Among millennials who may decide the 2020 presidential election, the most discussed thing about Wednesday night’s vice presidential debate was neither candidates’ ideas or debate skills.
Among the young, internet chatter was about an insect – a fly that landed for two minutes atop Vice President Mike Pence’s white hair. An omen, lucky or unlucky? A Chinese or Silicon Valley bugging drone?
To those watching the very different personalities of California Sen. Kamala Harris and Pence, an old saying came to mind: “You catch more flies with honey than with vinegar.”
Harris seemed sour, acidic and corrosive. Pence was sweet, healing and pleasant. By roughly two to one, viewers preferred Honey Pence over Vinegar Harris.
Pence won the debate, not by a knockout but on points, by pointing out that Harris tended to deal with tough questions by evasion and dissimulation. Harris needs a “defibrillator” to stop her from telling so many fibs – about the Biden-Harris embrace of socialist Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s Green New Deal, designed to kill capitalism; about their promise to end fossil fuel use; and about Biden’s pledge to repeal President Donald Trump’s tax cuts for rich and poor alike.
Following the previous week’s debacle moderated by Fox’s Never-Trumper Chris Wallace, Veepstakes moderator Susan Page of USA Today did better. Page is liberal but professional. She also has a lucrative book contract to write House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s biography, which would be more profitable if Democrats gain rather than lose power.
Page deserves a grade of “B” for her moderating. She repeatedly cut Pence off harshly, while rarely imposing limits on Harris. Page also usually insisted that Pence respond first, which gave Harris the advantage of having “the last word.”
Kamala – whose India-born mother named her after the Hindu goddess of wealth and whose African genes are mingled with DNA from one of Jamaica’s biggest slave owners – unleashed a verbal swarm of deceptive accusations, making faces or interrupting when Pence was speaking and utilizing other oratorical gimmicks.
My favorite Kamala Harris trick was inspired by Hillary Clinton, who won young female votes by snapping at her male Senate opponent during a debate: “Don’t patronize me!”
Harris attempted this trick by repeatedly saying to Pence, with fake feminist outrage: “I will not be lectured [by you] …”
But Mike Pence had not “lectured” her. He was unfailingly polite and kind. Harris’ unfair vinegar tactic merely showed that little she said should be believed.
Also untrustworthy: Harris blamed Trump for riots and economic hardships caused by leftist Democratic governors and mayors. She blamed Trump, not Chinese Communists, for COVID. In an Orwellian re-write of history, she blamed riots on “white supremacists,” not Marxist-founded, Biden-funding Antifa and Black Lives Matter. Harris, remember, bailed out rioters, attacked police, but told an alleged rapist “I’m proud of you.”
Kamala Harris dropped out of the Democratic primaries after her support fell to only 2%. She is unlikeable and untrusted, even by Democrats happy that she votes to the left even of socialist Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders.
Harris, however, is not ideological. Sanders has always been honestly far-left, but Kamala will adopt whatever poses, right or left, bring her power – as being loony left now does in the Democratic Party. Like Biden, she is amoral, corrupt, greedy and grasping.
Kamala Harris, as the Rev. Jesse Jackson once described Bill Clinton, in her deepest self is shamelessly unprincipled – in Jackson’s words, “nothing but an appetite” for power and ego. A vote for deteriorating Biden will likely make Harris, who “slept her way to the top” in California politics, America’s president.
During the debate, Pence offered sure-footed values and solid facts, much as President Ronald Reagan did. In his youth, Reagan had been a New Deal Democrat. “I didn’t leave the Democratic Party,” Reagan famously said, “the party left me.”
Mike Pence was born and raised an Irish-American Roman Catholic Democrat who in 1980 voted for Jimmy Carter. In college, he became a born-again Protestant evangelical, politically inspired by Reagan’s “common-sense conservatism.” Eight years later, as a talk host on Indiana radio, Pence described himself as “Rush Limbaugh on decaf,” a Tea Party conservative.
During Wednesday’s debate, millions of moderate Americans found Pence’s honest, decent decaf with honey was their cup of tea.
Lowell Ponte is a former Reader’s Digest Roving Editor. His articles have appeared in the Wall Street Journal, the New York Times and other major publications. His latest paper co-authored with Craig R. Smith, “The Secret War,” shows how to rethink several areas of investment to protect and grow your savings against little-known economic threats. For a free, postpaid copy, call toll-free 800-630-1492.
