Pick your poison
A majority of Democrats wish Mike Pence were president
President Mike Pence? Most Democrats wish they could say those words, a new poll has found. The PredictWise and Pollfish survey discovered that an entire 62 percent of Democrats prefer Pence in office over President Trump, BuzzFeed News reports.
"I think it's fair to say that every Democrat I know would prefer a President Mike Pence, without hesitation," said one top Democratic aide. "He would pass some very bad laws, possibly more efficiently than Trump will. But we would not be worried about nuclear war, the end of NATO and an unholy alliance with Russia, the dissolution of basic democratic norms and principles, or the base-level stability and mental health of the world's most powerful person."
President Obama's speechwriter, Jon Favreau, agreed: "I'd sleep easier with almost any other human being as president than Donald Trump," Favreau confessed. "I'm not as worried [Pence] would accidentally start a nuclear war because some Breitbart lunatic floated a conspiracy that got under his skin."
Director Joss Whedon told BuzzFeed News that he would prefer Veruca Salt, Smaug, and four radishes in a bowl over Trump — and yes, Mike Pence too. "Pence is unethical, but he's quantifiable. He's opposable," Whedon explained. "Like a thumb."
Other liberals warned about falling for the grass being greener on the other side. “Clearly on the 'oh s--- am I going to die' every morning, Pence would provide a little bit of relief," Angelo Carusone, the president of Media Matters, told BuzzFeed News. But "what Pence represents is just as scary. It's a slower approach to the same sort of devastation that Trump is bringing us to."
The poll reached 1,200 people on March 6, with PredictWise economist David Rothschild declining to report a margin of error because he does "not believe it can be accurately estimated."