Summary: Mike Pence certainly did not help Donald Trump last night in the vice presidential debate. It’s hard to see how the mainstream media can buy into the notion that Mr. Pence “won” the debate when his entire performance was a bravura demonstration of undercutting the top of the ticket and setting himself up as a possible presidential contender in 2020.
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So much spin has emerged from last night’s vice presidential debate that the public is virtually seasick from it.
As usual, Democratic loyalists are insisting that Tim Kaine won the debate, while Republicans are insisting that the nod should go to Mike Pence.
In truth, both men are not inexpert debaters. The consensus that has emerged seems to be that Pence delivered a smoother performance, one that may win on points. However, as we dig deeper into what transpired last night, Pence’s victory begins to look more and more illusory.
For Tim Kaine, representing a campaign that is now up by anywhere between five and ten points nationally, and which has actually pulled ahead in the battleground state of Ohio, the assignment was quite simple and even Hippocratic: first do no harm. And indeed, Tim Kaine did no harm. Despite handwringing and Monday morning quarterbacking from timid Democrats who saw fit to place their interest in decorum above their loyalty to their party, Tim Kaine delivered a masterful Kriegßpiel against the embattled Mike Pence.
Moreover, the debate appeared to be two separate proceedings conducted in the same space at the same time. Much like the 2008 vice presidential debate between Joe Biden and the unspeakable Sarah Palin, Tim Kaine reached out purposefully to the broad coalition which makes up the Democratic Party. By contrast, Mike Pence spent the debate grokking with the evangelical subset of the Republican base. While Tim Kaine was evangelizing the broad Democratic coalition and acting as a “fisher of men” among the undecideds, Mike Pence was engaged in a love feast with a narrow subsection of the Trump electorate. Like Sarah Palin and Joe Biden, the two contenders seem largely to have talked past or at one another.
Watching the debate was akin to watching a kind of bizarre, balletic, pas de deux, or perhaps watching two judoka sparring in the dōjō, so evenly matched that neither could pull off a definitive victory against the other. Nonetheless, we may see a number of factors emerge in the next few days tending to undercut the “Pence won” narrative that the Beltway media have been trying assiduously to propagate since yesterday evening.
For, as a number of sites, including vox.com and Politico have suggested, much of Pence’s performance last night seemed less about defending the top of his ticket than it did about positioning Mike Pence for a possible presidential run in 2020 or 2024. Yet, more than that, Mike Pence’s astonishing failure to defend Donald Trump against any of the very serious charges Tim Kaine leveled against him may have begun to drive a wedge between the two Republican standardbearers.
Moreover, Pence’s denial of many of Trump’s outrageous and documented utterances not only shows a disturbing lack of moral compass implicit in Pence’s unwillingness to own his running mate’s remarks, but also an astonishing lack of strategic grasp. The Hillary Clinton campaign ads virtually write themselves; Pence saying “Donald Trump never said [insert outrageous thing here],” followed by a video clip of Donald Trump saying exactly that.
If Mike Pence thought he had won the debate last night, victory will surely be snatched from him by the Clinton attack ads we can expect to see in short order, highlighting each obvious Pence lie. To the extent that the Clinton attack ads emerge fairly swiftly, they can be expected to significantly undermine the credibility of the Trump-Pence ticket among undecided voters. This, notwithstanding the conventional wisdom that most vice presidential debates don’t much move the needle. And in truth, this one probably won’t move the needle terribly much. It will be the fact checkers and the attack ad writers for Hillary Clinton will have the effect of moving the needle.
Of course, the fact checkers and the attack ad writers will have a powerful, if un-self-aware, ally in Donald Trump himself. The Donald, who seems to have all the impulse control of a five-year-old child, can’t stop tweeting foolish and unhelpful things. Already, this morning, the word is out the Trump is having conniptions over the strong public perception that Mike Pence might have been the better presidential candidate for the Republicans than would The Donald himself. And since The Donald cannot stand not to be thought of as the best, the smartest, the most endowed, the most YUGE guy in the room, we may predict another self sabotaging Twitter meltdown before too long.
In short, while the early post game wrapup might award the debate to Mike Pence on points, the Clinton campaign can afford to play a long game, allowing the situation to develop for a few days while the fact checkers do their work and the attack ad writers do theirs. Mike Pence may have won a transitory victory yesterday evening, but his tergiversation, his outright untruths, and his astonishing failure to mount a vigorous defense of the top of his ticket will, in the end, be one of those factors which will cost the Trump campaign the election.
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