President Trump and Vice President Mike Pence took very different debate approaches but had one strategy in common: seeing how far to the left the Democratic ticket of Joe Biden and Kamala Harris was willing to go.
Pence regularly hammered Harris, a California Democrat who was rated the most liberal senator, on the Green New Deal. Trump tried to draw Biden out on defunding the police and other “law and order” themes. Both Republicans sought to get their opponents to admit they would “pack” the Supreme Court, a proposal with little support in a recent Washington Examiner/YouGov poll.
The strategy was to present the Democrats as far more radical, and much less centrist, than advertised. Failing that, Pence, and especially Trump, hoped to drive a wedge between Biden and his most left-wing supporters. In 2016, some Bernie Sanders voters stayed home, voted for third-party candidates like Green Party nominee Jill Stein, or even cast ballots for Trump.
So far, Biden and Harris have mostly responded by rejecting their opponents’ efforts to tie them to the most liberal elements of the Democratic Party. The former vice president has disavowed defunding the police and has stepped up criticism of the more violent racial justice protests. His running mate denied that Biden would back liberal policies that she herself supported when she ran for president in the Democratic primaries.
“You were the first Senate co-sponsor of the Green New Deal,” Pence told Harris Wednesday night. “And while Joe Biden denied the Green New Deal, Susan, thank you for pointing out, the Green New Deal is on their campaign website. And as USA Today said, it’s essentially the same plan as you co-sponsored with AOC when she submitted it in the Senate.”
Harris went on to deny Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez multiple times. Every single reference to the Green New Deal was made by either the vice president or debate moderator Susan Page; Harris never uttered the phrase. The senator vowed Biden would not raise taxes on anyone making less than $400,000 a year, despite a pledge to repeal the Trump tax cuts fully.
“I will repeat, and the American people know, that Joe Biden will not ban fracking,” Harris said, with an eye on Pennsylvania’s 20 electoral votes. “That is a fact. That is a fact.”
“Fracking is bad, actually,” tweeted Ocasio-Cortez, the New York Democrat who has become popular on the Left.
“When the queen of the Green New Deal, AOC, thumps you on Twitter just after Vice President Pence calls you out for being all over the map on the issue of fracking, it was just not a good night for Harris,” said Republican strategist Ford O’Connell. “It was the type of moment that sows distrust with the voters who will decide this election.”
Trump and Pence have tried especially hard to pin their rivals down on expanding the Supreme Court. “If Judge Amy Coney Barrett is confirmed to the Supreme Court of the United States, are you and Joe Biden, if somehow you win this election, going to pack the Supreme Court to get your way?” Pence asked Harris directly. When she began talking about Abraham Lincoln, he shot back, “Once again, you gave a nonanswer. Joe Biden gave a nonanswer.”
“Harris was annoyed, condescending, smirking, and evasive,” said Republican strategist Bradley Blakeman. “She is not ready to be the leader of the free world.”
“Are you going to pack the court?” Trump asked in his debate with Biden. “He doesn’t want to answer the question.” Biden demurred and has continued to do so since, saying in the battleground state of Arizona on Thursday, “You’ll know my opinion on court-packing when the election is over.”
Trump succeeded in getting Biden to distance himself from top progressives more forcefully. “The fact of the matter is, I beat Bernie Sanders,” the Democratic nominee said. “I am the Democratic Party right now,” Biden said when Trump brought up the Biden-Sanders “unity” plan. “The platform of the Democratic Party is what, I, in fact, approved of.”
“You just lost the Left,” Trump responded. “You just lost the Left. You agreed with Bernie Sanders on a plan.”
Some Republicans fear this will not work as well as it did against Hillary Clinton four years ago, instead reassuring people that Biden is a centrist. “You want them to own socialism,” said a GOP consultant. “So far, they haven’t.”
Others hope the Democrats are being too clever by half. “It is just not logically compatible for someone to say they like the Green New Deal as much as Harris does and be so strongly in favor of green energy in every sector of America’s economy, and yet still also be in favor of fracking,” O’Connell said. “These two positions are flat-out incompatible, and that was clear to anyone watching or listening.”
