VP Debate Rundown And Open Thread

Yesterday was the 2020 vice presidential debate between Kamala Harris and Mike Pence. I know this is a bit late to the game, but I thought I’d put a few thoughts down and open the forum for further discussion.

I agree with everyone who has said that the debate was meaningful to any woman who has ever been talked over by a man. Pence was not as bad as Trump last week, but he was still bad enough that at one point the moderator asked him whether his team had briefed him on the rules. He was bad.

I also think we shouldn’t underestimate the importance of having women on the stage in moments like this—and not just a woman, a woman with Jamaican and Indian immigrant parents. The more debates we have that look like this, the more debates between two white men will stick out. Children who grow up watching debates like this will become adults who expect to see diversity on the stage.

Also, after everything we’ve been through, watching Harris’s passion, confidence, and clear mastery of the material was both soothing and much needed. She refilled my joy.

Before I open the thread for discussion, I want to touch on something that struck me as very, very odd. When the moderator asked Trump point blank whether, if Roe was overturned, he would ban abortion in Indiana if that were in his power, he … dodged. Pence has never been particularly secretive about the fact that his goal is to ban abortion. So why suddenly become cagey, when his object seems to be almost within reach?

For god’s sake, when he was governor of Indiana, Pence signed a law requiring women who have miscarriages to bury or cremate the remains. This is the level of absurdity he is willing to go to in his efforts to ban abortion, and yet, when given the question on a national stage, he declined to answer.

Someone noted that if Roe were overturned, the Republican Party would lose one of their most important wedge issues. Look, I grew up in a conservative evangelical household. We definitely felt that we had no choice but to vote Republican because of abortion. This is one reason many voters in 2016 voted for Trump, despite him being an appalling, horrible person: because no matter what objectively terrible things someone might be doing, nothing is worse than murdering hundreds of thousands of babies.

If Roe is overturned and abortion rights are thrown to the states, the stakes might change. I’m not dismissing the problems throwing Roe to the states would cause. We already live in a world where women who struggle with addiction can be charged with murder if they are miscarry, and all of this would only get worse. But it’s nonetheless true that the abortion issue has pinned a specific constituency to the Republican Party.

Was Pence worried about the Republican Party losing a wedge issue? Is he getting cold feet about actually overturning Roe? While I can’t say for sure, I tend to think not. Pence, in my view, is a true ideologue. He actually wants to ban abortion. He isn’t an opportunist merely using abortion as a wedge issue.

So, then, why didn’t he state outright that he wants to ban abortion?

The answer, I think, banning abortion is incredibly unpopular. I suspect that Pence was concerned about answering for that reason. This is no excuse, though. Pence should be honest with the American people about what he’s trying to do. Backtracking at this moment is also disingenuous, because Pence hasn’t exactly been secretive about his intentions here in the past. Hiding that from the American people because it’s unpopular is not okay. Whatever happened to being okay with taking an unpopular position if that is what is right?

Someone playing devil’s advocate (which I hate) might note that Harris refused to answer the question about court packing. I don’t see that as at all the same, both because Harris has not committed to court packing in the past (so it’s not like she’s dodging a former position), and because Harris hasn’t spent the past multiple decades trying to pack the court, as Pence has trying to ban abortion.

Oh boy oh boy, I have so many court packing thoughts. So many thoughts. We’ll save that for another time, though.

So. What debate thoughts do you have?