Who are Tim Kaine (D) and Mike Pence (R)?

On October 4th, citizens of the USA got to hear from the vice presidential candidates. People have said that they don’t know who Tim Kaine, the Virginia Senator and Mike Pence, the Governor of Indiana as well as Hillary Clinton or Donald Trump are. So, did the debate help?

Vice presidential candidates have only one shot at promoting their presidential candidates during a debate, so what were their strategies? Kaine was on the offense, repeating negative comments that Trump had made in the past. Pence on the other hand worked to defend Trump. According to “The Hill”, Kaine interrupted Pence roughly 70 times during Pence’s time to speak.

Candidates were asked many questions on a variety of topics. In this article, we will be looking at the candidates’ answers to a few questions. When asked about national security, and specifically terrorism, Kaine talked about how secure our country is right now. Kaine talked about Clinton’s plan to defeat terrorist groups around the world. He talked about her qualifications by discussing her part in the national security team that was involved in final decision making in the killing of Osama Bin Laden, showing that she had experience in defeating terrorism. He also attacked Trump, saying that he didn’t have a real plan to defeat these groups of people, and he attacked him on his comments about encouraging more countries around the world to develop nuclear weapons. Pence attacked Clinton on her failed negotiations, causing and worsening wars around the world.

The candidates were asked about how their ticket would bring benefits to our economy. Pence answered by bringing up the success in his home state of Indiana. He said “We cut taxes, we've made record investments in education and in infrastructure, and I will finish my term with $2 billion in the bank.” Pence reiterated his plan to lower taxes for working families and small businesses. Pence also said that Trump would create a new healthcare system removing the current system, Obamacare. Then, they would work on trade deals that would support the average “American worker”. After doing all of this, they would tackle the national debt saying, “When we get back to 3.5 percent to 4 percent growth with Donald Trump's plan, then we're going to have adequate resources to meet our nation's needs at home and abroad, and we're going to have the ability to bring down the national debt.” Kaine first talked about the jobs that a Clinton-Kaine ticket would work on. He said “First thing we will do is to invest in manufacturing jobs, infrastructure development, and research in the clean energy for better tomorrow.” Part of this plan is to raise the minimum wage. He went on to talk about investing time on improving the education system and offering “debt-free education and tuition-free college for families that make less than $125,000 a year.”

CNN conducted an ORC poll on how voters who watched the debate felt about the vice presidential candidates’ performance. This poll showed that Mike Pence had a small edge over Tim Kaine. The debate audience were also polled. The audience that participated in this poll had more democrats than republicans but 48% of them said that Pence won the debate while 42% of people said that Kaine won the debate. This Sunday, Donald Trump and Hilary Clinton will be going head to head for the second debate. Students still have many years to go until we are able to vote, but the election has given us a unique opportunity to understand the issues and form our own opinions. This is really what democracy is all about.