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Pence Vs Harris

Venom said:
I think Harris sounds good in some settings like a Senate hearing.

But in a back and forth firefight she seems a bit clumsy and inefficient. Kamala Harris actually spoke more than Pence did, despite the interruptions and Pence going off topic. I recall more things Pence said than what Harris said in the 20 minutes I sat and listened to it.
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I think I figured out the problem here.
 
pgwenthold said:
The question is not "Should we end fracking?"
but "What do we need to do to end fracking?"
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Well nothing. Other countries will do the work for us.

APA To Try Renewable Methane In Australia's Gas Pipelines

The Australian Renewable Energy Agency has announced $1.1 million
of funding for a power-to-gas demonstration plant to be built at APA Group’s
Wallumbilla gas hub in Queensland. The project will demonstrate the viability
of producing renewable methane from solar power.
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If I guessed the right process with 30% efficiency and industrial solar cost
of around thirty cents per kilowatt hour then a thousand cubic for of natural
gas produced this way will cost $12.50 thereabouts.
 
jerrywayne said:
So concludes the Washington Examiner:

"Supporters of Kamala Harris were quick to launch accusations of sexism and “mansplaining” against Mike Pence after the vice presidential debate on Wednesday. This is because Harris clearly lost the debate. And it wasn't because of some fabricated sexism from Pence, but because Harris is just a terrible debater and an awful candidate -- something that became clear during the Democratic primaries."
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I doesn't matter what right-wing Trump mouthpiece media say, what matters is what the ordinary public thought, and they thought Harris clearly won that debate, and by a large margin.

"More Americans said Sen. Kamala Harris did the best job in the vice presidential debate Wednesday night, according to a CNN Instant Poll of registered voters who watched. About 6 in 10 (59%) said Harris won, while 38% said Vice President Mike Pence had the better night.
Those results roughly matched voters' expectations heading into the debate. In interviews conducted before the debate, 61% of those same voters said they expected Harris to win, 36% thought Pence would.

There was a stark gender gap in the results, with women saying Harris did the best job in the debate by a 69% to 30% margin. Men, meanwhile, split about evenly between Harris (48%) and Pence (46%).
Harris did improve her favorability rating among those who watched, according to the poll, while for Pence, the debate was a wash. In pre-debate interviews, 56% said they had a positive view of Harris -- that rose to 63% after the debate. For Pence, his favorability stood at 41% in both pre- and post-debate interviews.
​

https://edition.cnn.com/2020/10/07/...rris-vice-presidential-debate-poll/index.html
 
Checkmite said:
Unfortunately it's required of women under the national spotlight, as to be less-inhibited and more energetic is to be "emotional" in a negatively-connotated way, which is a worse look. Basically, there is no possible "great look" for women.
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Invisible Woman!

 
Venom said:
I think Harris sounds good in some settings like a Senate hearing.

But in a back and forth firefight she seems a bit clumsy and inefficient. Kamala Harris actually spoke more than Pence did, despite the interruptions and Pence going off topic. I recall more things Pence said than what Harris said in the 20 minutes I sat and listened to it.
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What makes you think that a Senate hearing is not a back and forth firestorm? The ones I’ve seen of Harris have been quite fierce with witnesses from the Trump administration aggressively defendig themselves and not deferring to Harris’s status as a a Senator. Yet she is known to be a powerful debater in those and in campaign settings. She mopped the floor with many of her opponents in the primary debates.

Truth is, however, we all typically see what we hope to see in these debate settings.

And also each side rolls out their own spin doctors after each debate to convince the undecided voters that their own candidates won the debate by a landslide.
 
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Caveat: I didn't watch the whole thing. From what I did see: I wish she had challenged Pence far more over factual errors. Like when Pence said the average family saw a $2,000 rise in income after tax cuts, she said that was not true, but she didn't (as far as I saw) really say why. As far as I can tell, Pence wasn't wrong, but that relief was *temporary* and would be phased down to $767 by 2027. "Yes, and for families the savings shrink every year, while corporate tax cuts extend indefinitely. Meanwhile Biden's proposals will save middle class families much more than this shrinking sum." On climate change, did she call out Pence's claim that we don't know what was causing it? Even if it's only partly human-caused, wouldn't it be all the more important for humanity to change its behavior?

At times she seemed to be more interested in reassuring progressives than she was in demolishing Trump talking points. Maybe that's appropriate. I don't know what the polls say. I feel like she needed to appeal to older voters more because that's a real problem area for Trump. Pence said Trump banned travel from China but he didn't. He said Trump tackled the trade deficit with China but in fact it's gotten larger. Pence was there to deliver a stump speech and I kept thinking it would be trivial to demolish all of his half-truths but - from what I saw - she did not appear to be doing that. I found it frustrating that she didn't act more like a hard-ass prosecutor cross-examining a hostile witness. You work with the format you have, I guess. She may have done this at some point; I didn't see/hear the whole thing.
 
smartcooky said:
I doesn't matter what right-wing Trump mouthpiece media say, what matters is what the ordinary public thought, and they thought Harris clearly won that debate, and by a large margin.
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CNN is far more credible than Fox IMO but they spin stuff too and it doesn't surprise me that a poll (of its viewers?) indicates a preference for Kamala. It's getting harder to find neutral parties on the Trump issue on account of he's so objectively awful that the fairest news organizations on the planet can hardly cover the man without depicting him as a lying, incoherent, self-centered crybaby.

I'm happy to believe that the debate changed no one's mind but not as happy as I'd be if Kamala had systematically torn Pence to shreds. IMO that was more important than selling Biden's vision of America. Some people say Biden can't win just by being not-Trump but I'm not so sure that's true.
 
Mumbles said:
Hm? Oh, I already voted, so my opinion doesn't matter much here.

But, I got to watch Harris immediately call Dolt 45 a failure (he is), and treat Pence like a man-baby (he is), and in the end, the polls won't change, but I enjoyed it.
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To be honest, I was really hoping that Harris was less restrained. I wanted her to force Pence to try and coherently defend Trump's coronavirus handling and his behaviour since his diagnosis. To me, getting Trump's people to defend him should be a good way to expose how lacking in independence they are and how much they have to make up, on the fly (no pun intended), some bizarre rationalization for his behaviour and then sit back as Trump's own rationalizations contradict those of his lackeys ("Lackey: "He was clearly joking about buying Greenland!"; Trump: "I'm completely serious about buying Greenland!"; Lackey: "Trump was right! There are experiments using UV inside a person for viruses! He's a genius!"; Trump: "I was being sarcastic [sic]!").

I found it a disturbing and frankly extremely sad commentary on the US, that people assume (correctly or otherwise) that Kamala was pulling her punches because she is worried about the optics of a black woman being assertive, passionate or aggressive in a debate.

But I think the strategy makes sense in what you say - "The polls won't change." As it is, Biden-Harris are way ahead in the polls, and it is Trump-Pence who need to shake things up in the debates. By holding off in the debates like a defensive boxer, and making the opponent do the chasing, they don't need to risk losing the lead they have, whereas Trump and Pence are the ones trying to make their ever more desperate swings connect.
 
angrysoba said:
I found it a disturbing and frankly extremely sad commentary on the US, that people assume (correctly or otherwise) that Kamala was pulling her punches because she is worried about the optics of a black woman being assertive, passionate or aggressive in a debate.
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And she was right to be worried about that. How many people watched Obama give 8 years worth of reasonable, measured speeches, but still ranted about him being "the most divisive President" they'd ever seen?
 
Horatius said:
And she was right to be worried about that. How many people watched Obama give 8 years worth of reasonable, measured speeches, but still ranted about him being "the most divisive President" they'd ever seen?
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How many? I don't know. He won his elections by a landslide in each case, though, so clearly not enough to make a difference.
 
angrysoba said:
Trump's people... have to make up, on the fly (no pun intended), some bizarre rationalization for his behaviour and then sit back as Trump's own rationalizations contradict those of his lackeys
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My favorite one of those was about a week after his election, or maybe after his inauguration, when he had already had a series of trumpism and somebody tried excusing them by saying they were caused by fatigue and he'd start acting like a civilized, not-hopped-up-on-drugs, adult human after getting some rest. They didn't even need to wait for him to contradict them on that one; he had already just spent his campaign blathering about his own endless "stamina" and that fatigue was something other people were subject to. Whoever came up with that excuse for him had still been thinking of what kinds of excuses you might try for a civilized, not-hopped-up-on-drugs, adult, human politician, not adjusting for the whole new level of dysfunctionality that had just been ushered in.
 
angrysoba said:
I found it a disturbing and frankly extremely sad commentary on the US, that people assume (correctly or otherwise) that Kamala was pulling her punches because she is worried about the optics of a black woman being assertive, passionate or aggressive in a debate.

But I think the strategy makes sense in what you say - "The polls won't change." As it is, Biden-Harris are way ahead in the polls, and it is Trump-Pence who need to shake things up in the debates. By holding off in the debates like a defensive boxer, and making the opponent do the chasing, they don't need to risk losing the lead they have, whereas Trump and Pence are the ones trying to make their ever more desperate swings connect.
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Actually, your analogy with a boxing match is a pretty good one.

A fighter who knows he is well ahead on points would be ill-advised to start swinging for the knock-out blow. All he has to do is keep his opponent at arm's length so he doesn't get an opportunity to land a big one, while continuing to rack up scoring hits of his own.
 
angrysoba said:
To be honest, I was really hoping that Harris was less restrained.
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She should have been like Pete has been on Fox News.

Pete: Given the President has called servicemen suckers and losers...
Host: You know he has denied saying that
Pete: Yeah, but he's lying, and everyone knows he's lying.
Host: How can you say that?
Pete: Because in the same statement when he denied saying that, he also claimed he never called John McCain a loser. Anyone with a twitter account can look it up and see that he did exactly that. Are you saying he lied on one part and not in the other? If you think he's telling the truth, I have a bridge to sell you....
Host: {drooling pile of goo}
 
More Pete:

Host: How can she address the fact that she used to support medicare for all and now she doesn't?
Pete: Oh, there are always games like that where people try to find distance between running mates. I mean, one could ask why an evangelical christian supports a guy who did it with a porn star, or how he now supports an immigration policy that he once called unconstitutional.
Host: duhhhhhhhhhhh........
 
Minoosh said:
CNN is far more credible than Fox IMO but they spin stuff too and it doesn't surprise me that a poll (of its viewers?) indicates a preference for Kamala. It's getting harder to find neutral parties on the Trump issue on account of he's so objectively awful that the fairest news organizations on the planet can hardly cover the man without depicting him as a lying, incoherent, self-centered crybaby. ....
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Responsible news organizations report the facts. If the fact is that someone is, as you put it, "a lying, incoherent, self-centered crybaby" who is also an ignorant vicious crook, that's what they will report. It's not their job to be neutral. What could that even mean? It's not their job to find a way to make someone look good despite the facts. Trump has never been convicted of murder, for example, but there's no necessity to work that into every story about him.

Often people call it "bias" when the facts don't align with their preconceptions. That's especially the case with the Trumpers.
 
pgwenthold said:
More Pete:

Host: How can she address the fact that she used to support medicare for all and now she doesn't?
Pete: Oh, there are always games like that where people try to find distance between running mates. I mean, one could ask why an evangelical christian supports a guy who did it with a porn star, or how he now supports an immigration policy that he once called unconstitutional.
Host: duhhhhhhhhhhh........
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Yeah, honestly, I didn't think Harris answered those types of questions well, such as with the Green New Deal. These should be boiler-plate answers:

"Of course, Biden and I have some differences otherwise we would not have run against each other in the primary, but unlike some people around here such as the president and vice-president, I accept the results of elections and understand that Biden was the first choice of the people, so I support his policies."

I mean, a few little zingers should have been easy to put in there, right? She can do that with a smile on her face so she doesn't scare all the white folks.
 
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