I liked the visual format of the VP debate: Kaine and Pence in a continuous shot and moderator Elaine Quijano was only heard, though she seemed to have little control of the debate. Kaine's approach was to quote Trump often and when he did Pence either denied he said what he did or ignored it, particularly when Kaine mentioned rounding up immigrants and deporting them, which caused Pence to say a lot of them were criminals. And Pence had no responses to Kaine's Trump quotes about Muslims, African-American neighborhoods, Mexicans, disbanding NATO and women being incarcerated for having abortions. One general response Pence had was that "Trump is not a polished politician" and therefore one should not take seriously anything political he says?!
Pence's unremitting refrain was for America to beef up the military (would he reinstitute the draft?)and demonstrate "broad shoulders." He wants to abolish Obamacare -- though neither he nor Trump have any suggested alternative for the uninsured -- and Pence has also advocated privatizing social security, a disaster we managed to avoid under Bush. Pence also mentioned several times "the war on coal" as shorthand for recent attempts to enforce environmental regulations. When Kaine mentioned Senator Scott's speech (Scott is an African-American Senator from South Carolina) saying that he had been stopped forty-seven times by the police it was just ignored by Pence, who pointedly did not endorse Trump's advocating stop-and-frisk and irrelevantly cited Trump's endorsement by The Fraternal Order of Police.
Kaine continued to mention Trump's broken promise of providing his tax returns, while Pence praised Trump for taking all his legal deductions, though he did not suggest that showing a loss of 900 million dollars one year might suggest he is not quite the businessman he claims to be. Pence also agrees with Trump that wages are too high already, so we should not increase the minimum wage, which Clinton and Kaine support.
Privatizing Social Security could be done in such a way to greatly increase future benefits with minimal risk. It appears that one would rather have a smaller amount "guaranteed" by the government than the greater returns the same amount could gain if prudently invested. Social Security can also be altered by congress, which is why guaranteed is in quotes.
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