The debate has been held as the sole vice president of the 2020 US election campaign and dusted off.
Camala Harris and Mike Pence gathered on the discussion stage, separating not only from their political positions and political plans, but also with a small glass barrier that was installed at the last moment in the wake of Donald Trump’s infection with the Corona virus.
Here are the main points.
Nobody won the debate, but nobody lost, either
The vice president job is simple, but not always easy – don’t steal the spotlight.
The tricky part is you can attract light for the wrong reasons. It was Harris and Pence’s job to avoid it at all costs in this debate.
They both showed exactly why they were chosen as pals in the competition by avoiding doing anything that would cause reporters to question the President and Democratic nominee Joe Biden tomorrow morning.
It’s fair to say that both campaigns will withdraw as if they had won.
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But in pursuit of the political tightrope, Harris and Pence did nothing to deepen our understanding of their vision for America, something that was also overshadowed by the wild first presidential debate.
Opportunities to reignite public debate about political differences over China, climate change and the coronavirus pandemic have been used to attack the opposition, but in a way that is in line with campaign points we heard months ago.
The most obvious thing was not a slip or a killer streak, but a fly that landed on a penny hair and stayed there for two minutes and four seconds.
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Interruptions are over … for the most part
Moderator, Susan Page of USA Today, issued a stern warning before launching the first question: Be civil.
“These are turbulent times, but we can and will have a respectful exchange on the major issues facing our nation,” she said.
Opinion polls showed that Americans of all political trends were left feeling “alarmed” and “frustrated” after last week’s discussion, which was so full of cross-talk and petty aspects that it was hard to hear a message.
American media tracked more than 70 boycotts from Trump and 20 counties from Biden.
Both candidates came out on stage tonight with strategies to arm civility.
Pence, best known for being a quiet and smooth politician, poured his generosity into thanking the broker and praising his opponent whenever possible.
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But he has placed his loyalty to the president’s lines above his civilian behavior.
Harris tried to have this Trump debate, and so there were a few moments – 10 According to US media tracking outages – where Pence jumped to defend the President.
In one case, Harris responded with a smile, a nod, and a practicing line that resonated with American women on social media: “I’m talking.”
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There were other parts of the discussion that touched on issues of race and gender. Harris said that Briona Taylor was not getting justice. Pence renewed his opposition to abortion.
But a portrait of a woman of color gently fighting back a candidate trying to appear as traditional as possible is doing more to steer the conversation around these points of identity than politics.
It was another stressful night for the moderator
The day after the first discussion, Fox News journalist Chris Wallace thought about what had happened, telling the New York Times that he “never dreamed of veering off course as it did.”
There was a lot of pressure on Paige to keep the two candidates in line, but Pence and Harris were happily compliant on that front.
But in appearing to be conceding a few things to the supervisor on the issue of interruptions, the couple were able to get away with something much harder for the police mediator – answering the questions.
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To the frustration of viewers, the two candidates used the age-old tactic of turning a question a journalist had asked into a point about something else entirely, and at times it wasn’t particularly accurate.
He was asked about the Supreme Court and abortion.
Follow-up questions are seldom asked on the page, and thanks to the lack of time it is often moved to another topic rather than pressuring candidates to tackle the issue at hand.
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It might have been for a different reason this time, but critics say once again that the candidates have once again controlled the procedures of the debate, not the mediator.
The most telling answers were those that were not given
Both candidates have not provided a direct answer to two separate but very important questions in the 2020 elections.
For Harris, it was a question of whether the Democratic Party would try to increase the number of Supreme Court justices if Trump’s nominee, Amy Connie Barrett, is confirmed before Election Day.
“And did you know that of the 50 people President Trump appointed to the Court of Appeals for life appointments, there was no black one. That’s what they were doing.”
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Pence did not miss an opportunity to keep her coals in the fire: “I want the record to reflect that she never answered the question. The American people want to know.”
But the vice president himself will draw attention not to answering what he would do if Trump loses the election, and refuses to accept the result.
The Supreme Court and the peaceful transfer of power are two of the issues that currently occupy the minds of anxious American voters.
Neither Pence nor Harris did much to calm the nerves of the people requesting their vote.
There will (likely) be another debate
As Paige wrapped up the evening, she gave the clearest hint yet about whether the remaining two presidential debates would take place.
But any talk of Trump and Biden participating in the theater in eight days must come with a massive asterisk.
Much depends on how the president continues to recover from COVID-19, with experts concerned he is now just entering a time when his condition can be “reversed”.
However, more depends on the Biden campaign’s desire to place their 77-year-old candidate in the same room, on the same stage, as someone who tested positive for coronavirus just 14 days ago (and he wasn’t exactly the same). Next with information about prognosis).
Minutes after the Vice President’s discussion ended, the US media was reporting that the PBC was moving unilaterally (that is, without the approval of the Trump / Biden campaigns) to make next week’s debate “remote.”
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The next debate, the second among the two presidential contenders, was scheduled to question undecided voters.
But the future of this debate is similar to the general impression that American critics and voters took from tonight’s Vice President contest: Lots of questions, but few new answers.
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