I truly thought Kamala would have a big edge on Pence today, but I was totally wrong...
Pence calmly wiped the floor with Kamala and politely embarrassed her while he was at it. That was by far his best performance I’ve ever seen. I had my expectations way way low because he’s always been “Bland Pence” to me.
For the first time, I actually thought he could be presidential after this debate.
Regarding the high death rate in the US, Pence wasn’t able to tell the truth about the higher COVID death rate in the US. When that question came up, I immediately had the same thought: OBESITY, DIABETES, LACK OF PRECAUTIONS. If Pence says Obesity, he’ll be accused of “fat-shaming.”
And many people didn’t notice that when Kamala was talking about economic policy, she did a slick maneuver by blaming Trump for the current economy, when in fact, it’s due to COVID.
Pence missed the opportunity to counter many of her lies though.
Pence effectively turned Kamala’s allegations of the Trump Admin failing on COVID back on her by citing accomplishments of the Admin and then saying Kamala was essentially sabotaging the efforts of the Admin for political gain. That played well.
Susan Paige, the moderator, though she’s writing a book on Nasty Pelosi and is a liberal, was fair for the most part.
The good thing about Pence’s calmness was that he won’t be accused by the sexist feminists for “bullying a female.” His tone was perfect in that regard. Meanwhile she got angry several times and fired up, so she was perceived as flustered.
On another note a Japanese friend was was watching on her smartphone with Japanese real-time translation and on the same screen were all the tweets by the Japanese who were watching.
It was amazing how so many of the Japanese figured out the truth about Kamala without even having much knowledge of her yet. Most Japanese know nothing about her, so this was really the first introduction for them. They said she had a fake smile, they said she was lying, etc. – when I also knew she was lying. And when she said the lie about how she’s a “black woman,” (she’s at most 25% black) - one J-guy tweeted, “I prefer White people!”
Others said “Gambate Trump!” - e.g. “Go Trump, we’re rooting for you.”
And “Democrats are like Chinese”
Many Japanese now love Trump these days (mostly because of his China and NK stance winning their hearts). He has bravado that no one has in their normally meek, “don’t rock the boat” society. So they see him as a liberating personality from their cultural perspective. They say “Trump should be our president!”
Paige was only fair in the sense of cutting both of them off when they went over. the questions were clearly written to give Kamala an edge. however it didn’t work as Mike didn’t take the bait and Kamala was unable to capitalize. She did not seem prepared except with the little windup speech “don’t lecture me about law enforcement.” which IMO sounded flat.
A) It has the best economy and healthcare in the world, so it has many more vulnerable residents over age 80 than most other nations.
B) It is overcounting deaths (the virus has killed ~6% of its victims on its own). The other virus-attributed deaths had on average more than 2 co-morbidities.
He’s being accused of the Republican party still feels they can interrupt women when they speak.