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Mike Pence/Kamala Harris 2020 US Vice Presidential Debate - Discussion thread
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Debate starts ~90 minutes from the time of this posting.
Info from The Washington Post:
Location: The University of Utah in Salt Lake City.
Moderator: Susan Page, Washington bureau chief, USA Today
Details: The debate will be 90 minutes long and have no commercial breaks. It will be divided into nine segments of 10 minutes each that the moderator gets to choose.
It's genuinely sad that the Green New Deal and Paris Climate Accord are being treated as boogeymen. Pence keeps hitting those, and Harris is treating them like they're radioactive.
I said this with the last one, but they kind of are. I honestly don't know about "Middle America," but if it's what everybody thinks it is, they're scared of a Democrat that is too progressive. This, combined with the party trying to keep the Sanders voters, has lead to the party simultaneously embracing more progressive policies, and subsequently abandoning them when poked at all. This is why I was legitimately surprised when Biden announced picking up Harris as his running mate.
This also creates a spot the Republicans think they can poke at, but, also as I said about the last debate, all the Democrats need to do is convince the centrists that they aren't hyper-progressive. The more liberal and leftist contingents aren't taken for granted, necessarily, but know the game is up, and they're basically disposable, but they don't have a better option. Having Harris on, and working with more progressive people just sweetens the bitter medicine a bit.
It’s important to separate campaign posturing and rhetoric from substance and material reality. In practice, nobody has been abandoned yet. Associations have been elided, but abandonment happens at the level of policy, not politics. And it happens when people are actually in power and making policies. Currently all they’re doing is trying to reassure mushy centrists that they’re not whatever bogeyman they’re painted out as.
We should avoid this theater criticism approach where we try to analyze every turn of phrase and wink to see where anyone’s sympathies really are. Political change isn’t about the personal virtues of any one politician. The politicians themselves are just administrative workhorses. The actual work happens through organizing to push them while they’re in power.
I hadn't considered that idea.
Well said, and great point.
Democrats are walking a moderate tight rope because the GOP has put up a campaign barraging Americans with nonsense that if Dems win the election they’re going to begin communist rule and start by executing Christians. Then they take away your McDonald’s , trucks, and guns. Middle America hates this.
We’re in a new red scare and democrats, environmentalists, and intellectuals are the new boogeymen looking to steal your white picket fence middle class lives. It’s like we’re facing down the problems of the 50s and 60s all over again.
Pence literally told Harris to "stop playing politics with people's lives".
Also both candidates outright dodged the question about presidential disability.
Yeah - Harris’ non-answer was disappointing. She gave a life story answer instead of anything substantial.
Otherwise I like what she’s saying.
I was disappointed by the question dodging. I kind of get it because you don't want to admit any fault in your candidates health, but I think you could find a way to pivot to it being an advantage that you work closely. Although I suppose then you have the issue of the right saying Biden is a puppet of the radical left.
There was this, and one other question that would have been a slam dunk, and Harris dodged them for what I thought was no reason at all. Especially when the answers can be as straightforward as:
Presidential disability:
"While I don't want to assume the worst, it's something we've discussed and have planned for, and will deal with if it happens."
Policy Differences:
"While it's true I have sought in the past to enact more climate change measures than Joe is willing to move forward with at this time, we've reached a compromise on policy that we feel furthers both of our goals acceptably."
Surely I'm missing something. It can't be this easy, can it?
I was thinking she'd work towards an answer. I was wrong.
Well at least I can understand them this time...
I do wish the moderator would be more forceful in cutting Pence off because he clearly can’t count to 60.
It is, but they both agreed to the rules, but it seems like only one side followed them.
Well they actually have to count down, which everyone knows is significantly harder.
That’s why they give them that massive clock counting down!
For the first time, I'm actually interested to see a VP debate, given the fact that we have two presidential candidates in their mid to late 70s during a pandemic. Hoping this doesn't devolve into what malarkey the last debate was.
Edit: After the first segment or two, Pence seems competent, which is mildly scary. He's calm and measured, even though I interpret his words as honeyed BS. Seems adept at avoiding a question, and it doesn't seem like the moderator is trying to hold him (or Harris) to answer the question asked. Harris doesn't across all that well to me, personally. I don't feel like her arguments are coming across as intended.
It makes you wonder how people like Pence that seem, “normal”, can work with Trump on the regular without cracking and giving up the game.
Fucking moderate. Damn.
Pence talking over Harris for 30+ seconds at the beginning of her time. He also is going over his time way more than she is. The moderator is doing a crappy job. Softly saying "Mr Vice President" doesn't do shit.
She needs to literally use a disappointed mother voice and say, “I need you to stop talking now or I’ll take the time off your future answers.”
When he gets cut off he goes back to the last question to get some unaddressable personal attacks out.
He literally said he wasn’t going to address the second question so he could stay on the first one instead.
He interrupts the “2 uninterrupted minutes to speak”.
He’s only barely more civil than Trump. I’m sure since they’re desperate they are I afraid to stoop to the level Trump has paved the way for.
I'm guessing Page can't cut mics. That would be the easiest way to stop them from going over, and at this point I have to assume she would have already done so if she could.
I honestly wish the mics were cut automatically. She's so bad at this. She just thanked him five times in a row before he shut up.
I was thinking two things: A big red doomsday timer and auto-mute. If a candidate can't make a solid point in two minutes, they deserve whatever judgement comes of it, and they have time to plan their speech out in real time, with the knowledge of when to bring it home.
I think part of it is simply that it's hard to track time.
Pence isn't even acting like he's trying to answer the question anymore. A decent amount of what he says strike me as blatant lies, but I don't have the sources (or time/energy) to try digging up a reliable source that clearly states the contrary.
Really frustrating to see the moderator gingerly thank him for going 30 seconds over each time he talks. I think he's pretty clearly 'winning' the debate. Harris isn't getting her points through, partly because she's trying to respond to Pence whereas he largely steps over what she says.
Yeah, Pence is a calm, cool, collected liar. It's actually a bit scary considering that he's next in line and Trump's health is still not in the clear yet. At least with Trump his incompetence unequivocally shines through, but Pence is able to be outright terrible yet look great doing it, and that's deeply unsettling.
Y’all have allowed Donald Trump to erode your expectations to shocking depths. Pence merely being able to string coherent sentences together without going red faced and spitting isn’t that “scary.” It’s baseline for not being a deranged lunatic.
You need to set the bar higher than merely not being a deranged lunatic. Like the fact that he’s lying nonstop and absolutely nothing he says has any relationship to objective reality.
I agree, but I should qualify that part of why it's so scary to me is that I come from a very conservative Christian family and background. My parents are lifelong conservative Christians, but they despise Trump. 2016 was probably the first time they haven't voted for a Republican presidential candidate in their lives because he was the name on the ballot. I'm incredibly grateful that they are able to see Trump for exactly who he is.
But they don't see Pence for who he is. Not at all. They love him. That's what scares me.
Even with his demonically red eye and the flies circling around his face? What more omens do they need? Does a bush need to catch on fire and talk to them?
I wish it would.
This whole ‘God wants Trump’ thing is insane. There’s even a movie about it... and it’s awful!
Completely agreed; I was afraid this was the case. He's a stereotypical good-ole-boy politician in my eyes. It's going to appeal to a fairly large number of people, I feel.
He also kept Harris on her heels in a sense. I thought she did a good job going blow for blow, and she can't exactly duck out and go "I'm going to ignore that and answer the question."
Since both parties agreed to her knowing the topics beforehand, it would also make sense to, as a tactic, avoid those topics.
So, overall this was disappointing. It wasn't the bedlam that was the last debate, but that's way too low a bar to hold anything to.
Not only did they regularly go over their time and fail to respect the moderator's redirects, but they also dodged a large number of questions. Pence in particular began several of his answers by outright announcing he was going to address something different, which just feels like an outright subversion of the entire format. I really wish Page had held their feet to the fire on their answers.
Furthermore, there needs to be some sort of factchecking force present in the debate itself. It doesn't do any good to discuss things if people can just outright lie.
It also felt overall... insubstantial? Hollow? I can't put my finger on what I mean exactly, but they discussed what should have been big, significant issues but it often felt like almost nothing was said. I was looking forward to the issue of racial justice being brought up and it felt like a mere blip on the radar. Same with the discussion of the peaceful transition of power. Much of this came from the fact that they just outright dodged so many questions, but even when they did answer it was unsatisfying in a way I can't quite articulate.
Why is their a fly in the hair of Pence
Because he's full of shit
Here's a good shot of our hero
That was so fun. Harris did a great job holding back her smirks.
Inspiring a generation: https://store.joebiden.com/truth-over-flies-fly-swatter/ (already sold out, sorry)
I want Chris Wallace back but with the ability to mute people. Ugh.
Pence looks kind of nervous to me