PAST PENCE

This was the most one-sided debate in American history. Mike Pence just wiped the floor with Kamala Harris. If you want to evaluate the debate yourself, just watch it with no sound. Look at the body language. Look at the facial expressions. Pence was calm, collected, and focused. Harris was clearly frazzled. She tried to make up for that with raw emotion, but she lacked the skill to pull that off. Most people watching this had only one question. Which of these two people is capable of being President of the United States? Only extremely liberal Democrats willing to overlook the obvious would choose Kamala Harris. Most of them were watching CNN. That is why the CNN poll has Harris winning 59% to 38%. That says more about the rapidly shrinking viewership of CNN than it does about the debate itself.

The moderator was predictably awful. She started with the ultimate soft ball question to Kamala Harris. She stated that the U.S. response to COVID 19 was an obvious failure and how would a Biden-Harris administration fix it. Kamala flailed big time. She chose to attack Donald Trump but offered no new solutions. Then Pence killed her with his response by pointing out that everything Biden is proposing was already done by the Trump administration. He then reminded people that Joe Biden has a history of plagiarism.

Harris lied, again, about Trump mocking the troops, Pence battled that down in the most effective way possible. He talked about his son and son-in-law in the military and he said that President Trump not only honored the troops, he revered them. It was impossible not to believe Pence.

When Harris repeated the Charlottesville lie about Trump supporting white supremacists Pence was ready. He pointed out that this was totally the result of selective editing by the mainstream media. He reminded people that not only did Trump condemn white supremacists at Charlottesville he had done this repeatedly.

Then Pence delivered an unexpected blow. He invited Kayla Mueller’s parents as guests. He told about how the Obama administration had a chance to save her, but they delayed approving the mission 30 days and they were too late to save her. Pence said Mueller’s parents told him if Donald Trump had been President, they believed their daughter would be still alive.  Harris had no response and was clearly shocked.

Pence also pinned Harris down about stacking the Supreme Court. She absolutely refused to answer, and he called her on it. He also responded to the idiotic request by the moderator to confirm that Trump would willingly leave office if he lost in the election. Pence pointed out that it was Democrats who refused to accept the results of the 2016 election.

But the real death blow was regarding fracking. Pence simultaneously showed that Harris was lying when she said Biden was not going to ban fracking while simultaneous pushing her into a position guaranteed to infuriate the radical Democratic base. If you doubt that, check out the following tweets from AOC this morning:

Fracking is bad, actually

still can’t get over how bad the climate change section of the debate was last night. This is the consequence of no climate questions in debates for years. The questions were childish, no follow-up questions for basic information, & there was almost no talk of solutions.

AOC never pretended that Harris did well. She predictably hated Mike Pence, but she knew who won that debate and who lost. She also knew that Pence handled the climate change question brilliantly.

Many are speculating that this debate won’t have much impact on the election. They are wrong about that too. Usually a VP debate is irrelevant. But this year is different. Few people in either party expect Biden to last 4 years. That means they know if he wins at some point Kamala Harris will become President of the United States. Few watching the debate last night with an ounce of objectivity thinks she is remotely capable of doing the job. Instead, she reminded a national audience of why she was one of the first major Democratic candidates to drop out of the race. She is a horrible debater and she showcased her lack of talent on national television.

Pence on the other hand, looked very presidential. He looks fully capable of taking over for Donald Trump. While Trump has survived COVID 19, this did make him look more mortal. That also made the VP debate more important.

Kamala Harris probably ended her political career last night. After this, any opinion of her will be past Pence.

TDM