Debate Night in America: Pence, Harris Square Off in High-Stakes Battle

A battle of partisan sniping led off Wednesday’s vice presidential debate, with Sen. Kamala Harris insisting that “210,000 dead bodies” of Americans killed in the Covid-19 pandemic are an indictment of the Trump administration, and Vice President Mike Pence insisting that Joe Biden’s plan largely plagiarizes the one he developed as head of the White House’s coronavirus task force.

“As of today they still don’t have a plan,” Harris said. “This administration has forfeited their right to re-election based on this.”

Pence boasted that Trump suspended all travel from China in the beginning days of the global crisis, and recalled that “Joe Biden opposed that decision. He said it was xenophobic and hysterical.”

Harris sought to identify with Americans she said had been “standing in a food line” earlier this year “because of the ineptitude of an administration that was unwilling to speak the truth to the American people. … The American people have had to sacrifice far too much because of the incompetence of this administration.”

Harris and Pence debated Wednesday in America’s most hotly watched political proxy war since Geraldine Ferraro was the Democrats’ vice presidential nominee in 1984.

The Trump administration’s No. 2 and the woman who wants his job squared off at the University of Utah in Salt Lake City, the only time they will meet before Election Day.

The 61-year-old Pence and 55-year-old Harris, a California Democrat, are significantly younger than President Donald Trump, 74, and former Vice President Joe Biden, 77. Should Biden become president, he would be older on Inauguration Day than Ronald Reagan was after eight years in office.

Add that Trump has spent most of the past week fighting off a Covid-19 infection—he claimed in a video message filmed Wednesday, maskless and outdoors, that he feels no remaining symptoms—and the potential impact of being a heartbeat away from serving in the Oval Office has seldom been as acute.

The last time a sitting president died in office, other than the Kennedy assassination, was Franklin Roosevelt during his fourth term, 75 years ago.

The 25th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution dictates what would happen if Trump or Biden should not live out his term as president: Either Pence or Harris would take over.

Susan Page, Washington bureau chief of USA TODAY, moderated Wednesday’s debate. Page has covered 10 presidential campaigns and interviewed the past nine U.S. presidents.

A “small and socially distant audience” was present, Page said. Pence and Harris were separated by a 12-foot buffer zone, seated at desks with a pair of Plexiglas sheets between them. All attendees were required to wear masks. Neither Page nor the candidates wore them.

Frank Fahrenkopf, the chairman of the Commission on Presidential Debates, which sponsored Wednesday night’s debate, announced from the stage that anyone refusing to wear a mask would be ejected.

“We beg you please do not take off your mask,” he said, according to a pool reporter.

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