Presidential election, 2016

[playwrite]

VP Debate - the trap was set and sprung last night.

Out of all the talking heads gleeful with a Pence 'win' and being the 2020 GOP contender,  it looks like only one was smart enough to figure out what actually had happened -

Van Jones On Pence: 'He Invented A Running Mate And He Just Lied'

Quote:CNN's pundit panel was pretty unanimous that Mike Pence won the debate, because he didn't interrupt and wasn't as dogged as Kaine.
Van Jones wasn't as sure, and I tend to agree with him on this one.
Speaking of small and big communications sins, Jones said, "The small sin is to interrupt all the time, and Kaine was guilty of that sin."
He continued, "But that's a small sin compared to the larger sin, which is to just lie."
"And what happened was you saw in real time essentially Pence invent a running mate and he just lied about you know what this guy stood for. The guy that Pence has as a running mate might get a bunch of votes."
"That guy's just not Donald Trump, so i think the fact fact-checking avalanche is about to fall on the head of Mike Pence to erase his gains tonight," he concluded.
You watch. As soon as the Clinton campaign starts rolling out the videos of Pence lying about what Trump said and did right next to Trump saying and doing those things, the wheels will come off the whole "Pence Won" train. Just wait and see.

And in less than 12 hours, a devastating new ad -
https://twitter.com/HillaryClinton/statu...7247114240
- going viral, that not only remind us of Trump's insanity but will forever taint Pence as the slick lying empty suit that he is - so much for 2020.

More here -
Mission Accomplished

Quote:With the dawn of a new day we can see one thing clearly, Tim Kaine went into the debate with one mission: force a week of rehashing and relitigation of basically every lie, crazy idea and toxic rant we've heard from Donald Trump over the last year and a half. Whether he made ignore the attack, deny the attacks or agree with the attacks didn't really matter. As it happened, he got one and two. Here's the Clinton campaign's rapid response video lining up every Kaine claim, Pence denial and Trump video saying it. It's a classic Pence Said, Videotape Said thing. Everybody now digs into to see who's telling the truth.

All this said, Pence did pretty well too. I'm still uncertain whether Pence went in with a plan to toss Trump overboard or whether that's more how it came out in the moment. To the extent it was planned, Pence's mission seemed to be a simple message to GOP stalwarts: Do you see how good I could be if I weren't running with this jackass? The response from high profile Republicans seemed to be: We see, and it's killing us.
The fact that Pence got frustrated and created the "Mexican Thing" meme is is just an additional benefit for the Clinton campaign.
Pence has a decent amount to be happy about this morning. There are things conservatives can take heart from - largely finding someone in the campaign to feel good about. But none of them are things that do anything good for them in 2016. On that front, Kaine won pretty much hands down.

It's not just that the Clinton campaign can count on the stupidity of the GOP to fall into their traps; it's the media that plays the patsy facilitators as they stumble around with their false equivalency and need for a horse race. 
No wonder GOP insiders are so scared of Clinton.