The exchange underscores the absurdity of this election: Clinton is just about the only Democrat who could lose to Trump, and Trump is certainly the only GOP candidate who could lose to Clinton. If there’s such a thing as a “basket of deplorables,” it’s this Clinton-Trump race.

Clinton’s troubling collapse, which her campaign eventually said was the result of previously diagnosed pneumonia, might now force voters to consider what would happen if a President Clinton or Trump were to become incapacitated while in office: the vice president would of course take over. With Clinton and Trump nearly tied for most unfavorable presidential candidate ever, disaffected voters might like nothing more than a Pence or Kaine administration.

Admittedly, Pence is not all that conservative. He has a long track record of jettisoning his principles at the first signs of resistance—like he did with Indiana’s insipid religious liberty bill, Obamacare’s Medicaid expansion, and a shameful Common Core bait-and-switch. But like so much else this election season, his virtues lie in what he is not. Pence is not a lifelong Democrat. He is not an intemperate, thin-skinned carnival barker who regularly says incoherent things and lashes out at the media. He’s just a milquetoast politician of modest accomplishment who will not start a nuclear war with China. And that counts for something.