Mike pence

8:15 p.m. ET — Matt McDonald: Hello and welcome to The Spectator’s live blog for the vice presidential debate in Salt Lake City, Utah, between Vice President Mike Pence and Sen. Kamala Harris. Along with six of my Spectator comrades, I’ll be offering commentary, analysis and jokes (much more my pace), on whatever unfolds on the University of Utah campus tonight. While the pair may offer a more sober affair than Trump and Biden did last week, Cockburn has knocked up a drinking game so you don’t have to join them. I have a six-pack of Carib, let’s get started. 8:16 p.m. ET — Freddy Gray: Vice presidential debates are not that interesting, as a rule. But 2020 is very weird and different and tonight does feel as if it should produce something unusual.

The United States has always been the world’s leading religious marketplace. Even before independence, the American colonies were more fervently Protestant than any country in Europe. The Pilgrim Fathers turned Massachusetts into a witch-hunting Calvinist theocracy, and no sooner had Puritan power begun to wane than New England was seized by a ‘Great Awakening’ in which vast crowds declared their faith in Jesus with hysterical enthusiasm. But it was the Founding Fathers’ decision to deregulate religion completely that really set America apart from the Old World. In successive ‘awakenings’ lasting well into the 20th century, thousands of sects sprang up, some barely Christian but all of them 100 percent American.

If you’ve kept half an eye on the ‘who will it be?’ story that is the Democratic party’s vice-presidential nomination, you’ll have heard commentators suggesting that Biden will pick a ‘do no harm’ candidate.In other words, Biden should play it safe: given his lead in the polls, he can only slip up, so boring is better than original; boring is better than exciting; uninspiring beats edgy. Do no harm — it’s become journalistic shorthand for boring.The trouble is, there is no such thing as a harmless Veep pick. A candidate who has obviously been picked because of his or, in this case, her inability to excite will damage Biden’s campaign. She will fall flat.Just look at what happened four years ago. Hillary Clinton chose Sen.

This COVID-infected campaign season has brought more than its fair share of surprises. Virtual conventions, turnover at the top of the Trump campaign, sudden swings in previously steady polls. It’s a year like no other, Still, one pillar of presidential electioneering remains: Joe Biden needs to pick a running mate.The vice presidency is a peculiar office: at once vestigial and essential. The office has few defined duties. We’ve all read the quote of John Nance 'Cactus Jack' Garner — FDR’s first VP — who described it as 'not worth a bucket of warm piss’. Yet as Garner’s successor’s successor Harry Truman showed, who a candidate picks to play second fiddle can be one of a presidential aspirant’s most monumental decisions.

The White House has announced that everyone coming into range of President Trump will be tested for COVID-19. Trump, meanwhile, insists that he won’t wear a mask when meeting other leaders — or, as he put it in order of reverse dignity, ‘presidents, prime ministers, dictators, kings, queens’.Unfortunately the worst-case scenario — that a 73-year-old might catch a dose and get seriously ill — no longer seems outlandish. On Sunday night, Britain’s prime minister Boris Johnson was hospitalized after falling sick 10 days ago. Today he went into critical care. What if someone sneezes and Trump catches a cold?Welcome to the nasty, brutish and short Pence presidency.

Donald Trump’s true opponent is not Joe Biden or any of the other Democrats vying for the nomination. It’s Nancy Pelosi. Her announcement that a formal impeachment inquiry is beginning should come as a nasty shock to Trump. Pelosi is the one Democrat he has been unable to cow and bully. Instead, she has repeatedly outmaneuvered him. In her lapidary statement today she emphasized that 'no one is above the law'. That was basically it. The message was clear. She came across as calm, reassuring and understated. No doubt Trump may have inadvertently bolstered Biden’s chances to gain the nomination by targeting his candidacy for destruction with the help of the Ukrainian government. If he plays his cards right, Biden can go on the offense.

At this point, we can relegate the admonitions and advisories to the small print reserved for the disclaimers about possible side effects on bottles of medicine and past-performance-is-no-guarantee-of-returns notices on mutual-fund prospectuses. Sure, it is possible that Donald Trump will lose the presidential election in 2020. It is also possible that he will choose not to run. Many things are possible. But as I have explained in these virtual pages — taking care to post those cautionary bulletins — it is likely that Donald Trump will run again for the presidency in 2020 and it is very likely that he will win and win by a much larger margin than his victory in 2016. I set forth my thoughts on the subject at the end of March.

It was no cakewalk for Vice President Mike Pence. He had showed up in Sea Island, Ga., reckoning that he would schmooze with the wealthy donors to the American Enterprise Institute and answer some prearranged questions from Dick Cheney aka Vice. No dice. Cheney, the wily veteran, took a look at the parvenu occupying his old office and decided to go off script. Where were all the ‘softball’ topics, Pence remarked. Cheney was having none of it. There wasn’t much gratitude for the administration that had finally gotten around to pardoning his former aide I. Lewis ‘Scooter’ Libby. Instead, Cheney breathed fire.