Debate Scoring

I spent some hours yesterday doing data related to Wednesday’s Vice-Presidential debate. I’ll include some of that, but it requires only a quick summary.

Vice President Mike Pence won. Overwhelmingly.

Vice-Presidential Debate, October 7, 2020
screenshot from Fox News video

But, depending on which media you listen to, you might not know that—even if you did watch with your own eyes. The stories were about how Pence interrupted continually, and disrespectfully “mansplained” to the woman opponent. “Mansplaining” seemed to be the word that got sent to all outlets in some memo. Did you see him do that? Neither did I.

One of the things I looked at was the interruptions. You can see the chart below, if you care about the data. (I’m using this transcript from USA Today.) 

Harris enjoyed 9 uninterrupted 2-minute answers. Pence got only 4. The appearance was that he was going long, and that is why the moderator kept interrupting him. A closer look and that appears not to be so. Moderator Susan Page [a Democrat who is writing a biography on Nancy Pelosi] started interrupting him well ahead of the 2-minute mark most of that time, and would have spared him the negative appearance if she had signaled for him to wind up within 10 seconds, rather than breaking in. She almost never interrupted Harris, even though Harris went just as long or longer.

Pence did break in—but did not interrupt--during a particularly egregious lie, insisting he couldn’t let that stand. It was when Harris used the Democrat talking-point lie that President Trump had disrespected the military.

The Lies

Here is Harris’s lie—in the middle of her 2 minute and 22 second uninterrupted answer—and only after her full time does Pence breaks in to make sure he can respond.

HARRIS: And this is about a pattern of Donald Trump's, where he has referred to our men who are serving in our military, as suckers and losers. Donald Trump, who went to Arlington Cemetery, and stood above the graves of our fallen heroes and said, ‘What's in it for them?’ Because, of course, you know he only thinks about what's in it for him.

Pence has to correct that, so he insists on responding—against the refusals of the moderator:

PENCE: The slanders against President Donald Trump regarding men and women of our armed forces are absurd…. My son is a captain in the United States Marine Corps, my son in law is deployed in the United States Navy. I can assure all of you with sons and daughters serving in our military, President Donald Trump not only respects but reveres all of those who served in our armed forces, and any suggestion otherwise is ridiculous. Let me also say—

At this point the moderator stops him and lectures him on the rules. Seriously. A good moderator would have facilitated a response after such an accusation, not attempted multiple times to prevent it.

There were other egregious lies by Harris during the debate. The one that got me most upset was the answer to this question, asked directly by Pence, not the moderator, about whether a Biden administration planned to “pack the court” if Amy Coney Barrett’s nomination to the Supreme Court is approved; that is, add members of the Supreme Court in order to guarantee a partisan ruling forever forward. Harris fails to answer, but she does lecture us with this false history non-answer:

HARRIS: I'm so glad to have a little history lesson. Let's do that a little more. In 1860—

PENCE: Well, I'd like you to answer the question.

HARRIS: Mr. Vice President, I’m speaking. I’m speaking. In 1864, one of the, I think, political heroes—certainly the President, and I assume to you as well, Mr. Vice President—is Abraham Lincoln. Abraham Lincoln was up for reelection, and it was 27 days before the election, and a seat became open on the United States Supreme Court. Abraham Lincoln's party was in charge, not only in the White House, but the Senate. But honest Abe said it's not the right thing to do. The American people deserve to make the decision about who will be the next president of the United States, and then that person can select who will serve for a lifetime on the highest court of our land. And so Joe and I are very clear: the American people are voting right now. And it should be their decision about who will serve on this most important body for a lifetime.

Pence called her on her deflection, adding,

PENCE: The people deserve a straight answer. And if you haven't figured it out yet, the straight answer is they are going to pack the Supreme Court if they somehow win this election. To the many people across this country: If you cherish our Supreme Court, if you cherish the separation of powers, you need to reject the Biden-Harris ticket come November the third and reelect President Donald Trump. We will stand by the separation powers and nine seats on the Supreme Court.

But I also want to call her out on the lie, because, as we’ve already covered, all 29 times a seat has opened up in an election year, the President made the appointment without delay. Let’s take a look at that 1864 election.  When a Supreme Court seat became open in October, just weeks before the 1864 election, the Senate was out of session, with members in their home states, campaigning; there was no one to send a nomination to—this is before telephones, cars, and airplanes. But Lincoln did encourage them to campaign on that issue. He would appoint a nomination the very first day the Senate was in session—and the Senate approved the nomination that day. There was nothing about, “Oh, let’s wait, because that’s the right thing to do.” That was simply a lie, prepared ahead of time, to deflect from a question she refused to answer.

One of the ugliest moments of the debate was having Harris lecture all of us about truth.

HARRIS: Let's talk about respecting the American people. You respect the American people when you tell them the truth.

And shortly later:                                                                                                                       

HARRIS: Well, I mean, I thought we saw enough of it in last week's debate, but I think this is supposed to be a debate based on fact and truth. And the truth of the fact is, Joe Biden has been very clear. He will not raise taxes on anybody who makes less than $400,000 a year—

PENCE: He said he’s gonna appeal the Trump tax cuts—

HARRIS: Mr. Vice President I’m speaking.

PENCE: Well—

HARRIS: I’m speaking.

PENCE:—it’d be important if you said the truth. Joe Biden said twice in the debate last week that he's going to repeal the Trump tax cuts. That was tax cuts that gave the average working family $2,000 in a tax break every single year—

HARRIS: That is— That is absolutely not true.

PENCE:—Senator, that’s the math.

When Harris says something is definitely truth and fact, expect to find ubiquitous footage of her or Biden declaring the exact opposite. Truth doesn’t matter to them; it is just a word they throw around because they think maybe it appeals to some voters.

One fact checker, Jacob Palmieri, detailed her debate lies, if you’re up to investigating them all: “WOW: 24 False or Misleading Claims Made by Kamala During the Debate.” 

The Data

Here are the time stats and interruptions, if you’re interested. It was a 90-minute debate, consisting of nine 10-minute segments on different topics of the moderator’s choosing. They were each to be asked questions for which they had two uninterrupted minutes to respond, following six minutes of discussion, with length of answers determined by the moderator.

Time ended up close to equal. Harris got 35 minutes 35 seconds; Pence got 33 minutes 54 seconds. Her time was much less interrupted than his. As I said, the moderator jumped in so frequently to stop Pence that it created the appearance that he was breaking rules when he was not. There was one response where she said she would give him one minute, and she jumped in at 40 seconds; he plowed ahead through her multiple interruptions and finished right at a minute.

I can’t find an instance when she interrupted Harris head of her allotted time.

 

Who	Time	Interruptions by moderator	Interruptions by opponent	2-minute answer	Shorter response
Harris	2:05	0	0	X
Pence	2:10	0	0	X
Harris	1:11	1	0		X
Harris	0:26	0	1		X
Pence	1:21	4	1		X
Pence	1:36	2	0	X
Harris	0:53	1	2		X
Harris	0:11	0	0		X
Pence	2:09	3	0	X
Harris	2:04	0	0	X
Pence	1:17	0	1		X
Harris	1:19	0	0		X
Pence	0:59	3	1		X
Harris	1:53	0	0	X
Pence	2:09	1	1	X
Harris	2:28	3	6	X
Pence	1:08	2	2		X
Pence	2:17	3	1	X
Harris	2:14	0	0	X
Pence	1:38	2	0	X
Harris	1:22	1	1		X
Pence	0:50	3	0		X
Harris	0:14	0	0		X
Pence	2:16	2	0	X
Harris	2:02	0	1	X
Harris	2:02	0	0	X
Pence	2:28	2	0	X
Harris	2:22	0	0		X
Pence	0:36	2	0		X
Pence	1:49	2	0	X
Harris	2:21	0	0	X
Pence	1:36	0	0	X
Harris	1:11	0	1	X
Pence	0:40	0	3		X
Harris	0:47	0	0		X
Pence	0:11	0	0		X
Harris	2:17	0	0	X
Pence	2:22	2	0	X
Harris	1:55	1	1		X
Pence	1:31	3	0		X
Harris	0:29	0	0		X
Harris	0:49	0	0		X
Harris	1:58	0	0	X
Pence	1:11	0	0	X
Pence	1:40	0	0	X
Harris	1:48	0	0	X

 

It was an interesting exercise. I like to know whether my perceptions are actually borne out by data. But all things considered, VP Pence held firm when he needed to, spoke when he needed to, and despite moderator interference came out appearing to be the gentleman that he is.

Other Observations

Harris has the disadvantage of being a dislikable human being. One of the men I talk with asked, really wanting to know, whether his perception of her was sexist or real. Because men get accused of being afraid of, or prejudiced against, any assertive female; it’s a landmine. Would he have thought she was simply a strong personality, if she were a male? No, I told him. Assuredly no. She is unlikable to all humans. That’s why she couldn’t even get the support of her home state long enough to hang in for the first primary state.

Women are often at a disadvantage vocally. A higher pitch can be harder to listen to in media. This is not always true. Some women have both soothing and interesting voices. That’s true for many in the media, including Hollywood media. Ellen Degeneres. Janeane Garafalo (until she stopped saying scripted lines and started saying political garbage, so I had to stop paying attention—and apparently so did everyone else). Both Deschanel sisters (totally different, both interesting). Megyn Kelly. Heather MacDonald. Condoleeza Rice. My BFF Sherri (who is not in media or politics, but still has a noticeably pleasant voice).

But Harris is particularly disadvantaged. Her nasal, sneering condescending tone is every bit as ugly as Hillary Clinton’s stilted harangue. And both have an especially annoying cackle in place of a laugh.

On the other hand, Pence, who had his own radio show, is especially advantaged vocally. Plus, he’s naturally a nice guy. And he happens to be smart enough to bring the facts to bear—another place where Harris is especially disadvantaged, not having lived a life that values truth or facts.

There was a standard look Harris used throughout the debate. It was easy to get a screenshot.

Kamala Harris during the debate
screenshots from Fox News video

Biden did himself—and his party, and the country—a disservice by limiting himself to intersectional criteria. There are only so many black females to choose from. And all the good ones for the country are Republicans.

He chose a black woman—because she was a black woman, not for any other qualification or characteristic. And even those are questionable. She is my color (I am of Scandinavian heritage). Literally, we appear to have the same amount of melanin in our skin. I haven’t compared us in person, but that is my perception. I have the also-unearned advantage of not descending from slave owners, as she did. Yet she’s promoting reparations for racism toward people of her skin color—but not mine. I’m supposed to feel guilty for my skin color—which is the same color as hers. And I’m supposed to pay those reparations. That’s how stupid that whole racist way of thinking is.

One thing we know from this debate: Trump is as well-supported by his Vice President as any I’ve seen in my lifetime; Pence is fully capable. He doesn’t inspire energy as the top of the ticket does; but he inspires confidence in every other way. Biden appears unable to carry on a conversation without someone in his ear telling him what to say. And he chose a VP candidate whom his entire party already rejected, and who is so corrupt and uninspiring that the very idea of her having to step in when he becomes incapacitated is horrifying.

Addendum

I listened to Steve Deace on Glenn Beck Radio this morning. Both of them were saying, by their experience, they know many people who didn’t vote for Trump last time (the two of them for example, and I’ll add myself) who are voting for him this time. But do they know a single 2016 Trump voter refusing to vote for him this time? I don’t. Later I followed that with a clip from Deace’s show, talking about polling, which is his specialty. Maybe I’ll cover this another day, but the idea that we’re being lied to by the media—not a new idea to us on our side—is appearing more blatant. Here’s what he said about the unbelievable polling we’re seeing, which I think will give you hope:

If you were to consider every other metric that matters when looking at an election environment—for example, look at the voter registration numbers, and it’s not just in Pennsylvania; this is going on across the country. If you looked at things like the NBA ratings, television ratings, tanking over wokeness. And that’s the most liberal fan base in American team sports, probably other than soccer. And even they don’t want to watch this stuff. Look at the falling unemployment rate. Look at all of those metrics. If you never looked at a single poll, and you just looked at every other metric that told you what was going on in an election campaign, you would think Trump is cruising to reelection. The only thing that says differently are the polls. Draw your own conclusion from there.

The lesson: don’t let the mainstream media tell you what to believe. Look elsewhere. And think for yourself.