Today's Liberal News

Where Harris Succeeded and Pence Failed

Will this latest debate make a measurable difference in the outcome of the election? Probably not; vice-presidential debates rarely do. But something significant may have happened last night, and it involves what usually turns out to matter, if anything does, from televised debates. Namely, the parts of their personalities and identities each candidate purposefully or unintentionally conveyed.

Rev. William Barber on Voter Suppression: Republicans Know They Can’t Win If Everyone Casts a Ballot

During Wednesday’s debate, Vice President Mike Pence refused to commit to a peaceful transition of power if Biden wins the election. Instead, he referenced the Trump administration’s legal efforts to restrict mail-in voting. Rev. William Barber says the Republican Party’s voter suppression efforts ahead of the November election, aimed primarily at Black and Brown voters, amount to “surgical racism with surgical precision.

Rev. William Barber: Millions Are Struggling. So Why Do the Debates Ignore Poverty?

Rev. William Barber says the 2020 election debates have steadfastly ignored the subject of poverty, even though it affected almost half the United States population before the COVID-19 pandemic and millions more people are struggling since then. “We have to stop saying that things were well before COVID,” Barber says. “The reality is, Wall Street was well.” Barber is co-chair of the Poor People’s Campaign and president of Repairers of the Breach.

The Greatest Failure in Presidential History: Kamala Harris Slams Trump/Pence’s Handling of COVID-19

Separated by two plates of plexiglass, Vice President Mike Pence and Senator Kamala Harris met Wednesday in the only vice-presidential debate of the campaign season. Pence, who heads the White House Coronavirus Task Force, repeatedly defended the Trump administration’s handling of the crisis as the U.S. death toll from COVID-19 nears 212,000 and millions of people remain out of work.

Meet the College Senior Who Built a COVID Tracker After CDC Blocked from Tracing Trump’s Contacts

As the number of people in President Trump’s orbit who test positive for COVID-19 continues to grow, we meet a student journalist who is doing what the White House doesn’t want the CDC to do: tracing the contacts of people who may have infected or been infected by President Trump. Benjy Renton, a Middlebury College senior, helped develop a real-time tracking tool to monitor the growing number of people in President Trump’s circle who were exposed or infected with COVID-19.

Activist Who Lost Father to COVID Says Trump’s White House Photo Op Was Like “Sci-Fi Horror Film”

As the highest-profile coronavirus patient in the world returns to the White House while still infectious and a danger to others, we speak with activist Kristin Urquiza, whose father died from COVID-19 earlier this year. She says President Trump’s minimizing of the disease is a slap in the face to families who have lost loved ones. “I was appalled,” says Urquiza.

Without Trump Onstage, There Is No Chaos

In perhaps the most chaotic week of a chaotic presidency, what was most surprising about tonight’s vice-presidential debate was how oddly normal it felt.Five days ago, the president of the United States was hospitalized after contracting a virus that has killed more than 200,000 Americans. There were legitimate questions about whether Donald Trump could execute the powers of his office.

Mike Pence put contempt for truth and his opponent on display, but Kamala Harris was up to the job

Mike Pence sure showed Donald Trump how it’s done during Wednesday night’s vice presidential debate. Pence put on his smug, condescending, holier-than-thou pants and interrupted nonstop. He didn’t yell and spray spittle like Trump. He just calmly, doggedly ignored time limits, ignored moderator Susan Page’s pathetic attempts to hold him to his time, and ignored the question he’d been asked.

Pence takes hard pass on explaining Trump’s nonexistent preexisting conditions ‘plan’

Mike Pence was asked point blank at Tuesday night’s vice presidential debate to explain Donald Trump’s plan to protect health care coverage for people with preexisting conditions. And despite Pence’s earlier claim that such a plan exists, he ran for the hills.

“You mentioned earlier, Vice President Pence, that the president was committed to maintaining protections for people with preexisting conditions,” said moderator Susan Page of USA Today.

One of the unsung heroes of the night: The fly on Mike Pence’s head

Wednesday night’s vice presidential debate came to a close with a lot less heavy breathing and yelling than last week’s presidential showdown. But Mike Pence does retain the sociopathic-seeming ability to just lie through his teeth about virtually anything and everything, and Sen. Kamala Harris had to do a lot of history lessoning and in-debate fact-checking.

The Man Who Pretended Not to Notice

“It’s a visual medium.” So often said the late Roger Ailes about television. He said it to justify hiring women who looked a certain way and requiring them to dress a certain way. Ailes’s abuse of the saying does not make it any less true. The most striking thing about the Pence-Harris debate was nothing that was said. It was what we saw.We saw a vice president with a pale face, his mouth cankered by a cold sore, his eyes pink.