So in the short term, we had Wednesday’s previously scheduled event where incumbent Vice President Mike Pence went against Democratic California Senator Kamala Harris in the only vice-presidential debate. As in, where you have to choose your favorite vice: socialism or theocracy?
What, you don’t like either of those? You want more choices?? Tough. This is America.
I didn’t actually see any of this live, because as opposed to last Tuesday’s debate, I had something else on my schedule. Plus which: Fuck You, CNN. Going into this, the main controversy was actually over the debate committee’s decision to protect the candidates by installing two plexiglass shields between each of them, an action possibly inspired by the South Carolina US Senate debate, where Democrat Jaime Harrison installed his own shield wall to his podium to protect against Banana Republican (read: rat-licker) Senator Lindsay Graham. I mean, talk about bringing the shade. And because this IS now the party of rat-lickers, Pence’s team objected to installing the shields for the sit-down debate with Senator Harris, although by Wednesday, they eventually relented, possibly because they realized it wasn’t important enough to make a difference.
I mean, most of the post-debate coverage didn’t mention the fly that settled on Pence’s head for about two minutes, but it was all anyone on social media could talk about. It just shows what it takes for Mike Pence to get attention. Plus which, making a big deal of coronavirus restrictions would only point out the fact that Mike Pence is (allegedly) head of the White House Coronavirus Task Force, and they haven’t actually contained the virus.
Other than that, even though moderator Susan Page got some flak for letting Pence go over his time, he didn’t interrupt nearly as much as resident rump, and it worked somewhat to the Republicans’ benefit, because letting Kamala Harris speak let observers judge whether her answers were valid. She, like Joe Biden, was asked to give a straight answer on whether the Biden-Harris Administration would engage in court-packing to counter Republican control of the Supreme Court, and like Biden, refused to do so. The difference being that Trump kept talking over both Biden and Chris Wallace when he was trying to press Biden on the issue, so that the story last week was not “Biden won’t admit he’d pack the Court”, it was “Biden told Trump, ‘Man, why don’t you just shut up?”
I mean, the Democrats ought to at least say they’re keeping the option open, cause after all, FDR didn’t need to actually appoint six more Justices to make his threat work. And if Democrats think that conservatives are so far gone that the only way they can get balance is to appoint their own people, they ought to say so. Republicans are motivated to the point of risking coronavirus over this because they know the results will shape the judicial system for decades. Democrats shouldn’t be that stupid, but they shouldn’t be afraid to show voters that they take the issue as seriously as Republicans.
Otherwise while both candidates dissembled, they both came off as normal politicians, which is not really a good thing, but if this event was normal, it only reinforces the point that the singular factor in making American politics abnormal is Donald Trump, and that while the unpopularity of both Democrats and establishment Republicans helps explain why Trump won the first time, he has had four years to demonstrate that people do not say “this is not normal” because they think that’s a GOOD thing.
Pundits usually say that the Vice President’s first job is ‘do no harm’ which for the challenger’s party really means that the running mate should do no harm to the head of the ticket. Harris certainly didn’t harm Biden, and Pence certainly didn’t harm Trump. But if the result is mostly a wash, we’re left with the fact that Pence is still defending a Trump Organization that is the primary cause of a coronavirus pandemic in America that not only wrecked the economy and weakened their voter support, it’s currently hollowing out their own membership. And everyone knows Pence can’t really do anything about that.
So in that respect, even if one is generous to Pence and calls this debate a draw, a draw does no favors for Republicans.