In this thread I ask a simple question. When Mike Pence was asked if he would vote for Trump, he said “Well, there might be someone else I’d prefer more.” I asked whether he meant himself.
I spelled out that I wanted to discuss this one specific question. I spelled out that I didn’t want a discussion of Mike Pence.
The first reply was: “Every tidbit of Pence wishy comes with a heaping side of washy.”
Several equally unhelpful replies followed. Most people chose to attack Mike Pence because he didn’t say if he would support Trump or not. That was not my question.
I made a post clarifying what I wanted the discussion to be about. I made a simple request that they take their attacks to a different thread.
I got a note from @What_Exit dinging me for “junior moderating” . This is completely absurd. I started the thread. I specified what it was about. People started making political potshots, and I said that I didn’t want the thread to be about that. How is it junior moderating to remind people what my own thread is about?
And then @What_Exit tells me to “Stop being obnoxious”. Where was I obnoxious? All I did was spell out the question I wanted to discuss. There are a lot of people making nasty comments in that thread. Take a look at @Chronos, " We’re answering the question you asked. If you didn’t want it answered, you shouldn’t have asked." His answer had nothing at all to do with the question. Claiming to have answered the question, when he hadn’t, and then attacking me for it. That’s obnoxious.
And frankly there are several people who seem intent on derailing the thread with off-topic political potshots. W_E should have mod noted them. Why not?
We do allow you to restrict the topic of threads, so adding restrictions isn’t a problem. These are the restrictions you wanted on the topic:
I get where you are coming from, but since Pence is a politician, and he is being political while speaking, there is a certain amount of political interpretation required in order to answer your question.
Elmer_J.Fudd’s first reply was a bit off topic. He is saying that Pence is wishy-washy. While you did ask for opinions, this is more of an opinion of Pence personally and not an opinion of what Pence meant.
The next replies by Johnny_Bravo, Chronos, Steve_MB, Cervaise, and the second reply by Elmer_J.Fudd are on topic, and do give their opinions of what Pence was saying. As Chronos said, what you were calling pot-shots were in fact answers to the question. You then went on to complain that everybody wasn’t answering the question when in fact they had answered exactly the question that you had asked, even given the restrictions that you had placed on the topic.
You basically keep telling people how they can and can’t answer your question, even though they did their best to answer it given the constantly changing constraints that you put on the question.
Don’t berate people who are just trying to answer your question, just because their answer doesn’t fit within some extremely narrow band of answers that you had in your mind.
You had a point about the first post being off-topic. The rest of it was poor behavior on your part.
My question: When Pence said that he might prefer “someone else” did he mean himself?
Here’s the thing. Pence was asked if he would vote for Trump, and he didn’t say yes, and he didn’t say no. All the replies attack that. None of them address my question. And they are certainly pot shots.
Here are the replies:
Johnny_Bravo: “I think Trump is a dumpster fire but I’m terrified that saying so out loud will end my political career. …"
Chronos : What he meant by that remark was absolutely nothing. He didn’t want to commit to anything, and so he said something completely meaningless.
Steve_MB: It means he’s still trying to pointlessly … triangulate.
Cervaise: Pence … neither prostrates himself before Trump … nor criticizes him as unfit for office
Elmer_J_Fudd: “I’m not 100% on the Trump Train, but please don’t try to have me murdered again.”
What did I change? What I did was clarify the question for those who didn’t understand it. I didn’t change a thing. It was the same question all through.
When a hypothetical human being who may or may not be Mike Pence says something like “I might prefer someone else”, that gives three options as to their true meaning:
There truly is some third party they prefer
They would prefer themselves to get the position
They are just being non-committal.
Without context, it is impossible to tell which of the three options is true. Since you don’t want any discussion of Pence, and hence context, this is as far as the thread can go, and any further discussion is pointless.
I think the reply was fine because, basically, it’s stating that Pence’s reply is an example of Pence “hedging his bets” (wishy-washy) by saying, in essence, “maybe, maybe not”. In fact, I think that’s it in a nutshell.
It’s possible you misunderstood me on this point. I didn’t want the thread to be dominated by people saying how much they hate Pence. I wanted to discuss that one specific statement. Of course I was willing to discuss Pence in that specific context.
That’s the exact opposite of what I asked for.
I love the way that the moderators accuse me of “berating” other people, yet ignore stuff like this.
I read that thread and I half-agree with @Peter_Morris. Many of the replies were rip-on-Pence qualifiers then answering the question. The replies did fall within the strict rules PM set up for the thread but clearly violated the spirit of keeping it non-partisan. That being said, what did the OP really expect from this thread? This board cannot keep any Trump/Pence/McConnell/McCarthy/MTG/Other Pub thread civil. I’m not going to beat that dead horse again but at this point, no one should expect any rational conversation involving Dems vs. Pubs so just sit back and expect the replies like:
The Cheetoe-in-Chief should be hung for his Jan 6th role for treason. And to answer the OP’s question, yes tuna noodle casserole should be considered “American” cuisine.
All that being said, I think this reply by Cervaise clearly violated the OP’s intentions but still answered his question so technically was in-bounds.
Yeah, Pence still delusionally believes he has a political future in the US, so he is attempting to thread the messaging needle where he neither prostrates himself before Trump (and thereby looks like a cowardly hypocrite) nor criticizes him as unfit for office (and thereby alienates the angry MAGAt base). Unsurprising that what emerges from this effort sounds like gibberish.
I’ve read through that thread and this one, and I’m still not sure what you were looking for. This could be entirely due to my own obtuseness, but I feel like we’re playing a game of Silly Sally, trying to guess the hidden rule that makes some answers acceptable and others not.