Vice presidential debate updates: The winner? Our analysts say Pence came out ahead

There was no shortage of interruptions and insults during the first and only vice presidential debate of 2016.

Here are some of the major exchanges between vice presidential nominees Indiana Gov. Mike Pence and Virginia Sen. Tim Kaine.

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A conversation on abortion took a turn when Tim Kaine questioned Donald Trump’s ability to lead by criticizing his past statements on Mexican immigrants.

“Senator, you whipped out that Mexican thing again,” Pence responded. (Here’s the full transcript of their exchange.)

“That Mexican thing” immediately struck a chord with debate-watchers. Already, www.thatMexicanthing.com redirects back to Hillary Clinton campaign’s official website.

And on Twitter, it didn’t take long for people to chime in.

This isn’t the first time Trump’s campaign or someone associated with it has made a comment on Mexican immigrants that has turned into a bit a gaffe. Last month, “taco trucks on every corner” turned into an Internet meme after Latinos for Trump founder Marco Gutierrez said it in an anti-immigration interview.

Today happens to be National Taco Day.

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When asked to discuss the threat of terrorism Tuesday, Sen. Tim Kaine took the opportunity to outline Hillary Clinton’s plan to defeat Islamic State: Take out the network’s leadership, disrupt its financing and recruiting and work with allies “to share and surge intelligence.”

“She’s got the experience to do it,” he said, before pivoting to attack Donald Trump for his “secret” plans.

It might be one of the best examples Tuesday of how Kaine’s own priorities have become secondary to Clinton’s. Left unmentioned was perhaps a signature cause during Kaine’s nearly four years in the Senate: his insistence that further military action against the Islamic State extremist group requires congressional approval.

The Obama administration has maintained that deployments targeting the terrorist network are covered by previous congressional mandates, primarily the one passed in the days after the Sept. 11 attacks that granted broad authority for military action against “nations, organizations or persons” responsible.

Still, the president has indicated openness and offered a proposed draft of a new bill that would define the parameters of U.S. military deployments to target the terrorist network. It would have ruled out “enduring offensive ground combat operations” — a term that was never fully defined, and offered no geographic limitations.

Kaine and others called the proposal too vague, and said that members of Congress needed to do more to assert their own prerogative to declare war, as presidents from both parties have reached beyond what he says were their constitutional limits.

Kaine had worked with Rep. Adam B. Schiff (D-Burbank) and others on their own proposal in 2014; he introduced similar proposals this year with Republican Sen. Jeff Flake of Arizona that would give the president a narrow mandate for military action to protect U.S. citizens and provide military support to regional partners against Islamic State, while prohibiting a significant deployment of ground troops. Separately, Kaine has called for legislation to either revise or repeal that 2001 authorization.

In a national security speech in North Carolina last month, Kaine said that Hillary Clinton agreed with his mission.

“Hillary and I both believe that Congress should finally do its job and take a vote on whether the American military should be using force for now over two years against [the Islamic State],” he said.

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Tim Kaine explains his personal opposition to the death penalty.

Tim Kaine opposes the death penalty, describing his stance as a “moral position.” He also represented death-row inmates as a defense lawyer, something his Republican opponent tried to use against him when Kaine ran for governor in Virginia.

“But I looked the voters of Virginia in the eye and said, ‘Look, this is my religion. I’m not going to change my religious practice to get one vote. But I know how to take an oath and uphold the law. And if you elect me I will uphold the law,’” Kaine recalled Tuesday night as he discussed how his faith informed his public service.

After he was elected, Kaine still allowed death sentences to be carried out because it was state law. Eleven inmates were executed during his tenure from 2006 to 2010.

Kaine differs on the issue from Hillary Clinton, who supports the death penalty. She has said execution is justified for “particularly heinous crimes” as long as prosecutors meet “the highest standards of evidentiary proof.”

For his part, Kaine said it was “very, very difficult to allow executions to go forward” as governor.

“But in circumstances where I didn’t feel like there was a case for clemency, I told Virginia voters I would uphold the law and I did,” he said. “I think it is really, really, really important that those of us who have deep faith lives don’t feel like we can just substitute our own views for everyone else in society.”

Our judges say Mike Pence won on style and Tim Kaine on substance, and that Pence’s strong showing could help moderate Republicans back to the ticket.

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Tim Kaine and Mike Pence clash over questions about abortion.

Perhaps one of the most personal, intense policy arguments of Tuesday’s vice presidential debate was on the issue of abortion. This, despite the fact that Mike Pence and Tim Kaine are both against the practice.

What separates them is whether their personal views should dictate public policy. Kaine offered a lengthy explanation of why he feels it should not, starting initially on the subject of the death penalty, which he opposes but carried out as Virginia governor.

Kaine personally opposes abortion. However, he’s supported keeping the procedure legal and has earned a perfect voting record from Planned Parenthood.

Hillary Clinton’s support for abortion comes without qualifiers, and she’s also pushed for ending the Hyde Amendment, a ban on federal funding for abortions. Kaine has defended the amendment in the past, although a campaign spokeswoman said he is “fully committed to Hillary Clinton’s policy agenda.”

Pence questioned how people of faith like Kaine could support late-term abortions, which he called “anathema” to him.

Kaine said both he and Clinton are “people out of religious backgrounds,” discussing his running mate’s upbringing in the Methodist Church.

“We really feel like you should live fully and with enthusiasm in the commands of your faith, but it is not the role of the public servant to mandate that for everybody else,” he said.

Kaine said the Democratic ticket supports Roe vs. Wade, the Supreme Court decision that made abortion legal, and cited Pence’s previous pledge to repeal it.

He then pivoted to attack Donald Trump for having said in an MSNBC town hall that he would support punishing women who have abortions.

“Donald Trump and I would never support legislation that punished women who made the heartbreaking choice to end a pregnancy,” Pence said.

Kaine quickly interjected to ask why Trump had said that.

“He’s not a polished politician,” Pence answered.

Kaine argued that Pence should not simply dismiss Trump’s previous controversial statements on a range of issues as simply a lack of polish. He raised Trump’s comments about Mexican immigrants -- calling them rapists and criminals -- as an example.

“Senator, you whipped out that Mexican thing again,” Pence responded.

“Can you defend it?” Kaine answered back.

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Mike Pence misrepresents Hillary Clinton’s meetings with foundation donors at the vice presidential debate.

Mike Pence exaggerated Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton’s meetings with donors to her family foundation when she was secretary of State, saying in Tuesday’s vice presidential debate that they were far more extensive than they actually were.

Pence repeated a statement from a retracted Associated Press tweet — that more than half of those who met with Clinton when she was the nation’s top diplomat had given money to the Clinton Foundation. The AP deleted the tweet because it was incorrect.

The tweet linked to an AP story that found 85 of the 154 people in the private sector listed on Clinton’s State Department calendars as meeting with her were linked to donations to her family charity.

But the story did not count any of the U.S. or foreign government officials with whom Clinton met.

Two weeks after the tweet was posted, the AP deleted it after concluding that it fell short of AP standards by omitting essential context.

The incident led the AP to revise its practices to require removal and correction of any AP tweets that fall short of the news organization’s standards, including tweets that contain information that is incorrect, misleading or unfair.

After a third round that focused on faith and foreign policy, both candidates delivered solid performances but neither came out on top.

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Tim Kaine hits Mike Pence on Trump’s comments about nuclear weapons at the vice presidential debate.

In a feverish exchange about falsehoods, GOP vice presidential nominee Mike Pence claimed that Democratic rival Tim Kaine was misstating Donald Trump’s position on nuclear proliferation.

Kaine said that Trump has said that more nations should have nuclear weapons.

“He never said that,” Pence said.

“He absolutely said that,” Kaine replied.

Trump has repeatedly said he was amenable to more nations having nuclear weapons, and that it was inevitable.

“If Japan had that nuclear threat, I’m not sure that would be a bad thing for us,” he told the New York Times in March, arguing that it would be a good counter force to North Korea.

He expanded on his views on CNN the same month.

“Can I be honest with you? It’s going to happen anyway. It’s going to happen anyway. It’s only a question of time. They’re going to start having them or we have to get rid of them entirely. But you have so many countries already, China, Pakistan, you have so many countries, Russia, you have so many countries right now that have them,” he said. “Now, wouldn’t you rather in a certain sense have Japan have nuclear weapons when North Korea has nuclear weapons?”

(Carolyn Cole / Los Angeles Times)

Gov. Mike Pence took a hard line when it came to Russia, a somewhat surprising turn given what has been the Putin-friendly posture of his running mate.

“The provocations by Russia need to be met with American strength,” Pence said during a discussion of the conflict in Syria during Tuesday’s vice presidential debate.

He later suggested that the United States should deploy a missile defense shield in the Czech Republic and Poland, one that he noted President Obama and former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton opted against early in the president’s term (the U.S. and NATO have since moved to bolster its presence in Eastern Europe).

“We’ve just got to have American strength on the world stage, and when Donald Trump becomes president of the United States, the Russians and other countries in the world will know they’re dealing with a strong American president.”

Kaine said Clinton would stand up to Russia in a way that Trump would not, noting the Republican nominee has repeatedly praised President Vladimir Putin and raising “shadowy connections with pro-Putin forces.”

Kaine then attacked Pence directly for “the odd claim” that Putin was a “better” leader than Obama.

“Vladimir Putin’s run his economy into the ground, he persecutes LGBT folks and journalists. If you don’t know the difference between dictatorship and leadership, then you have got to go back to a fifth-grade civics class,” Kaine said.

“That is absolutely inaccurate,” Pence later claimed of his previous comments comparing Obama and Putin.

As Kaine said, you can go to the tape. Speaking on CNN from the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library, Pence backed up his running mate’s comments about the Russian leader.

“I think it’s inarguable that Vladimir Putin has been a stronger leader in his country than Barack Obama has been in this country,” Pence said then.

Pence’s point Tuesday seemed to be that there is a distinction between calling Putin a “better” leader than a “stronger” leader.

“He’s been stronger on the world stage,” Pence said again Tuesday.

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Mike Pence and Tim Kaine debate how to address the Syrian refugee crisis.

Mike Pence, asked about how he would deal with home-grown terrorists during the vice presidential debate, quickly turned to a frequent talking point of his running mate: Donald Trump often says that Hillary Clinton supports a radical 550% increase in Syrian refugees.

Clinton’s running mate Tim Kaine pushed back by noting that on Monday, a federal appeals court upheld a lower court’s order blocking a Pence effort to try to stop Syrian refugees from being resettled in his home state of Indiana.

While the figure Pence cited is accurate, the assertion is misleading, given the scale of the crisis of Syrians fleeing the country’s bloody civil war that has raged since 2011.

In a September 2015 CBS News interview, Clinton said she believes the U.S. should take in 65,000 Syrian refugees, which would be a 550% increase from the Obama administration’s goal of resettling 10,000 refugees this fiscal year.

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(David Goldman / Associated Press)

Donald Trump and his running mate, Indiana Gov. Mike Pence, often tout themselves as the “law and order” campaign.

And the recent high-profile police shootings of black men have created a stark contrast this election cycle on a polarizing issue: stop and frisk.

Hillary Clinton and Sen. Tim Kaine have assailed the policing tactic as racial profiling, and on Tuesday night Kaine sought to bring the issue back to the forefront.

“Donald Trump recently said we need to do more stop-and-frisk around the country,” Kaine said during the vice presidential debate at Longwood University. “That would be a big mistake.... It polarizes the relationship between the police and the community.”

Pence, who noted during the debate his uncle was a longtime Chicago police officer, did not agree.

“You just heard Sen. Kaine reject stop-and-frisk. I would suggest to you the families that live in our inner cities that are besieged by crime” would not agree, Pence said.

The policy, once used by many police departments, gained traction in New York under two former mayors, Rudolph W. Giuliani, now a top Trump surrogate, and Michael R. Bloomberg, now a fierce Trump critic.

The tactic drew dozens of lawsuits by people who argued that they were unfairly targeted by police on racial grounds as they walked the city’s streets.

In 2013, a federal judge ruled that New York’s stop-and-frisk policy had violated the rights of minorities.

While discussing criminal justice, the two did find common ground, as both agreed that better relationships between minority communities and police must be forged.

“At the risk of agreeing with you,” said Pence, nodding at Kaine, “community policing is a great idea.”

Our panel says that Kaine improved his performance from the first round, but neither man shone during the second third of the debate.

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Tim Kaine and Mike Pence present two opposing visions on immigration policy. 

When Indiana Gov. Mike Pence said during Tuesday night’s debate that it was “nonsense” that Donald Trump was going to deport millions of immigrants living in the United States illegally, he was incorrect.

During a Republican primary debate in November 2015, Trump praised President Dwight Eisenhower’s mass deportation program.

“You are going to have a deportation force, and you are going to do it humanely,” Trump said the next day on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” when asked how he would round up the nation’s 11 million undocumented immigrants.

In the general election, Trump has modulated his rhetoric on illegal immigration, emphasizing that his top priority is to expel criminals.

But in an August immigration speech in Phoenix, Trump made clear he was sticking to his hard line on deportations.

“Anyone who has entered the United States illegally is subject to deportation,” he said. “That is what it means to have laws and to have a country. Otherwise we don’t have a country.”

Donald Trump isn’t the only one tweeting during the debate — Hillary Clinton also has some thoughts.

At one point, she criticized Pence for skirting a question about whether bias affects policing.

Clinton also doesn’t think highly of Trump’s own tweeting.

Both vice presidential nominees may be best known for their affable, albeit bland, demeanors. But the two running mates arrived in Virginia ready to (mildly) brawl in their only debate.

The first third of the showdown between Tim Kaine and Mike Pence was most notable for cross-talk and interruptions in nearly every exchange.

Kaine jumped in when Pence took aim at the Clinton Foundation. Pence cut in to defend Donald Trump’s tax returns.

Observers pointedly noted the number of times Trump interrupted Clinton in the first debate, where the over-talking had a more fraught gender dynamic. On Tuesday night, free of that dynamic, the two men interrupted each other with gusto.

The cross-talk exasperated the debate moderator, CBS News’ Elaine Quijano.

“Gentlemen, the people at home cannot understand you when you speak over each other,” she reminded them.

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Tim Kaine explains his stance on gun control. 

Asked about criminal justice reforms, Sen. Tim Kaine touted improved crime statistics when he was a mayor and governor and then praised Hillary Clinton’s “comprehensive” plans for the nation, which includes one to “fight the scourge of gun violence in the United States.”

“I’m a gun owner. I’m a strong 2nd Amendment supporter, but I got a lot of scar tissue,” he said.

Kaine’s positions on gun control have become more stringent over time, reflecting his years in elected office in his home state of Virginia.

When Kaine ran for governor, he promised not to push for new restrictions on guns. But after the shooting massacre at Virginia Tech in 2007 — during his term — he worked with Republican lawmakers to bolster the state’s system for background checks, an effort the Obama administration pointed to as a model for national action.

As a U.S. senator, Kaine has backed restrictions on gun magazines that hold more than 10 bullets.

His support for tougher gun control meshes with Clinton’s platform. She’s consistently pushed for more extensive background checks and a ban on firearm purchases by people on the “no-fly” list because of suspected terrorist activity.

Donald Trump promised to live-tweet the vice presidential debate from his hotel in Las Vegas, and he’s been tweeting away so far.

Trump has run into trouble with his tweeting, so his campaign pointed out that he wouldn’t be alone with his smartphone.

Besides tweeting his own comments, Trump has been sharing thoughts from his fans.

(Andrew Jansen / Associated Press)

While defending Donald Trump’s apparent lack of paying taxes, GOP vice presidential candidate Mike Pence argued Tuesday to Tim Kaine that the Democratic vice presidential candidate and his running mate, Hillary Clinton, were “career public servants.”

Trump “actually built a business,” Pence said during the vice presidential debate.

Both members of the Democratic ticket are long-term politicians, but so is Pence. He has spent the past 15 years as a member of Congress and Indiana governor, public service his campaign proudly pointed to when he released his financial disclosures and tax returns he earlier this year.

“The Pence family has been honored to serve their state and their nation for the past 16 years, while raising three great children and putting them through college,” Marc Lotter, a Pence spokesman, said in statement when Pence and his wife, Karen, released a decade’s worth of tax returns.

The Pence family reported an adjusted gross income of $113,026 on the low end and $187,495 on the high end, with an effective state and federal tax rate that ranged from 10.4% to 16.5%. The bulk of the income, covering 2006 to 2015, came from Pence’s salaries as a congressman and governor.

The financial disclosures found nearly all of their assets come from Pence’s government work. They reported a state pension worth between $500,001 and $1 million, and two other state retirement accounts worth up to $30,000. The couple also has a bank account worth up to $15,000 and two college savings accounts worth up to $30,000 combined.

Our judges praised Mike Pence’s calm demeanor, a sharp contrast to his running mate’s performance last week.

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Tim Kaine and Mike Pence spar over their economic records in Virginia and Indiana

The vice presidential candidates are spending much of their time advocating for their running mates. But as the debate turned to the economy, Gov. Mike Pence sought to contrast his record in one term leading Indiana to Tim Kaine’s tenure as Virginia governor.

I’m “proud of fact I come from a state that works,” Pence said, while arguing that Kaine left Virginia’s budget “in the hole.”

Virginia’s unemployment rate was more than double when Kaine left office in 2010 (10.8%) than it was when he was sworn in in 2006 (5.1%).

Indiana’s unemployment rate is now 4.5%, compared with 8.4% when Pence took office.

Governors can do a lot to boost their states’ economies, but national trends play a significant role here. Kaine has often referred to himself as “a hard-times governor,” noting that he had to make difficult decisions as the Great Recession unfolded nationally.

Pence took office just as the economic recovery was underway, and benefited somewhat from the decisions his predecessor, Republican Mitch Daniels, made.

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Pundits have tried to stoke enthusiasm for Tuesday night’s vice presidential candidates’ debate, noting that Pence and Kaine are likely to have a more substantive back-and-forth about the major issues facing this country. Civil, competent and unburdened by the weight of charisma, these two men are expected to lay out the clear differences in governing philosophy between the Republican and Democratic tickets.

But, come on, does anybody really care?

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The tiny town of Farmville does not even amount to a spit on the map of Virginia, perhaps a fitting backdrop for a vice presidential debate that is being drowned out by the clanging of the presidential nominees.

But in addition to charming brick warehouses, furniture stores, wooded views of the river and two small private colleges, the town is rich in history.

The Civil War ended here and the era of segregation lingered in Prince Edward County longer than almost any other place in the United States.

The county, which had been a party in Brown vs. Board of Education, decided to close its public school system rather than integrate it when the Supreme Court struck down segregation in 1959. Unlike other integration holdouts, which quickly reopened their schools, the Prince Edward County schools remained closed for five years. Many black children were forced to move or denied an education altogether.

White children were sent to a state-supported private school.

“Prince Edward Academy became the prototype for all-white private schools formed to protest school integration,” according to the Virginia Historical Society.

Even after the public schools reopened, when the Supreme Court struck down state grants given to private schools, de facto segregation lingered for decades.

But the county also has changed. An editorial in Monday’s Roanoke Times argues that Farmville and the surrounding county “tells a story about the nation.”

The piece points out that among many changes here, voters last year elected Megan Clark as the county attorney, the first woman and African American to hold the post. Clark’s parents were denied a public education here for five years, with her mother forced to attend school in a neighboring county.

“Keep breaking down walls and keep building bridges,” the Rev. Jesse Jackson said in an interview Tuesday, when asked about the significance of holding the debate in Farmville. “These are signs of progress and signs of hope.”

People in the town of 8,000 residents seem genuinely excited to reemerge on the national stage. There was celebration over the weekend to mark the repainting of an old Coca-Cola mural, and many friendly smiles from people who work in the stores along Main Street.

(Frederick M. Brown/Getty Images)

Last week it was Lester Holt in the moderator spotlight, and now it’s Elaine Quijano.

The CBS News reporter will moderate tonight’s vice presidential debate between Virginia Sen. Tim Kaine and Indiana Gov. Mike Pence.

Quijano, 42, is an anchor for the Sunday edition of “CBS Weekend News.” But the bulk of Quijano’s work is on CBS’ Internet-streamed 24-hour news channel, where she leads its political coverage. She’s a former CNN correspondent who joined CBS News in 2010.

The Chicago-area native will be the first Asian American to moderate a general election debate.

Quijano will oversee nine 10-minute segments between Kaine and Pence.

“Elaine connects today’s digital audiences with this historic 2016 campaign,” CBS News President David Rhodes said in a statement last month when it was announced Quijano would moderate the debate.

“Her perspective, dedication to political reporting, and important role on CBS News’ live-streaming platform make her an ideal choice to lead the only vice presidential debate this fall.”

The moderators have been the subject of much scrutiny amid the uproar over fact-checking during this campaign, and Holt largely received positive reviews, allowing Trump and Clinton to debate, yet at times interrupting to ask follow-up questions and to point out falsehoods.

(Andrew Harnik / Associated Press)

As vice president, Tim Kaine would face a challenge no one in the office has: working alongside not one but two presidents.

Hillary and Bill Clinton would, of course, be the first wife and husband to both serve as president. Given Bill Clinton’s eagerness to be at the center of the action and deep passion for politics, that could make Kaine the odd man out.

“We’ve never had this before, with a former president being in the White House, and Hillary has indicated that he will have an active role,” said Charles Burson, a former chief of staff to Bill Clinton’s vice president, Al Gore.

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(Mandel Ngan / AFP-Getty Images)

Mike Pence takes the debate stage as the occasionally forgotten No. 2 to the indisputable chief attention-getter of the presidential campaign, Donald Trump. But he could assume a big role in a Trump administration.

Pence, Indiana’s governor and a former congressman, has the policy experience that Trump lacks. He also has close ties to religious conservatives, a group that is somewhat warily supportive of Trump.

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Donald Trump on Tuesday seized upon President Bill Clinton’s criticism of some of the fallout from President Obama’s signature healthcare law as “the craziest thing in the world.”

Trump said Clinton was simply being honest when he said a day earlier that people who barely miss out on qualifying for healthcare subsidies are seeing their insurance premiums double and coverage slashed.

“He absolutely trashed President Obama’s signature legislation,” Trump told thousands of supporters in Prescott Valley, a desert town 90 minutes north of Phoenix. “I’ll bet he went through hell last night. Can you imagine? Can you imagine? Can you imagine what he went through after making that statement? He went through hell.

“Honestly, there have been many nights when he has gone through hell with Hillary Clinton,” Trump added, continuing his recent line of attacks on the Clintons’ marriage. “I want to thank him honestly for being honest.”

Trump said that Bill Clinton was also reiterating what he has said throughout his campaign. Trump repeated his pledge that he would, on his first day as president, ask Congress to send him a bill to repeal and replace Obamacare.

In his remarks Monday, Clinton said that the system worked fine for the elderly and the poor, but he said it created problems for people who barely miss out on qualifying for a subsidy.

“The people that are getting killed in this deal is small-business people and individuals who make just a little too much to get any of these subsidies,” Clinton said while campaigning for his wife in Michigan.

“So you’ve got this crazy system where all of a sudden 25 million more people have healthcare, and then the people who are out there busting it sometimes 60 hours a week wind up with their premiums doubled and their coverage cut in half,” Clinton said. “It’s the craziest thing in the world.”

The law has fallen short of some goals in part because of efforts by Republican elected officials in many states to block expansion of Medicaid and erect other barriers to insurance enrollment.

Clinton emphasized a day later that the legislation did a “world of good.”

“We for the first time in our history at least are providing insurance to more than 90% of our people,” he said at a rally in Ohio.

Hillary Clinton tried to strike a middle path: She praised the Affordable Care Act for its health insurance exchanges and coverage for preexisting conditions. But she acknowledged that it needed improvements, such as mechanisms to keep costs down. She did not disagree with her husband’s remarks.

“I’ve been saying, we’ve got to fix what’s broken and keep what works,” Clinton told reporters in Harrisburg. “We’re going to tackle it. We’re going to fix it. It won’t be easy. But it’s a heck of a lot better than starting for scratch.”

Mehta reported from Prescott Valley and Megerian from Harrisburg.

What, no spoiler alert?

About 90 minutes before the vice presidential debate was scheduled to begin, the GOP published a post on its website declaring the Republican candidate the “clear winner.” The post appears to have since been removed, but here’s what was up there:

“Americans from all across the country tuned in to watch the one and only Vice Presidential debate,” the post read. “The consensus was clear after the dust settled, Mike Pence was the clear winner of the debate.”

The post touted Pence’s highlights from the debate that has not yet happened, including talking about the economy and “highlighting Hillary’s scandals.”

Guess we know what we can look forward to tonight.

By the way, if you go to the link now, it looks like this:

If only 10-year-old Barron Trump had been there to help them out with “the cyber.”

First Lady Michelle Obama portrayed Donald Trump as an unstable and thin-skinned bigot Tuesday as she sought to inspire a strong voter turnout for Hillary Clinton in North Carolina.

Obama never mentioned the Republican presidential nominee by name in her remarks at a rally in Charlotte. But she picked apart Trump’s recent missteps, including his middle-of-the-night tweets calling a former Miss Universe a “terrible” and “disgusting” con artist with a sordid sexual history.

Americans, Obama said, need a commander in chief “who is steady and measured, because when making life-or-death, war-or-peace decisions, a president can’t just pop off or lash out irrationally. And I think we can all agree that someone who’s roaming around at 3 a.m. tweeting should not have their fingers on the nuclear codes.”

Obama seized on the New York Times disclosure that Trump reported a nearly billion-dollar loss in 1995 that would have enabled him to pay no federal income tax for up to 18 years.

“We need someone who is honest and plays by the rules, because not paying taxes for years and years while the rest of us pay our fair share doesn’t make you smarter than the rest of us,” she said, drawing cheers.

“No, we need a president who will choose to do what’s best for the country, even when it doesn’t personally benefit them.”

North Carolina is a crucial battleground state that Clinton can only win with a strong turnout of black voters. The first lady has been one of her strongest surrogates.

Obama ridiculed Trump’s effort to excuse his poorly received debate performance last week by faulting the low quality of his microphone, which affected the sound level in the auditorium but was unnoticeable to the record 84 million television viewers.

When Clinton “gets knocked down, she doesn’t complain, she doesn’t cry foul,” Obama said, tapping loudly on her microphone. “No, she gets right back up and comes back stronger for the people who need her most.”

(Sean Simmers / PennLive.com via AP)

When Hillary Clinton took the stage here Tuesday, there was little talk of the sexism, racism or xenophobia she has accused Donald Trump of spreading.

Instead, much like her speeches the previous day in Ohio, Clinton focused on the economy, Trump’s taxes and accusations that he stiffed contractors in his business dealings.

“Donald Trump is the poster boy for so much of what is wrong with our economy,” she said.

Public polls have showed voters believe that Trump, whose record as a real estate developer has been central to his presidential pitch, would be better at handling the country’s economy. But his lead on that score has shrunk, and Clinton has tried to further close the gap in battleground states like Pennsylvania and Ohio.

Part of Clinton’s message echoed some of the complaints from her primary opponent Bernie Sanders about the “rigged economy,” with criticisms of a “cowboy culture” on Wall Street.

“I’m going to be even tougher on the Wall Street banks,” Clinton said. Her record of accepting donations and paid speaking engagements from financial institutions has been a controversial issue for her campaign.

At every turn, Clinton linked Trump to the economic problems she bemoaned.

“He embodies the risky behavior that crashed our economy, that brought us the Great Recession, the quick-buck culture that still rules too many corporate boardrooms,” she said.

Clinton once again assailed Trump for buying steel from China for some construction projects despite his campaign promises to protect the domestic steel industry.

She promised to protect U.S. steel companies from unfair Chinese competition.

“We’re going to ramp up enforcement. We’re going to throw the book at China and anyone else that does it,” she said.

Clinton also promised to crack down on companies that outsource jobs, saying she would require them to pay an “exit tax” if they move work overseas after accepting tax breaks.

(Darron Cummings / Associated Press))

Tuesday’s debate puts the spotlight on the major parties’ vice presidential nominees, and one odd chapter of Mike Pence’s life has gotten little attention in this election: the unfounded conspiracy theories he peddled about anthrax and Saddam Hussein.

Pence, a congressman at the time, claimed that a foreign government, probably Hussein’s Iraq, was responsible for the attacks via mail that killed five people in the months after the Sept. 11 attacks when the U.S. was already in a heightened state of fear.

The Times’ David Willman explored Pence’s reaction to the anthrax attacks this summer, after the Indiana governor was named to the GOP ticket.

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Score one for team Clinton.

The campaign is often criticized for getting outflanked by Donald Trump in terms of attention from media. But their old-school tactics — and much larger staff — gave Clinton’s campaign some added exposure ahead of the vice presidential debate Tuesday.

The campaign supplied a steady stream of high-level officials and surrogates for reporters, who have been waiting hours in the debate filing room before the 9 p.m. Eastern kickoff.

There was Robby Mook, the campaign manager, pushing reporters to make sure a low bar isn’t set for Trump in the next debate. Jennifer Palmieri, the communications director, mocked Trump’s tweeting. The Rev. Jesse Jackson roamed the spin room. There was a separate availability with bilingual campaign officials for the large contingent of Spanish-language media.

Team Trump? Not so much. A few officials roamed around from the Virginia Legislature. Alabama Sen. Jeff Sessions spoke to CNN. GOP chief strategist Sean Spicer did some local television interviews. The Republican National Committee’s Hispanic communications chief, Helen Aguirre Ferre, did some one-on-one interviews.

As the vice presidential candidates square off in their debate Tuesday night, the Clinton campaign will be paying particularly close attention to how it might play in one battleground state: Ohio.

Democrats have struggled to win over this part of the Rust Belt, particularly in 2016 as they face a rival whose pitch is custom-made for the legions of workers whose jobs have been casualties of globalization. Donald Trump maintained a slight lead in Ohio over Clinton in every poll taken in September.

But the Clinton campaign sees opportunity in the state stemming from Trump’s latest troubles, which include revelations that he may not have paid federal income taxes for nearly two decades and that he opted not to buy massive amounts of steel for construction projects in America. His company purchased the steel in China.

“We have a real opening with these voters,” Clinton communications director Jennifer Palmieri said in the spin room before Tuesday night’s debate in Farmville, Va. “These are voters that have been difficult for Democrats to win over in recent presidential elections. We haven’t done as well with them as we should or as we would like.”

Clinton running mate Tim Kaine, who will take the debate stage Tuesday, is key to the campaign’s Ohio strategy. Kaine, a native of Minnesota who grew up outside Kansas City, Mo., is a Midwesterner himself and also is free of the political baggage that has given Ohio voters reservations about Clinton.

Hours before their running mates were to debate, Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump said that the vice presidential clash would be a referendum on the top of the ticket.

Trump said the face-off between his running mate, Mike Pence, and Democrat Tim Kaine would demonstrate the two paths the nation faces in the election.

“The debate will be a contrast between our campaign of big ideas and bold solutions for tomorrow versus the small and petty Clinton campaign that has totally stopped in the past,” Trump told thousands of cheering supporters in Prescott Valley, a desert town 90 minutes north of Phoenix.

“We are change. She is four more years of Obama, and we can’t take that.”

Clinton hailed Kaine’s record in statewide and local office in Virginia and slashed at Pence’s tenure as governor of Indiana and at Trump.

Pence “has a huge burden defending both his own record and the record of Donald Trump,” Clinton told reporters in Harrisburg, Pa.

“I’m very confident and excited about Tim Kaine in the debate tonight because he understands what’s at stake,” Clinton said.

“He is ready to go toe-to-toe with Mike Pence on all the issues that matter to Americans. He is ready to take that fight to the Trump-Pence ticket.”

Mehta reported from Prescott Valley and Megerian from Harrisburg.

(Los Angeles Times / Associated Press)

The vice presidential debate Tuesday might matter little to the outcome of the race, but either Mike Pence or Tim Kaine will be consequential to the administration they serve in, if recent history is a guide.

The Times’ Noah Bierman looked this week at how the office of the vice president has grown in clout in recent decades, due to a number of factors, including shifting politics and the increasing demands placed on presidents.

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Henry Kissinger, Richard Nixon and Gerald Ford, the latter two vice presidents who became president.

(Harvey W. Georges / AP/File Photo)

Here’s an amazing statistic to consider as you watch Tuesday’s vice presidential debate: The U.S. has gone without a vice president for more than a fifth of its 240-year history.

The fact speaks to the inherent contradiction of the nation’s second-highest office: For most of American history, it was largely an irrelevant post until it was supremely relevant.

Until the 25th Amendment to the Constitution was adopted in 1967, no provision existed for replacing a vice president when the position became vacant, as it had 16 times to that point. Thus, the job stayed open for months or even years.

Half of those times, the vacancy occurred because the vice president had ascended to the presidency upon the death of the incumbent. A ninth vice president, Gerald R. Ford, became president because of Richard M. Nixon’s resignation.

Seven vice presidents died in office, including one — William R. King — just six weeks into his term. Vice President John C. Calhoun resigned early to take a seat in the Senate. Spiro Agnew resigned after being indicted.

All told, since the first vice president, John Adams, took office in 1789, the office was vacant for the equivalent of 50 years.

The tally is unlikely to grow much. As my colleague Noah Bierman reported this week, the vice presidency has grown in consequence in recent decades, thanks to several factors, including the increased complexity of the president’s job.

(Justin Sullivan / Getty Images)

Kara Kubisiak drove out to see Hillary Clinton speak in Harrisburg, Pa., on Tuesday, even bringing her 16-month-old daughter, who munched on an apple in her stroller.

But she doesn’t plan to flip on the vice presidential debate later.

“I’m more interested in Hillary,” she said.

Kubisiak, 33, doesn’t know a lot about Sen. Tim Kaine, Clinton’s running mate.

“I know he’s from Virginia,” she said.

The man standing next to her at the rally, Richard Schnoyer, was more enthusiastic about tuning in. He called the debate “critically important.”

After all, the 71-year-old said, both Clinton and Donald Trump are technically senior citizens. She’s 68 and he’s 70, so they need running mates who are prepared to step in.

Schnoyer is impressed with Kaine.

“His is a very good candidate,” he said. “He’s a middle-of-the-roader.”

Hillary Clinton sharply criticized Donald Trump for his comments on military veterans and post-tramautic stress, which have drawn criticism for his suggestion that “strong” veterans don’t have to worry about the disorder.

“Donald Trump’s comments are not just ignorant, they’re harmful,” she said, raising concerns that such remarks increase the stigma surrounding mental health.

“Every one of our troops matter. Their wounds could be visible, or they could be invisible,” Clinton said.

Vice President Joe Biden has already teed off on Trump, calling him “completely uninformed.”

Trump’s campaign has defended the candidate, describing his comments as a sensitive recognition of a difficult issue.

“Mr. Trump was highlighting the challenges veterans face when returning home after serving their country,” retired Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn, a Trump advisor, said in a statement.

Vice President Joe Biden had a little trash talk for the Republican contender for his job on Tuesday, taking a moment out of his workday to offer some pre-debate “advice” for Republican Indiana Gov. Mike Pence.

“Think about whether you made the right decision,” Biden said, hours before Pence’s debate with Biden’s fellow Democrat, Tim Kaine.

“Because it could be a long day in that office over there,” he said, pointing out the window at the White House, “if you don’t agree with the president.”

The warning was a thinly veiled reference to Pence’s differences of opinion with his running mate, Donald Trump. Pence clashed with Trump’s call to ban admission of Muslims to the U.S. last year, and long was a proponent of free-trade deals that Trump has excoriated.

More Americans will likely watch Tuesday’s vice presidential debate than watched the summer political conventions, President Obama’s final State of the Union address or even the last Oscars or clinching World Series game.

That viewership, though, does not mean the match-up of Democratic Sen. Tim Kaine of Virginia and Republican Gov. Mike Pence of Indiana will make much of a difference in the presidential race.

Some of the most memorable moments in national debates have occurred in the vice presidential face-offs, including Democrat Lloyd Bentsen’s famous “You’re no Jack Kennedy” putdown of Dan Quayle in 1988. Yet it was George H.W. Bush who won that election and took Quayle with him to the White House.

But as that encounter showed, the debates can have lasting impact even if it doesn’t shift the race. In 2008, Sarah Palin’s capable and at times folksy performance — “Can I call you Joe?” — helped somewhat to temper doubts about her. In 2012, Vice President Joe Biden’s energetic clash with Rep. Paul D. Ryan reinvigorated Democrats after Obama’s flat debate performance the week before.

In this case, Pence needs to deliver a sure-footed performance after Donald Trump fell short in his opening debate with Hillary Clinton and compounded his poor showing both by doubling down on an attack on a former Miss Universe and subsequent revelations about a massive tax write-down he took.

Pence can also provide a measure of reassurance to many Republicans who aren’t convinced they can back Trump but are loathe to cast a ballot for Clinton.

For Kaine, like Pence a new face on the national stage, the task is to answer questions about Clinton’s liabilities that she did not address directly. In his more than two months on the ticket, he has made it a point to convey the trust he has in the former senator and secretary of State.

But barring a major gaffe by either man, and even perhaps if there is one, the public’s attention is likely to return quickly to how the candidates at the top of the ticket react and prepare for their own rematch Sunday.