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Originally Posted by Ranior
I'll echo DS yet again that I think at least Pence and Kaine are good people.
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So, I guess that you think that either Clinton or Trump are not "good people". I wrote this a while back, and I'll write it again, that we should try not to demonize people that we don't agree with or canonize people that we agree with. I tend to be socially liberal and fiscally conservative, so I'm not a big fan of Bernie Sanders (on the fiscal side of things). Still, I have no problem acknowledging that Bernie believes that a more socialist government would be a good thing. This means that we have a difference of opinion, not that one of us isn't a good person.
In this election, I'm not thrilled with either candidate, but I think that they both want what's best for the US. Perhaps that makes me naïve, but that's how I feel.
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Originally Posted by dok
As a matter of political discourse, last night was a disaster. It was considerably less coherent and harder to make sense of than the presidential debate. The moderator did a pretty poor job in my opinion by constantly jumping from topic to topic and not asking appropriate follow-ups. The two debaters themselves did her no favors by constantly exceeding time and talking over her and frequently ignoring the questions. With rare exception, what was stated was mostly a re-hash of known talking points.
As a matter of political theater, I thought Pence came off much better than Kaine. Pence's experience in live radio came through, as he appeared pretty unflappable while Kaine appeared kind of manic at times. I don't think this stuff matters much (at the end of the day, nobody cares about the personalities of the VPs) but it will lead to most pundits declaring Pence the winner.
As a matter of political impact, I think the Democrats did slightly better, only because Pence's main defense mechanism was to repeatedly deny that Trump had said things that he has definitely said. Fact checks on those denials might get a lot of air time on the news for the next few days.
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Kaine seemed a bit unhinged. I understand that Kaine is typically a very polite debater, so he may have been sent out to aggressively attack the other side (which is typically what a VP is asked to do). Pence came across as presidential. I think that he helped himself more for a possible run at the 2020 election than he did for Trump in the 2016 election. He couldn't defend what Trump said, and didn't even try. He looked great compared to Kaine. Having said that, no one pays attention to the VP debate.