A Song of Whites and Ire 2: Kaine Vs Pence

The first and only VP debate is in the books, and it seems to be a narrow, but measurable, win for Pence according to the pundits and first round of flash polls anyway, I sort of expect it to even out a bit as the public has time to think about it over the next couple days, but we can't fool ourselves here, it was a loss for Kaine and no two ways about it.

However it won't matter much primarily because Kaine clearly wasn't there to win on points, he was there only to attack Trump and hits on Pence were just collateral damage really. See, Pence doesn't matter, the VP doesn't matter really, this isn't a Biden/Ryan situation where it actually can effect the race based on the personalities of the two debaters. My guess is that if we were to be privy to candid internal campaign conversations during debate prep they would have been along the lines of keeping Trump and his baggage in the public eye rather than hit Pence, who, for all of his many weaknesses and terrible ideas, can at least fake a reasoned debate.

Pence had his stumbles, forgetting what college they were at was the first one, but like I said it doesn't matter, even if Kaine ended up winning it wouldn't have mattered. I don't think the goal for the Democrats was even to win. Some commentators suggest that Trump will actually be pissed that Pence is considered to have performed better than him, and that will effect his performance in the next debate on Sunday, I don't know if the Dems threw the debate on purpose though, that suggests a level of 11th dimensional chess that I don't think exists in the campaigns.

The other reason it doesn't matter is that presidential debate #2 happens this coming Sunday, it will pretty much erase this debate from the public perception, especially since nothing particularly notable happened during it. I think that Pence's inability to defend Trump, or talk about him at all during the VP debate will help Clinton make attacks on Sunday, and I think this whole ordeal is tailor made to piss Trump off in ways that should encourage him to go even further off the rails rather than trying to control himself at all.

I could be wrong, it could be another nothing-burger and pass without incident, but that doesn't help Trump either, at this point the most memorable thing about the man is his insanity at the debate and his followup three AM Tweetstorm about Machado, if he doesn't win solidly, he can't erase that.

Trump needs to be memorable on Sunday, and he needs to win, and the win can't be based no his expectations of "didn't literally poop himself on stage". Now the first part isn't hard for Trump, but I don't think he can manage the second while doing the first, he needs to score points on Clinton off of her Iraq War support, emails, and changing policies, but he needs to do that while simultaneously not alienating women and minorities any more than he has, AND he has to make it sound good. If it doesn't sound good then it won't erase the first debate.

Meanwhile his surrogates have been signaling that he might attack Clinton on her husband's infidelities, so none of that is going to happen.

It's gonna be a shitshow and I think I have to close at work, so I won't be able to follow it like I want to, which saddens me dearly, but my prediction will stand as a solid to overwhelming win for Clinton and another two weeks of sound bites for the ad campaign.