As you are almost certainly aware the Vice Presidential debate was last night. I watched the whole thing and live tweeted it on my various social media accounts. It was a much better debate then the presidential one that may be only on in this election cycle.
Unlike the first debate the candidates did not interrupt each other that much and the moderator wasn't as biased. Susan Page was in no way unbiased but she was less so than Chris Wallace. She mostly interrupted Mike Pence and let Kamala Harris talk but she did ask a few tough questions to Harris and interrupted her a few times. I don't think she was a good moderator but the difference between her and Wallace was night and day.
The debate was a lot more substantive then the last one as well. We actually heard a lot about policy. Well, the questions were asked about policy, not all the questions were answered. The biggest criticism I have for both candidates was how evasive they were in their answers. Many times questions were left either downplayed or totally unanswered.
Harris was the worst for this by far. She did not answer questions about stacking the Supreme Court, what the relationship between America and China is and didn't even consider asking the question about Biden's health. Of those the SCOTUS question is one that is going to hurt her and Joe Biden. People deserve to know if they are going to do it or not and she just absolutely refused to answer the question.
Pence was guilty of this as well. He didn't answer a question about if he had a conversation about replacing Trump if he was incapacitated, which was a pretty dumb question if I'm honest. More annoying was his total punt on the question of pre existing conditions. Given that President Trump just did an executive order saying that he would protect pre existing condition health coverage and said he would refuse to sign any health care bill that wouldn't protect them, it was a pretty dumb mistake.
Otherwise, this was Pence's debate. He was masterful and a huge contrast to President Trump. He was calm yet forceful and showed compassion. He was even nice to Harris when he mentioned that it was historic that she was the first woman of color as a VP candidate.
But more importantly he called out both the media and Kamala Harris on their B.S. Harris said so many lies and unlike Trump in the last debate, he didn't let them pass. He debunked, finally, the "fine people hoax" where the media lied about what Trump said about the Charlottesville rally. He also hit Harris hard on her and Biden's flip flopping on the Green New Deal, SCOTUS packing and the "suckers and losers" military hoax. He even fought back against the idea of systemic racism, which was long overdue.
Harris on the other hand had a terrible performance. Far too many times was she evasive and not honest about what she was saying. She didn't answer critical questions, but more importantly she was lying through her teeth. It was the greatest hits of the worst lies the media and the Democratic Party have ever told about President Trump. She knows things like the "fine people hoax" and the "suckers and losers" hoax are fake but she focused on them anyways.
Other problem for Harris was her attitude. She was constantly making faces and had the air of someone who thinks she's right without ever considering she might be wrong. Plus she was knocked off of her game more than a couple of times where she wasn't really able to collect her thoughts fast enough. This is really saying something but I thought Biden was quicker on his feet in the 1st debate then Harris was in this one.
Plus I think that Harris is totally unlikable. Her complaints of "i'm speaking" made her seem rude and annoying and her voice is just so grating. There was very little warmth to her and she just seemed like a whiner.
The debate performance was predictable. I've watched just about every debate since 2015 and I have to say that Pence was good in the previous debate against Tim Kaine. He didn't do quite as good as he did in that debate but I was quite confident that he would do well.
On the other side, I have always thought Harris did terrible in this cycle of debates. Though some people thought she did well in the first debate I thought she came off as terrible and that she launched the "racist" attack against Joe Biden. I'm not one to ever defend Biden but even I thought that her attacks on Biden during that debate were unfair. And of course her performance against Tulsi Gabbard was so bad that she ended her campaign...
So I would say that Mike Pence won this debate almost totally. It wasn't a perfect performance by him, he should have answered the question about pre existing conditions, but not only was his performance good, Harris did terrible. It's such a good performance that I think President Trump feels comfortable skipping the next two debates, especially after the nonsense about them being "virtual".
Will it have an effect? I think it will. People know that Harris is the actual top of the ticket and she did not come off well as far as I am concerned. And Pence brought some much needed maturity to the Trump/Pence ticket. It probably won't have much of an effect on polling, since the polls have so little relation to reality these days, but I think Pence won quite a few votes last night.
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