Blog Credo

The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary.

H.L. Mencken

Tuesday, October 4, 2016

Snap Judgment, If You Care

I can smell the CW congealing around the Veep debate:  Mike Pence won the debate and Donald Trump lost it.

Tim Kaine took of his Ned Flanders suit and went full Sideshow Bob on Trump, challenging Pence to defend his running mate's absurd and inflammatory comments.  Pence mostly refused to do that, sticking to his talking points or outright lying about what Trump has said.

I've seen several Twitter comments along the lines of "Kaine is running for vice president in 2016 and Pence is running for president in 2020."

Kaine was certainly not running as the nice guy he seemed throughout the rest of the campaign.  It seems pretty clear that the latest Clinton ad is going to be a bunch of Republicans refusing to agree with Trump (or agreeing with him).  It could be that Kaine's mission was to tie the GOP to Trump.  That's a long term strategy of making the GOP repugnant.

That Pence simply denied that Trump said all the things Trump said may have rendered that moot.  However, if enough people say that Pence didn't defend Trump enough, when will Trump turn on him?  We know how thin-skinned Trump is.

At any rate, Trump will likely feel the need to regain the limelight after 90 minutes of not having Pence defend him or praise him.  He was engaged in a Twitter fight with Megyn Kelly during the debate.  What will happen at 2:00 AM?

Or maybe this will be all we have to remember the debate for:

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