Sen. Kamala Harris and Vice President Mike Pence face off in a debate on Oct. 7, 2020. AP Picture/Morry Gash, Pool

Vice presidential candidates Kamala Harris and Mike Pence sat far aside and separated by Plexiglass for the one 2020 vice presidential debate, held in Utah on Oct. 7. Their exchanges had been extra civil than the presidential debate per week earlier, however Pence – and Harris to a lesser diploma – prevented robust questions from USA As we speak’s Susan Web page concerning the Supreme Court docket, COVID-19 response, succession and the peaceable switch of energy. Our consultants had been every assigned one candidate to look at and touch upon.

Cynthia Younger

Pennsylvania State College

On Harris

Harris wanted to assault the Trump administration’s report and current herself as able to getting into Joe Biden’s footwear ought to the necessity come up. On these counts, I imagine she acquitted herself properly, attacking Trump and defending Biden in equal measure. Harris argued that Trump bungled the COVID-19 response, began and misplaced a commerce conflict with China and destroyed U.S. relations with overseas leaders. She even managed to affiliate Pence with these failures, regardless of Pence’s four-year lengthy battle to stay largely above the fray.

Although Harris was aggressive and smirked a bit an excessive amount of, she was by no means uncivil or smug, successfully assembly Pence’s tendency to speak over her, interrupt her and exceed his allotted time with robust statements like “I’m speaking,” which successfully shut Pence down.

When requested whether or not Biden supposed to “pack the Supreme Court docket” by growing the variety of justices, Harris responded that the Trump administration had already packed the federal courts of appeals with out appointing a single Black individual. At one other second, she asserted that overseas coverage was “about relationships,” suggesting to voters that the president typically appears to not perceive learn how to work with folks, not to mention different world leaders. Harris turned a query about well being transparency into one on tax transparency, reminding voters that Trump paid as little as $750 in earnings tax in 2017.

All through, I felt Harris appeared heat, relatable and ready, repeatedly reminding those that Biden had recognized private tragedy and will empathize with the struggling of tens of millions of displaced employees, whose jobs and family members had disappeared throughout this pandemic. She additionally appealed to “American Dream” mythology by asserting that she had damaged a number of glass ceilings as a Black girl of South Asian descent. In a very memorable trade, Harris critiqued a Kentucky grand jury‘s failure to carry expenses in opposition to the cops who killed Breonna Taylor. In response, Pence questioned her legislation and order credentials, however Harris shortly shot again, “I can’t sit right here and be lectured by the vice chairman about what it means to implement the legal guidelines of our nation,” as a result of cops know that “dangerous cops are dangerous for good cops.”

Although he largely held his personal, Pence fell prey to dangerous luck when a fly landed on his head and remained there for about two minutes. Grist for limitless memes and Twitter quips, the fly’s look and Pence’s unflinching response strengthened his fame as robotic. The fly’s look was one other surprising improvement in an October that, for the Trump Administration, has been filled with unwelcome surprises.

Austin Sarat

Amherst School

On Pence

The talk was one thing of a back-to-the-future occasion with each candidates drawing on a playbook made well-known within the 1988 marketing campaign.

Like that 12 months’s Democratic presidential candidate, Michael Dukakis, who famously stated that the marketing campaign was about competence not ideology, Harris went after what she described because the Trump Administration’s incompetence, claiming its dealing with of the coronavirus pandemic was the “best failure of any presidential administration in American historical past.”

In response, Pence trumpeted the administration’s report, insisting a number of occasions in opposition to all of the proof that it was trustworthy to information and science. Speaking about local weather change, he stated, we’re “following the science.” He referred to as Harris “probably the most liberal senator in Congress” – a declare primarily based on a 2019 GovTrack rating of her voting report.

In so doing he borrowed a technique of George H.W. Bush’s 1988 marketing campaign and insisted that Biden and Harris symbolize simply one other, out-of-the-mainstream iteration of the Democrats tax, spend and regulate agenda. Pence repeated greater than as soon as Biden’s promise that he would repeal the Trump tax cuts. He stated a Biden administration would enact the so-called Inexperienced New Deal – although Biden doesn’t assist it. And he claimed that Biden would upend American prosperity and give up to China.

Like Bush’s use of the so referred to as Willy Horton advert to discredit Dukakis, Pence instructed the story of the tragic demise of Kayla Mueller, an American human rights activist and humanitarian employee who was taken captive in August 2013 in Syria and later killed by the Islamic State Group. He laid her demise on the door step of the Obama-Biden Administration and claimed that she can be alive right now if Donald Trump had been president when she was captured.

All through the night, Pence offered a softer model of President Trump’s debate type, ignoring time limitations, speaking over the moderator, interrupting Harris, and demanding she reply his questions. He exuded a peaceful confidence within the righteousness of the administration’s insurance policies, providing Trump supporters reassurance that if in the future he had been to turn into president its agenda would stay intact.

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The authors don’t work for, seek the advice of, personal shares in or obtain funding from any firm or group that might profit from this text, and have disclosed no related affiliations past their tutorial appointment.