Kamala Harris won Wednesday’s vice-presidential debate. It wasn’t even close.*

Mike Pence repeatedly evaded questions, flat-out lied, and broke the rules by talking over the moderator and his opponent, Kamala Harris.

Pence was repeatedly forced to defend Trump’s abysmal record on the coronavirus, foreign affairs, and race, among other things. He proved one thing: It’s hard to return fire when you have no ammunition. The best you can do is point your empty weapon at the other person and hope she flinches.

Harris didn’t.

The only time Pence scored any points was on Harris’ refusal to answer a question on potentially expanding the Supreme Court. But Pence himself refused to answer a question on Trump’s nonexistent plan for health care and refused to commit to a peaceful transfer of power — something that went largely unnoticed, because he wasn’t as blunt about it as Trump was.

But one thing came across loud and clear: Pence is now, as he’s always been, Trump’s lapdog. Vice presidents traditionally carry their bosses’ water for them. But in no cases has that water ever been as Flint, Michigan-toxic as it is in this election.

Despite this, however, a lot of people think Pence won, or at least held his own, and there are a few reasons why.

1.  Lowered expectations

Pence was debating Harris, but you wouldn’t have known it from some of the commentary. A lot of pundits kept pointing out that it was a civil debate compared to the previous week’s clash between the unhinged Donald Trump and sometimes (justifiably) irritated Joe Biden.

In repeatedly mentioning how “civil” Pence supposedly was, commentators glossed over, by implication, his incivility. Was he more controlled than Trump? Sure. But that’s an extremely low bar. Compared to Harris, he still interrupted the moderator more often and, in most cases, more persistently than Harris.

Pence wasn’t necessarily going to look better when compared to Harris, but he was bound to look better when compared to Trump — which is exactly what the pundits did. In doing so, they did a disservice to the viewers and to Harris.

2.  Male chauvinism

Pence has been lauded for his politeness and civility, yet he should have known one thing going into the debate: Viewers, and women in particular, were turned off by Trump’s repeated interruptions and bullying in the first debate.

Somehow, though, he didn’t seem to get the memo. Unlike Trump, he faced a woman as his opponent in an event moderated by a woman. He talked over both of them repeatedly, the kind of attitude that communicates, implicitly, that “I’m a man, so what I have to say has to be more important than whatever’s on your mind.”

It’s hard for me to imagine women who aren’t ideologically driven (and have already made up their minds) thinking Pence won. If I’m right, Pence blew a huge opportunity to mitigate Trump’s bullying behavior in the first debate.

But a lot of debate watchers are conditioned to watch old white males on the debate stage, and those viewers got what they expected from Pence. As long as he performed competently, they were likely to think he won.

3.  Appearances

Appearances matter, but did they matter Wednesday?

Harris smiled frequently, and she was animated and forceful without appearing unhinged or rude. She used facial expression and vocal tone to maximum effect; even when Pence was speaking, she knew one of those cameras was still on her.

Pence, by contrast, looked dull and stiff most of the time Harris was talking. It didn’t help that he failed to notice Jeff Goldblum camping out on his perfectly coiffed hair for more than 2 full minutes. And it also didn’t help that his naturally beady, shifty eyes looked just as bloodshot as someone who’d spent the previous couple of hours lighting up at a Grateful Dead concert.

Pence didn’t look like the Grateful Dead, though, he looked like an extra from The Walking Dead. It’s become folklore that Richard Nixon lost his televised debate to John Kennedy because Nixon was pasty and sweaty. Pence looked worse than Nixon did, but pundits largely overlooked this. They also overlooked the clear contrast between Harris’ tone and body language and Pence’s. The result was viewers predisposed to liking Pence may have second-guessed their own eyes and gone along with what the talking heads were (or weren’t) telling them.

4.  Both-sidesism

Journalists are prone to the “fair and balanced” trap: They become so committed to balance that they hesitate to make any sort of judgment. They’re more scared of looking biased than a rabbit’s scared of a mountain lion.

Hence, no fact-checking during real time. Hence, bending over backwards to say “both sides did it,” even when one side was far more blatant. The irony is that the media have rightly blasted Trump for saying there were “fine people on both sides” at Charlottesville, yet the media does the same thing — though not about racism — as a matter of course to avoid the appearance of a conflict of interest.

Even when science overwhelmingly supports claims such as humans’ role in climate change and the efficacy of masks in preventing the spread of COVID, the press feels obligated to give equal time and credence to “opposing views” simply because those views are held by political elites. This is bad journalism, and it benefits debate losers when pundits report that “nobody won” — as they often do in debates.

Pence benefitted from this.

5. Context

This was a vice presidential debate, and the pundits are right about one thing: Veep debates rarely, if ever, move the needle.

Going into the debate, the election was a referendum on Trump, and nothing about the debate changed that — nor could it have, no matter what happened.

The thing that saved Pence was that this was a vice-presidential debate, and those almost never matter.

It won’t this time, either, which is a good thing for Pence, because he lost. Bigly

*For the record, I think Pence did win his 2016 debate with Tim Kaine. But back then, he didn’t have Trump’s pathetic record to lie and evade about, nor was Kaine as effective a debater as Harris is.