Winners and losers from the vice-presidential debate

Legal Insurrection

Washington Post  "Indiana Gov. Mike Pence and Virginia Sen. Tim Kaine stood toe-to-toe for 90 minutes in the lone vice presidential debate of the 2016 election. I watched, tweeted and took some notes on the best and the worst of the night that was. There was a lot more bad than good." . . .
Excerpts below:

Winners

* Mike Pence: From the very beginning, Pence was the more comfortable of the two men on the debate stage. Pence repeatedly turned to the camera when he answered questions, making clear he understood that the real audience wasn't in the room but watching on TV. The Indiana governor was calm, cool and collected throughout — a stark contrast to the fast-talking (and seemingly nervous) Kaine.

"* Orioles vs. Blue Jays:" . . .

Losers

* Tim Kaine: Someone must have told the Virginia senator he needed to always be on his front foot in the debate, always be the aggressor. It didn't work. Kaine started the debate talking so quickly and trying to load so many Trump attacks into every answer that it made it virtually impossible to grasp any one attack. In the middle of the debate, Kaine seemed to relax into it — delivering an effective attack on Trump's comments on women. But that Kaine was the exception, not the rule. When he wasn't trying to stuff 10 pounds of attack in a five-pound bag in his answers, he was relentlessly interrupting Pence.  Every single time Pence started to level an attack against Hillary Clinton, Kaine immediately began to talk over him. I'm not sure if that was on purpose or not, but it didn't come across well — at all. "

* Elaine Quijano: I root for the moderators in these debates because they have a next-to-impossible job. But Quijano lost control of the debate within minutes of it starting and never really got it back. She seemed to dole out 20 seconds here and 30 seconds there for Pence or Kaine or both to respond to each other with no rhyme or reason. She never was able to get Kaine or Pence to, well, stop talking. Then there was the fact that she didn't seem to follow the flow of the debate; Kaine and Pence would be feuding about, say, tax returns, and Quijano, after getting the two men to stop talking, would say something like, "Let's talk about North Korea."

"* The American public: ' . . .

"Republican National Committee press office:" . . .

 "* The debate stage background (again):" . . .

A debate-watching, live-tweeting Donald Trump had an eyebrow-raising night . . .

Politico: Insiders: Pence outclassed Trump  " 'Is there anyone outside of the Trump family who isn't wishing we could flip the ticket?' asked a Colorado Republican."
The Politico column comes with this photo as is: