Politics –
Vice-Presidential Hopefuls Debate
If anyone expected Tuesday’s Vice-Presidential debate between Sen. Tim Kaine and Gov. Mike Pence to be a great big snooze-fest, it was anything but.
Politics
Democratic VP nominee Tim Kaine and Republican VP nominee Mike Pence met Tuesday night at Longwood University in Farmville, Virginia, in their one and only debate of the election season. Although the event was predicted to be the equivalent of 2 librarians meeting to disagree over their choice of books, Tim Kaine brought some unexpected fire to the event that made for an entertaining evening.
The debate was a contest of style versus substance. Â The smooth and suave Pence provided enormous style, while Kaine delivered all the substance. Â Pence remained cool, calm, and collected as Kaine repeatedly interrupted him in an odd attempt to appear strong and aggressive. Â However, Kaine repeatedly hit Pence with substance, virtually putting Donald Trump on trial for his contradictory statements by simply using Trump’s own words against him. Pence never had a viable response to defend his running mate. Â However, Pence certainly succeeded in planting the seeds for his own expected presidential run in 2020.
In an interesting twist, a blog post from the Republican National Committee published before the vice-presidential debate prematurely declared Mike Pence the winner of the night, undoubtedly providing fodder for late night comedians. However, their early prediction wasn’t far off.
According to a CNN/ORC instant poll, 48% of voters who watched the debate said Gov. Pence did the better job while 42% believed Sen. Kaine had the better night.
Who do you think won the debate? Â Also, are vice-presidential debates at all relevant in swaying voters?
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The debate was a contest of style versus substance. The smooth and suave Pence provided enormous style, while Kaine delivered all the substance. Pence remained cool, calm, and collected as Kaine repeatedly interrupted him in an odd attempt to appear strong and aggressive. [….] I only caught about 10-15 minutes of the debate so Thank you DJ for (once again) providing a great summary. American voters who are like me can appreciate both style AND substance with an emphasis on Substance over style. However, there are millions of Americans who are easily influenced by Style or substance (if influenced by substance at all). In the short time that I watched, Pence indeed did come across just as DJ described "cool, calm and collected." Kaine came across as very knowledgeable but a bit too anxious in giving his response. He kept "interrupting" Pence and THAT can be a turn-off to some… Read more »