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By Britt Nelson
Facebook meme.
Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump is under attack from all sides since the Sept. 26th first debate with his Democratic challenger Hillary Clinton – the most watched political event in TV history. The mud-slinging is now in full swing.
Trump is being slapped across the face this week with 20-year-old comments about a former Miss Universe being overweight and calling her “Miss Piggy,” the New York Times received three pages of Trump’s 1995 tax return and is treating them like the ‘Pentagon Papers,’ meanwhile Clinton is being accused of a 40-year-old lesbian affair with a rock star’s wife and then someone leaked an audio ‘open microphone’ tape recording of Clinton recently belittling young voters supporting Democratic challenger Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders, and on and on it goes.
The mass assault on Trump is due to his near-even or even greater standing with Clinton in national polls and all-important swing states. But some of Trump’s momentum has slowed since the first debate and Team Clinton is pushing back as hard as they can.
As of Monday morning, Clinton is only 2.5 percentage points ahead of Trump in 4-way national poll averaging that also includes Libertarian Gary Johnson and Green Party candidate Dr. Jill Stein. Head-to-head matchup polls now are useless because 3rd party candidates are on the ballot in all 50 states for the upcoming national election in 5 weeks. Johnson and Stein will take votes from both Clinton and Trump. Their presence on the ballot should not be underestimated or dismissed as a nuisance. Johnson and Stein may claim 10 to 15 percent of the vote combined which will affect Clinton’s and/or Trump’s outcomes in some states, according to Real Clear Politics poll averaging.
From the Clinton campaign to mainstream news agencies to social media and late-night comedians, the anti-Trump pundits are working overtime to discredit the New York billionaire in any way they can calling him “unfit” to be president of the United States over and over again. After all the attacks, Trump is holding his own with the second Clinton-Trump debate coming up Oct. 9.
But on Oct. 4 both vice-presidential candidates, Republican Indiana Gov. Mike Pence and Democratic Virginia Sen. Tim Kaine, will debate at Longwood University in Farmville, Va., Kaine’s home state. This debate will be moderated by Elaine Quijano, news anchor for CBSN and correspondent for CBS News. The debate will be divided into nine time segments of about 10 minutes each. Quijano will ask an opening question, and Pence and Kaine will have two minutes each to respond and then rebut each other, according to the Commission on Presidential Debates.
Pence, 57, a career politician and attorney, won the Indiana governor’s office in 2013 after serving in the U.S. House of Representatives for 12 years from Indiana’s 2nd and 6th Congressional Districts. He is a great speaker with a deep voice and a gift for gab plus distinguished white hair. He walks the walk and talks the talk. Prior to winning his first congressional seat, Pence was a conservative radio and TV talk show host from 1994 to 1999. He is also a strong supporter of the Republican conservative Tea Party.
Trump’s secret weapon is Pence, who is highly respected with establishment Republicans in Washington, DC, and conservative Christians across the USA. He is gaining a bigger role in the Trump campaign with each passing day, unlike Kaine in Clinton’s campaign.
Kaine, 58, is also a career politician and attorney whose resume is that of a squeaky-clean public servant. He first won a seat on the Richmond City Council in 1994. From there he has served as mayor of Richmond, lieutenant governor of Virginia, Virginia governor from 2006 to 2010 and U.S. senator from 2013 to the present. He also served as chairman of the Democratic National Committee from 2009 to 2011 and was followed by Florida’s U.S. Congresswoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz, who was forced to resign the chairmanship just after the Democratic National Convention in July due to hacked and released emails from her showing clear bias against Clinton’s Democratic rival Sen. Sanders.
The difference between Pence and Kaine is night and day. Pence, if elected, will be Trump’s right-hand man working with the U.S. Congress, but Kaine will never be Clinton’s right-hand man. Kaine is destined to be a distant vice-president kept at arm’s length and not included in Clinton’s inner circle if she wins the presidency and you can deposit that in a Wall Street bank. Kaine will be the chief funeral attender in a Clinton administration.
Clinton’s love of secrecy, which gave birth to her now famous private email server and all those endless and still ongoing investigations, will keep Kaine in his office far down the hall within the Executive Branch of government.
But there is no doubt that either Pence or Kaine could assume the presidency if Trump or Clinton could not perform the duties of president of the United States. Both men have excellent credentials and both are good choices for vice president.
The relentless attacks from Clinton and Trump aimed at each other will not stop. Everything they say will be blown out of proportion by the mainstream media which is feeding upon the hundreds of millions of dollars each campaign is spending to trash the other with negative advertising.
There’s a lot of money to be made in making mountains out of mole hills as the Nov. 8 national general election nears.
About the Author
Britt Nelson relocated to Costa Rica in 2011 from Florida, where he served as news editor for the Palatka Daily News, a newspaper owned by the New York Times Regional Newspaper Group (NYT-RNG) for 20 years.
Nelson served the NYT-RNG for 18 years in Tennessee, Kentucky, Virginia, North Carolina and Florida as a correspondent, reporter, staff writer, senior staff writer training new reporters, copy editor, page designer, editorial writer, editorial page editor and editorial board member.
