that anyone who loves to lecture people about the Constitution ought to know that it includes the right to counsel and that any lawyer given that role has a duty to zealously represent their client, no matter how serious the crimes they are charged with.  If this comes up tonight, I expect Kaine to throw the name John Adams back in Pence's face.

I hope that Kaine at least goes after Pence on two important points: one is the disastrous decision to defund Planned Parenthood in Indiana.  There were real consequences to that decision including a spike in HIV transmissions and (of course) unwanted pregnancies.  Kaine should also raise the issue of Climate Change to show that even a potty-trained Republican can't be trusted to tell the truth aobu the most important issue facing our long term future.


But I don't think either candidate will be especially aggressive. Pence knows that Kaine is loaded for bear on the issue of being a public defender. His target is Hillary.  The GOP web site prematurely updated to show that Pence won tonight's debate about 2 hours before it began.  Those talking points list that Pence won on the economy and by highlighting Hillary's scandals. So that's the game plan.  Trump was actually coherent on trade during the first 15 minutes of the presidential debate.  We'll probably get more of that, especially since Kaine was a TPP supporter up until being chosen by Hillary. So we'll get that and probably a lot about emails and at least one Benghazi for old time's sake. Kaine will defend her, and I expect he will leave a very good impression on the viewing public.

This won't matter much.  In 2016 all of the celebrity rests on the top half of each ticket. Tonight will be a fleeting glimpse of a world run by boring but generally competent people.  The insults will be few and the inspiration rarer still.  That probably means a small audience and almost no movement in the polls.  But fear not, we're just five days away from the 2nd Hillary-Trump debate.




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