By Makini Brice
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The U.S. vice presidential debate on Wednesday night will pitch Kamala Harris, the first woman of color on a major ticket, against a conservative, white male vice president – and some Americans, especially women, are gearing up to watch the fight.
Activist groups, college associations and individuals around the country have organized mostly online “watch parties” as Harris debates U.S. Vice President Mike Pence, who is running with President Donald Trump in the Nov. 3 election.
“I really can tell that Kamala is ready,” said Rahdiah Barnes, the president of the National Association for Multi-Ethnicity in Communications in New York, which pushes for diversity in media, and has organized a watch party. “This is history. She has something to prove, and I’ve heard her say a couple of things over the past couple days, so I can know that she’s getting ready for war.”
The vice presidential debate normally does not attract as much attention as the presidential one. In 2016, the match-up between Tim Kaine and Pence drew 37 million, less than half of the viewers who watched Trump face off with Democratic opponent Hillary Clinton.
After Trump tested positive for the coronavirus last week, the two people who would be next in line for the presidency behind two septuagenarians has taken on outsized significance.
Sera Bonds, the co-founder of Waking Giants, an Austin, Texas communications company, said the online watch party she has organized for her friends and neighbors will feature Bingo cards (boxes include “mother,” “birth certificate,” and “Howard University”) and participants will be entered in a raffle to win prizes from women-owned companies.
Bonds and other organizers say they are hoping for a substantive debate about policy and issues, in comparison to the presidential debate where Trump constantly interrupted challenger Joe Biden.
“If there’s any opportunity to get voters back and to regain their confidence again in the overall platform, this is it,” said another watch party organizer, Catherine McNeil, who heads an Illinois career-development company.
“Of course there’ll be some kind of mudslinging because that’s politics. However, we’re going to find out where each one stands. That is a given,” she said.
HER, a dating application for LGBTQ people, expects about 50 people to attend its virtual watch party. Kris Chesson, the company’s global events manager, thinks Harris’s slight resemblance to “The L Word” television show character Bette Porter might be a draw, but the issues would be most important.
“Last week’s debate almost doesn’t really count to me at all” because of how little it engaged with the issues that voters care about, said Chesson, who is based in California’s Bay Area.
“This will be the first actual debate,” she said. “I’m excited for that, and I’m a little sad that there’s only one VP debate.”
(Reporting by Makini Brice; Editing by Heather Timmons and Lisa Shumaker)
