If you did not watch debate night for the VP’s this time you missed something. The debate was a better articulation of the Harris-Biden position than Joe was able to present. The interaction was more professional than the first Presidential debate. There did seem to be a clear winner.
It may be worth looking at the video if you are on the fence. Here are some highlights from the debate:
The virus
Q: What the Biden administration would have done differently than Trump to address the COVID-19 pandemic. Harris responded:
“The American people have witnessed what is the greatest failure of any presidential administration in the history of our country… And here are the facts: 210,000 dead people in our country in just the last several months, over 7 million people who have contracted this disease, 1 in 5 businesses closed. We are looking at frontline workers treated like sacrificial workers. We are looking at 30 million people who in the last several months had to file for unemployment.”
“Our plan is about what we need to do around a national strategy, for contact tracing, for testing, for administration of a vaccine, and make sure it’s free…”
Pence defended the administration’s record saying:
“I want the American people to know that from the very first day, President Donald Trump has put the health of America first… Before there were more than five cases in the United States … all people who had returned from China … President Donald Trump did what no other American had ever done. That was, he suspended all travel from China, the second-largest economy in the world…. Joe Biden opposed that decision.”
“He said it was xenophobic and hysterical. I can tell you, having led the White House coronavirus task force that decision alone by President Trump gave us invaluable time to set up the greatest mobilization since World War II … I believe it saved hundreds of thousands of American lives.”
With regard to the Harris-Biden plan Pence said the Trump administration was already doing much of what it recommends. He also took a shot at a Biden scandal that effectively ended his 1988 presidential bid. He said.
“The reality is, when you look at the Biden plan, it looks an awful lot like what President Trump and I and our task force have been doing every step of the way … It looks a little bit like plagiarism, something Joe Biden knows a little bit about.”
In September 1987, Biden came in for withering criticism for borrowing lines from a speech by then-British Labor Party leader Neil Kinnock without attribution, knocking him out of the race when it was subsequently revealed to be part of a larger pattern of borrowing lines from other politicians without credit.
Q: Asked about the race to develop a vaccine, Harris said:
“If the public health professionals, if Dr. Fauci, if the doctors tell us that we should take it, I’ll be the first in line to take it. Absolutely … But if Donald Trump tells us that we should take it, I’m not taking it.”
Pence responded:
“The fact that you continue to undermine public confidence in a vaccine, if a vaccine emerges during the Trump administration, I think, is unconscionable … Senator, I just ask you, stop playing politics with people’s lives. The reality is, we will have a vaccine by the end of this year, and it will continue to save countless American lives.”
That pretty much summarizes the first segment of debate night for the VP’s.
