Losing Through Winning: The Mike Pence Story

I almost feel sorry for Mike Pence. Although I did not watch the VP Debate last night, I did take in some post-debate coverage on cable news, and the consensus appears to be that Pence narrowly won. But by winning last night's debate battle, Pence may have lost the debate war.

Pence had an impossible job. He had to do well enough not to embarrass the ticket, but not too well, lest he would piss off Trump - which is what reportedly happened:

The emerging consensus about Tuesday’s vice presidential debate is that Mike Pence did well in the sense of seeming significantly more prepared and less insane than his running mate, Donald Trump, seemed during the Sept. 26 presidential debate. Word emerged pretty much immediately after Tuesday’s debate ended that Trump might not be happy about that comparison.

The Slate article then refers to a couple of sources within the Trump Camp, one of which quoted a Donald adviser who said: "Pence won overall, but lost with Trump."  The article then concludes: "CNN’s snap poll has Pence winning the debate overall 48-42, but Kaine winning 58-35 on the question of who better defended their running mate."

It's not hard to figure out where that 58-35 number came from. When Pence did defend Trump from Kaine's attacks over the stupid and disgusting shit Trump has said, he did so by simply claiming that Donald never said it when in fact he did.  Indeed, the Dems are already running an ad showing Pence at the debate repeatedly denying Trump said something and then showing footage of Trump saying exactly what he was accused of saying.

But then again, what the hell was Pence supposed to do, admit that Donald said those things and then attack him for it?  The problem was not Pence's debate performance -- from what I've heard, he did about as good of a job as he could do.  The problem is that the GOP nominated someone so unfit to serve as president that even his own running mate could not defend him.