From a progressive perspective, last night presented ample opportunities for both optimism and revulsion.
It is a fascinating symptom of the age: We were all told by the media (and even by me, guilty as charged) to prepare for World War Eleventy when Mike Pence and Kamala Harris met for the only vice presidential debate of the campaign. She’s gonna, he’s gonna, oh it’s gonna be, and we all leaned into our televisions and saw… a debate. Not a gross national embarrassment like we saw last week, not a herd of mooing cattle desperately trying to squeeze three extra seconds out of 13 overstuffed events during the primaries. Last night was two people, one moderator, and the general tone of voice expected of an NPR broadcaster. Did it get rude and chippy at times? Of course; Mike Pence was there, along with a fly who picked up nearly a million Twitter followers overnight. The fly was less annoying than the vice president by yards. The VP debate was weird, to be sure, especially in the absence of the anticipated fireworks. Pence told all of the same lies Donald Trump tells — about Biden, about COVID vs. the flu, about China, the environment, abortion, jobs, Russia and the impeachment, health care, taxes, abortion — but did so in complete sentences that, strangely enough, made them even less palatable. Coherent dishonesty can be far more disturbing that incoherent dishonesty. Yes, there was plenty to be sickened by, especially on the fly’s side of the occasion. While Pence did not garble and howl over his opponent and the moderator, he pointedly refused to adhere to the agreed-upon time format of the event. By the end of the night, Harris had thrown so much shade at Pence’s drearily unstoppable drone that she could have been a window treatments associate at Bed Bath & Beyond. Nothing stopped him; moderator Susan Page was a sandcastle wall against the slow onrushing of the evening tide. From a progressive perspective, last night presented ample opportunities for both optimism and disappointment. Kamala Harris, the groundbreaking first Black/South Asian VP nominee in U.
