Wall Street Journal article about the debate between Harris and Pence.

Wall Street Journal

OPINION

POTOMAC WATCH

Sanders Haunts Biden-Harris

Pence corners Harris on Biden’s embrace of the Vermont senator’s radical agenda.

By Kimberley A. Strassel

October 8, 2020

The Plexiglas at Wednesday’s vice-presidential debate made for some strange reflections. Squint hard enough, and you might even have seen the ghostly image of the evening’s third, silent participant: Bernie Sanders.

Debates rarely produce clear winners, though they often produce clear wins. Vice President Mike Pence’s victory of the evening was successfully exposing for viewers who is really running today’s Democratic Party. And give him credit. Just three weeks from an election, not one member of the Beltway media, including the debate moderators, has been willing to challenge Joe Biden on his leftward lurch. It was left to Mr. Pence to take the Bernie wraps off.

Kamala Harris had her good moments, but it was these exchanges on Mr. Biden’s agenda that were memorable for her nonanswers. And no surprise, since The Socialist Who Must Not Be Named poses the true liability for the Harris-Biden ticket. Mr. Biden rolled over for many of Mr. Sanders’s more radical policy ideas (and picked a lefty running mate) to keep the party peace. To broadcast this agenda now would risk scaring off middle-of-the-road Americans. But to disavow it risks alienating the progressive base Mr. Biden needs to turn out.

Which is why every Pence exposé of Biden plans left Ms. Harris responding with half-truths or nonanswers. Nowhere was this more on display than the vice president’s deep dive into the Biden energy plan, which has become a problem for a Democrat in search of blue-collars workers in states like Pennsylvania. “The both of you repeatedly committed to abolishing fossil fuel and banning fracking,” stated Mr. Pence. “That’s not true,” retorted Ms. Harris. But it is true, and Mr. Pence was able to provide the citations. “You yourself said on multiple occasions when you were running for president that you would ban fracking. Joe Biden looked his supporter in the eye and pointed and said: ‘I guarantee, I guarantee, that we will abolish fossil fuels.’ ” This is a clip any novice YouTuber can easily find.

Mr. Pence also pointed out that Ms. Harris is an original Senate co-sponsor of the Green New Deal, a Bernie-promoted $16 trillion regulatory straitjacket that would (among other things) get rid of coal, oil, natural gas, gas-powered cars and potentially cheeseburgers. That’s a campaign killer, even as it’s a litmus test for the left. Mr. Biden’s answer has been to claim disingenuously that the Green New Deal is the “crucial framework” for his own plan, which is nonetheless somehow “different.”

Even moderator Susan Page didn’t let that one go, and asked Ms. Harris to explain how her campaign can simultaneously tout the Green New Deal on its website and disavow it. Ms. Harris’s response was to talk about taxes, and wildfires, then the Senate Environment Committee. Mr. Pence referred to the Green New Deal 11 times; Ms. Harris not once—and you can bet smart voters noticed.

Mr. Pence called out the $4 trillion in tax hikes Mr. Biden would impose to pay for Bernie-style programs like free public-college tuition. Ms. Harris made the mistake of promising Mr. Biden would repeal the Trump tax cuts “on day one” while also promising he would “not raise taxes on anybody who makes less than $400,000 a year”—two statements that cannot both be true. “Is he only going to repeal part of the Trump tax cuts?” Mr. Pence quipped. The vice president also called out Mr. Biden’s timid history on fighting terrorism. Ms. Harris’s response? To complain Mr. Trump wasn’t nice to soldiers.

The stand-out moment of the debate (as even liberal commentators were forced to acknowledge) was Ms. Harris’s refusal—yet again—to come clean on packing the Supreme Court. Average Americans reject this; progressives demand it; the Biden campaign says it will explain its own view only after the election. Three times Mr. Pence challenged Ms. Harris to say whether a President Biden would add “seats to the Supreme Court, which has had nine seats for 150 years, if you don’t get your way.” Three times Ms. Harris dodged, along the way telling a canned but irrelevant story about Abraham Lincoln.

More than 20 million Americans watched Wednesday’s debate, and many were likely getting the facts about the Bernie-Biden agenda for the first time. Such is today’s media. The big question is whether Donald Trump was also taking notes. Granted, the president has a very different style than Mr. Pence. At the same time, the formula the vice president laid out is as simple as is it effective: Point out the Biden-Harris radicalism; contrast it to a positive Trump agenda.

The media intends to spend the next 25 days making every moment about Mr. Trump. While it goes against his instincts, Mr. Trump needs to make every one of those moments instead about Mr. Biden and Ms. Harris—their plans, their inconsistencies, their refusal to answer questions. Mr. Pence proved on Wednesday that this can done. But it will be up to the Trump campaign alone to do it.

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Appeared in the October 9, 2020, print edition.