5 things to watch in the vice presidential debate

Trump’s taxes are the single most effective attack line Clinton’s campaign has against him in the homestretch, a slow-motion scandal akin to her slow-drip email nightmare. His refusal to release the returns — and his ill-considered blurt that he was “smart” to avoid paying at the first debate was followed by a bombshell of sorts: The New York Times was leaked portions of his 1995 tax return showing that he lost nearly a billion bucks on his lousy casino and real estate deals.

.. If there’s any pressure on Kaine, it’s that he has a reputation as a very good debater, a point my colleague Anna Palmer made recently, evidenced by his cool dismantling of opponent George Allen in the 2012 Virginia Senate race.

.. Despite his nice-guy rep, Kaine has a mean(ish) streak, and has no problem going negative. His somewhat awkward convention speech featured a game, if not quite Alec-Baldwin-quality imitation of Trump, and his stump speech is peppered with attack lines.

2016 Trump’s risky early-voting strategy

They offer priority seating to prospective voters who fill out absentee ballot requests.

.. At a recent North Carolina rally, there was a reserved “mail-in voter seating section.”

.. But there’s no question that the GOP nominee’s campaign is counting on the rallies — which it insists are filled with first-time voters — to serve as the fulcrum of its early voting strategy.

Kaine’s plan: Turn Pence into Trump

One Senate ally calls on Kaine to make Pence ‘own every bit of Trump’s radical, racist, misogynist agenda.’

Pence will already have his talking points down on Tuesday evening — and getting him to deviate could prove nearly impossible.

.. Pence’s job is to steady the ship and remind conservatives what the Republican Party stands for: a pro-growth economic agenda and a break from the left-leaning policies of President Barack Obama.

..What’s extraordinary for Pence, however, is just how many individual topics he must be prepared to defend Trump on to get to his more orthodox pitch to Republican voters.

.. “Is Mike Pence going to aggressively defend his running mate when he hasn’t necessarily been inclined to go on full defense [in the past]?” asked a Kaine aide in an

.. Kaine’s allies are looking for Pence to either assume all of Trump’s rhetoric and positions or to publicly acknowledge disagreements with Trump. Either conclusion would be a win for Kaine and his fellow Democrats. Pence has been quick to laughingly admit he has a different “style” than Trump, but he will work hard to keep any daylight on policy from emerging between he and Trump.

.. “I hope Tim makes Pence own every bit of Trump’s radical, racist, misogynist agenda.”

.. And if Pence can weather Kaine’s Trump barbs, he’ll have a chance to stabilize the Republican ticket by simply contrasting his conservative bona fides with Clinton’s more liberal agenda.

.. Then there are Kaine’s own breaks with Clinton. He personally supports the Hyde Amendment, which bans taxpayer-funded abortions, yet says he will work with Clinton to overturn it as vice president. He praised the Trans-Pacific Partnership the same week he was selected as Clinton’s running mate, then came out against it.

.. “In any debate, he tries to be whatever the audience needs him to be,” Kilgore said of Kaine, whose raised eyebrow is a signature look.

.. more than 40 percent of voters don’t know who either Pence or Kaine is,