OK, so. I couldn't help myself and did a count of the overruns.
Keep in mind this is based on our initial quick and dirty transcript BUT my initial count:
Pence's overruns totaled somewhere around 748 words.
Harris's: 390 words.
To be clear, this is based on me going over our transcript and counting the instances where Susan Page tried to interrupt and the speakers kept going. It DOESN'T include anything after Page said "Ok 15 seconds" or something like that.
Again: this is based on very quickly established criteria (established by me) but it at least gives a first stab at showing an unevenness that showed up on stage tonight.
I do not know if I will be doing a full post on this tomorrow, but to me what I saw gender-wise: 1) Harris asked for time, while Pence took it. 2) Harris seemed to get a little more comfortable overrunning as time went on. 3) She smiled more than him...which...
maybe i was just watching for, but we know from a study of Clinton-Trump debates, people react VERY DIFFERENTLY to a woman smiling on a debate stage than a man.npr.org/2020/10/03/919…
One additional point of course:
Do gender dynamics on a debate stage affect people's lives directly? No. Policies they talked about like climate change and abortion and healthcare have a real impact on the lives of women (and men) watching.
BUT.
I could say this a million times. Cis men (overwhelllmingly white) have dominated debate stages for forever, so those men have set the norms.
Tonight we saw Pence totally comfortable steamrolling. Harris did so less often.
She is working on a playing field not created by people who look like her, and it's impossible to unspool all the ways that might play out.
(I am very eager to see more partisan reversals, btw -- GOP woman and Dem man, or even two women)
Anyway to the extent this affects who gets elected -- and debates do affect some voters' choices -- well...it ends up affecting policy.
OK one more thing -- I stressed gender here but i should add (and should have stressed more) that separating race AND gender from each other is impossible here. Race also plays an incalculable role.
OK seriously bed.
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Now i do have an obnoxious quibble and it’s that wealth and income are not the same thing but honestly.
I get it I get it that it’s expensive to live in SF or NY or DC. But framing it as “actually this family is middle class” seems less truthful than “you have to be making a crazy high income to support a family and plan for the future in these cities.”
Anyway I talk a lot about gender norms among politicians but seriously the fact that women are getting their careers (and paychecks) obliterated by this virus/pandemic/recession is the underappreciated story of the year.
And to be clear this recession is definitely harder on POC (and esp WOC) than whites.
Talking to the trump supporters outside Walter Reed. A good count is hard because supporter:press ratio has to be near 1:1.
Masking is....relatively prevalent? Maybe half of supporters fully masked? But again: glancing around a crazy amount of people are press so hard to get A+ estimates.
Dude just walked up in a grim reaper costume. This....may not go over well?
Warren out with a plan today to help part-time workers -- would require weeks-ahead scheduling, >11 hours between shifts (for workers at firms above 15 workers).
Which gets at a needle Democrats are trying to thread this year: 1/
Yes, the job market as a whole is relatively healthy. Low unemployment, albeit with so-so wage growth....worker *shortages* in some places (maybe not "healthy" but good for workers). BUT.
Job *quality* is a thing dem candidates are getting at with their policies. 2/
For example: check out this (awesome) new indicator, the Job Quality Index. Jobs are substantially lower-quality than they were before Great Recession: qz.com/1752676/the-jo…