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In 2000 I worked at the election polls as a Democrat on the outside, that is to say, a greeter to incoming voters. It was a heavily Republican district and it was hard for Democrats to feel they had support. It was also hard to reach anyone with my Republican counterpoint interrupting any exchange I had. He was louder, more aggressive, and determined that – party affiliation be damned – he was going to dominate every conversation. As soon as a voter got within 50 feet of the polls, he would make a beeline for the voter and physically block me from speaking at all. That day I grew to hate that man. Years later, we became friends and I was surprised to discover a nice guy. But on that particular November day, he was just doing his job.

I have mulled over that day many times. I chastised myself for not being more aggressive; I was afraid that if I ran in front of this guy I’d look like a yipping cocker spaniel to his Saint Bernard. I questioned his basic rules of politeness; we were saying hello to our neighbors, for crying out loud! I pondered what drove this Republican to disrupt two Democrats exchanging greetings.

It seems it’s an on-going problem. The same dilemma was played out in the nationally-televised vice-presidential debate.

Vice-President Pence exhibited disrespect to both Senator Kamala Harris and the moderator Susan Page. While he expressed admiration, gratitude, and compassion to both women and the American public, what he actually did -- talking over, lecturing, and disregarding the moderator’s questions and rules -- gave the truer message: You ladies may think you’re in the big leagues now, but you’re not.

As CNN commentator S. E. Cupp said after the vice-presidential debate,

“For the white suburban women who have fled the Republican Party and Trump in droves, it was an echo of the past few years, where they've felt disrespected and turned off by this administration's divisiveness, fear-mongering, incompetence, corruption, bigotry and politics of revenge.”

Why don’t we add to that list sexism and abuse?

Perhaps had we turned the volume off and just watched the debate (the fly would have garnered even higher ratings than it did), we would have seen what the debate was actually about. The hidden message is, You don’t belong here.

Barack Obama once described himself as …”a symbolic stand-in for a lot of the changes that have been made.” Obama was referring to his being Black. Kamala Harris is Black and female. And as a V-P candidate, she’s interviewing for the job of “symbolic stand-in.” The V-P debate was a contest of two symbolic stand-ins and, with that limited criteria, probably both are qualified for the job. Just as qualified as the two poll greeters on that November day twenty years ago.

For twenty years I’ve harbored the thought that my Republican counterpart did a better job than I did. Today I’m thinking, No. Senator Harris stood her ground. She requested equal time for all the overtalking Pence did. She challenged misinformation. And she never lost her cool.

I think I can do it. Just give me a Plexiglas shield to protect me from all the sexist germs.