In the last few months, the Trump-Pence team has held a plethora of press conferences and “pool sprays” taking hostile liberal questions, while Joe Biden’s campaign calls a “lid” on the press many days, and has “lidded” Kamala Harris from the national press since she was picked in August.
So it’s a little perverse that when Harris finally showed up for big-league questioning at the vice presidential debate, moderator Susan Page of USA Today gave her little-league questioning. Allow me to list the most frustrating and/or feckless Page inquiries, in order:
1. “President Trump has several times refused to commit himself to a peaceful transfer of power after the election. If your ticket wins and President Trump refuses to accept a peaceful transfer of power...What would happen next?”
There is no more useless softball. It’s a DNC question because it assumes Trump will lose. Trump declines to answer because it builds the media narrative that he’s losing. They asked this in 2016, and it was useless, because he won.
2. The vomitous softball on the tragic shooting of Breonna Taylor. Her boyfriend shot first at the cops, saying he didn't hear them knock and say they were police. “They say they were acting in self-defense. None of them have been indicted in connection with her death. Senator Harris, in the case of Breonna Taylor, was justice done?”
Page is implying “justice” means you indict cops when no jury would convict them – because they were acting in self-defense.
But notice what Page failed to ask. She didn’t ask if “justice is done” when stores are destroyed by rioting and looting. She didn’t ask about Harris praising Jacob Blake when he was accused of sexual assault. She didn’t ask about Harris begging for donations for a “Freedom Fund” in Minnesota that bailed out a number of people charged with violent crimes. She didn’t ask if “justice was done” in the tragic shootings of police officers.
3. Climate change? Again? Page asked Pence “Do you believe as the scientific community has concluded, that man-made climate change has made wildfires bigger, hotter, and more deadly and have made hurricanes wetter, slower and more damaging?”
Liberals always use this beat-your-wife framing: Are you with the “scientific community”? Or are you for Denial and Ignorance?
The toughest question Page gave Harris was to note her ticket can’t take a consistent position on climate. “What exactly would be the stance of a Biden-Harris administration toward the Green New Deal?”
4. Page asked Pence if Amy Comey Barrett’s confirmation “would cement the Court's conservative majority and make it likely to more abortion restrictions, even to overturning the landmark Roe v. Wade ruling." Warning: liberals always dress up their favorite rulings as “landmarks.” Big conservative wins are rarely a “landmark.”
Page continued: "Access to abortion would then be up to the states...If Roe v. Wade is overturned, what would you want Indiana to do? Would you want your home state to ban all abortions?”
That’s a fair question. But then she asked the same question to Harris, with a slight twist: “Would you want your home state to enact no restrictions on access to abortion?” Isn’t that roughly where California is now?
Page didn’t ask Harris about Biden the "devout Catholic” pushing for taxpayer-funded abortions. She didn’t ask Harris about her politicized lawsuit against David Daleiden for “eavesdropping” in his hidden-camera probe of Planned Parenthood.
Harris only faced tough questions from Mike Pence. For example, he pressed about her refusal to take a stand against court-packing. We need more balanced moderators. We’re not getting fair and equally accountable debates.
