This week's first and possibly only debate between Vice President Kamala Harris and former President Donald Trump was not nearly as consequential as the June debate, which ended President Joe Biden's political career. It also differed in another key way: The moderation was incredibly one-sided and unfair.
This was not true of the previous debate, between Biden and Trump. CNN's Jake Tapper and Dana Bash asked questions but did not interrupt or attempt to fact-check the candidates—they left that to Trump and Biden. Such an approach is preferable; politicians make so many incorrect statements that if the moderators really felt the need to intervene every single time, debates would devolve into showdowns between the moderators and each candidate, which isn't the point. There are also frequent examples of moderators asserting that a given claim is abjectly false when it may be complicated, ambiguous, or a case where reasonable minds disagree.
