CBS debate moderators Norah O'Donnell and Margaret Brennan weren't as overtly biased at the vice presidential debate last night as ABC News's David Muir and Linsey Davis had been at the previous one between President Trump and Kamala Harris, what with the one-way fact-checking and the three-against-one questioning.

But they managed to get their bias in all the same -- by asking boring, irrelevant questions on topics most voters couldn't care less about -- global warming, for one, the threat to democracy," child care, and abortion which are important only to Democrats. And in so doing, they ignored significant topics, like government spending, Ukraine, election integrity and other topics that voters of all stripes consistently tell pollster are most important to them.

It amounted to bias by omission.

Witness the opener, beginning with the newsy question about the Iran's attack on Israel, which produced no fireworks there, followed by the Hurricane Helene question, which O'Donnell completely framed around the boring, irrelevant issue of global warming.

The story there is that the storm was big and the federal response was inadequate -- they're still in lumbering meetings over at FEMA, while the private sector, including President Trump and Florida's Gov. Ron DeSantis, have already begun getting aid to the devastated. That didn't get talked about at all -- and since FEMA is the government, a serious question would have been what they'd do to turn around that agency, whose response has been inadequate for years -- witness Lahaina -- given its expanded budget, and mission creep, in feeding, transporting, and housing illegals. It doesn't do anything well at all any more and here are the two guys who could do something to fix it.

Nope, global warming all around, with the hurricane very questionably framed as a matter of climate change, prompting Walz to talk about all the farmers he knows who think about global warming, which is dubious, given his stated contempt for 'rocks and cows' in the past as well as urban political voting base in Minnesota, while Vance was reduced to sandwiching in talk about energy production. He stated that even if climate change were true, local energy production would reduce the carbon footprint. Neither was given scope to get into the hurricane at hand, which was a problem of FEMA budget-bloat and its resulting incompetence.

According to Pew Research, climate change ranks at rock bottom among the most important issues to voters -- among both Democrat and Republican voters. Same with Gallup, which notes that it ranks down there with cancer, infrastructure, elder care, and child care among the top issues of the day, with 2% of the voters saying that for them, it was the Big One.

Naturally, child care got brought up, too, with Vance winging it the right way by saying it was important to increase the supply of child care providers, and Walz calling for more government spending.

Way to pick the hot issues, news ladies.

Besides this, they picked one issue of lopsided importance to Democrats: Abortion, asking no fewer than six questions on the matter, which to most of us is boring as heck, too.

Walz lied about his record as a governor who signed a bill to make abortion legal up to the day of birth and even after birth, and recounted the phony story of the woman who died of abortion restrictions, when in fact it was of complications after a botched abortion of her twins with the hospital she went to not recognizing the distress she was in. Vance did the best he could, citing someone he knew who was glad she had an abortion, getting into the weeds a little inconclusively, but did what he could to emphasize that states have rights to determine their own policies, and at least condemn late-term abortion and call for a culture of life.

Left unasked, was very much about the Trump team's strongest point -- and the voters' top concern -- which is the economy.

There was tariffs and trade talk, which is bound to have put many to sleep right there, but Vance had to fight to get a word in edgewise about Trump's economy being better for voters than the Biden-Harris economy. He roughed it out pretty well, but could not get much into details, because "we have a lot to cover" the moderators repeatedly said whenever they got to a topic that boosted Trump.

There was nothing about the monstrous growth of the national debt, and the true cause of inflation, which is runaway government spending, which has kept the Federal Reserve's presses printing overtime. Vance didn't answer that very well, attributing inflation to stymied oil production, which Walz correctly noted was actually up. Sadder still, neither candidate seemed to know where inflation came from, which is purely a matter money-printing -- if they did, they'd be able to explain why health care costs, even under Obamacare, have shot through the roof (that's an electric topic that should have been brought up since everyone's getting their new insurance rates now) and why housing prices have made home ownership all but impossible for young buyers -- it's the interest rates brought in to tamp down all the inflation in the system, guys.

Vance, though, could be taught this and understand it well. Walz, not so much, given his fealty to limitless government spending. 

Vance was splendidly nimble on his feet, stepping in and not shutting up when his time was up by pointing out that the moderators had just "fact-checked" him on immigration when they said they wouldn't -- carefully describing the distortions and legal liberties with the law that the Biden administration was taking to disguise illegal immigration as legal immigration. The moderators tried to bring up migrant cat-eating in Springfield, Ohio, but Vance was in control there, too -- pointing out that the real issue here was that tiny towns and villages are being overwhelmed by illegals and all the problems they bring, including massive costs. He was very well briefed on that matter and it showed.

He also very cleverly turned around a dreary boring question about "democracy" and Jan. 6 against the moderators, by bringing up the real issue in democracy these days, which was the Democrats' embrace of censorship, which is an authentic assault on the First Amendment, putting Walz on his backfoot:

Best line of the debate:
"I believe we actually do have a threat to democracy in this country. Unfortunately, it's not the threat to democracy that Kamala Harris and Tim Walz want to talk about. It is the threat of censorship. It's Americans casting aside lifelong friendships…

— Julie Hamill (@hamill_law) October 2, 2024

The moderators even tried to step in to save Walz, who was caught flatfooted and actually admitted he embraced censorship:

Moderator intervenes at the end to try to save Walz from final blow ... https://t.co/LOpyri3ucb

— Mickey Kaus (@kausmickey) October 2, 2024

He might have brought up lawfare, and the failure of Democrat district attorneys to prosecute any crime at all, creating atmospheres of lawlessness. But he did very well with censorship, pointing out how badly Democrats have embraced it. That was a home run.

And it was done despite the moderators trying to steer all topics to elitist Democrat concerns instead of voter concerns. That made for a very boring debate, but Vance at least, was able to break out of most of it.

Image: Screen shot from CBS video, via YouTube