VP debates don’t matter. Except…
If that’s true, I shudder to think how Garner would have described the value of a vice presidential debate.
If we’re being honest, though, Garner was mostly right — colorful language aside. Being vice president means always being relegated to second fiddle, always the person who shows up when the president can’t, forever waiting for your chance to win the big seat.
And for all the hooplah around the single VP debate we get every four years, the truth is that there’s very, very little evidence that who is judged to have won (or lost) changes any statistically significant number of voters’ minds.
Which brings me to Wednesday night’s scheduled debate between Vice President Mike Pence and California Sen. Kamala Harris. And the exception to every rule.
See, while VPs — and even more so VP debates — don’t usually matter, the truth is that we are in very unusual times.
For one, we have the two oldest presidential nominees in American history; Donald Trump is 74, former Vice President Joe Biden is 77. Trump was the oldest person ever elected to a first term as president in 2016. Biden would break that record if he wins next month.
Then there is the Covid-19 factor. The disease has sickened more than 7 million Americans and killed more than 210,000. Trump, whose age and weight make him vulnerable to complications from the virus, was hospitalized for four days after being diagnosed with coronavirus last Thursday. He is now back in the White House.
While Biden has taken far more active precautions against contracting Covid-19 — he regularly wears a mask in public and limits large gatherings to support him — he has openly suggested that he views himself and his potential presidency as a “bridge” to a younger generation of Democratic politicians like Harris. (Biden has resisted answering whether he would serve only a single term if elected but, at age 81 on election day 2024, it’s not an unreasonable notion.)
All of which, when you look at in the aggregate, means that Pence and Harris — and their debate on Wednesday night — are worth considerably more attention than your average vice presidents.
While a VP or a VP candidate always has the possibility of winding up in the Oval Office one day, the circumstances surrounding this race make clear that both Pence and Harris face the very real chance of that happening sometime over the next four-ish years.
The Point: Wednesday’s debate matters. Maybe not to how people vote in November, but certainly to who the two parties will be represented by over the coming decade.
