Wednesday night is 2020’s one and only vice presidential debate, and let’s start with the main fact about it: this debate should be canceled. Mike Pence was in repeated contact with Donald Trump in the days leading up to Trump’s diagnosis (or the public announcement of it), he could still be in an incubation period for COVID-19, and his every action is showing that he cannot be trusted to keep others safe.
At the debate, Pence and Sen. Kamala Harris, the Democratic vice presidential nominee, will be seated 12 feet apart (Pence’s people pushed for them to be closer) and separated by teeny tiny plexiglass (check out the picture below). The debate begins at 9 PM ET and is scheduled to last 90 minutes. It’s set to be moderated by USA Today’s Susan Page, who last month was revealed to have hosted a Girls' Night party for the Trump administration's Seema Verma.
In 2016, Pence’s debate strategy was to present himself as calm, smug, and condescending while lying outrageously. Nothing in his record since offers reason to think he’ll do any differently in 2020.
Harris, for her part, had an inconsistent history at Democratic primary debates in 2019, with some debate-defining standout moments but at other times faltering a bit. She faces multiple challenges Wednesday: tied for first among them overcoming Pence’s lying and overcoming the ways she, as a woman of color, is tone-policed and likely to be portrayed as angry or mean. Beyond that, she has to hold Trump to account on coronavirus, without going too far on his personal condition in case he takes a turn for the worse, and be ready to answer questions about both her own record and positions and Biden’s record and positions. No big deal, right?
But the White House COVID-19 outbreak is the key backdrop to this entire debate. Columbia University virologist Dr. Angela Rasmussen laid out why CDC guidelines say Pence should be in quarantine until at least October 13—even though the CDC, which has been under so much political pressure lately, has given Pence its blessing to debate.
And check out this ludicrously inadequate amount of plexiglass. Even a significant plexiglass barrier couldn’t do much about aerosols circulating through the air, but this is a mockery of the idea that it could do anything.
We also need to hear a lot about the ventilation in this room if we’re going to believe that the Commission on Presidential Debates and their medical consultants over at the Cleveland Clinic are taking coronavirus concerns seriously, rather than being pushed around by the Trump-Pence campaign.
But the first point is also the last: this debate should be canceled. Team Trump cannot be relied on to behave responsibly about coronavirus, and Pence has showed that repeatedly in his refusal to quarantine and his resistance to measures like greater distance and plexiglass between himself and Harris. You can watch this debate-that-shouldn’t-happen on most networks that show news or stream it here.