Oh, Jake. Bless your little Trump-loathing, Democrat-defending heart. Buddy, you said far more than you realized when you rushed to ‘splain away Kamala Harris’s “train wreck” debate performance on Wednesday night. Yeoman’s effort, dude, but c’mon.

Anyway, the reviews are in for Wednesday night’s vice presidential debate. If you’re a hopelessly left-wing partisan, you saw the debate as a win for Sen. Kamala Harris (D-CA).

If you’re a rational, non-predisposed observer, Vice President Mike Pence handily bested his Democrat opponent.

Or as some on the Left are frantically spinning it, Harris beat herself.

In the case of CNN anchor Jake Tapper, Harris lost because… wait for it… she’s a woman. Yes, that smacks of hall-of-fame-quality hypocrisy but liberals are liberals, so…

Here’s Jake, with a “trainwreck” observation from One America News Network correspondent Jack Posobiec:

“I wonder if a woman candidate feels like she can’t push as much or steamroll as much as, say Mike Pence can, for fear of seeming and [sic] offending some segment of the electorate. I’m not saying it should be that way but I’m wondering if it is that way.”

Jake Tapper is trying to explain away Kamala’s trainwreck performance by saying she is a woman pic.twitter.com/xPOe6FbnYm

— Jack Posobiec (@JackPosobiec) October 8, 2020

Again, Jake, c’mon.

You do remember watching the ever-irascible Hillary Clinton debate Donald Trump in 2016, correct? Did that woman shrink from her snappy, attack-dog persona, simply because she was debating a man? Couch it however you want, Jake, but that was pathetic. Even for CNN.

Even Tapper’s equally-Trump-loathing colleague Dana Bash disagreed.

“I’m not sure if that’s true. She was tough and she certainly had her moments. But there were times when maybe there could have been more follow-up.”

Washington Post columnist Megan McArdle begged to disagree with Tapper’s lame excuse assessment, as well.

Jake Tapper is suggesting that Harris was not able to be aggressive because she's a woman. That was … not my impression of how that debate went.

— Megan McArdle (@asymmetricinfo) October 8, 2020

I wish people would stop explaining every meh debate performance by a woman as a function of gender. Yes, there are challenges, but Elizabeth Warren is a good debater! Not all women are great debaters being held back by their sex–some of us, like some men, are just bad debaters.

— Megan McArdle (@asymmetricinfo) October 8, 2020

McArdle is right, of course. Imagine for a nanosecond a couple of different scenarios if the tables were reversed.

If a Republican nominee were the woman and the Democrat nominee the man, and Fox News host Sean Hannity tried to rationalize the Republican’s poor performance by playing the woman card, how well would that have played in the “mainstream” media?

Or even if a Fox News host had said after last night’s debate that Harris’s “meh” performance was due to her gender? Hoo boy.

Regardless of who spins Wednesday night’s debate for what purpose, it was a rough night for the former Democrat presidential candidate whose polling numbers throughout her miserably-failed 2020 primary run never escaped the toilet.

As my RedState colleague, Nick Arama reported in an article titled Kamala Lied All Over the Place About the Biden Team Position on Fracking, Gets Busted Big Time, Including by the President, let’s just say Harris was not dancing cheek-to-cheek with the truth.

And Greg Price noted the effort of ABC’s George Stephanopoulos to blame Pence’s “mansplaining” for Harris’s performance.

They’re pulling the mansplaining card which means Pence won by more than we thought https://t.co/RrWnRl08ti

— Greg Price (@greg_price11) October 8, 2020

Podcaster Matt Walsh described the liberal media “clowns” as “parodies of themselves.”

Pence dominated Kamala so thoroughly and convincingly that the media’s only available tactic is to accuse him of being a sexist for debating a woman at a debate. These people are such clowns. Parodies of themselves. pic.twitter.com/OXaIKnV58Y

— Matt Walsh (@MattWalshBlog) October 8, 2020

Then there’s the ever-present hypocrisy of the Left, as Walsh noted.

Feminists: “Women are strong and fierce and independent!”

Mike Pence: [debates a woman respectfully]

Feminists, fainting: “How dare you!”

— Matt Walsh (@MattWalshBlog) October 8, 2020

But, hey — maybe we’re being too hard on the “mainstream” media.

After all, as reported by my RedState colleague Sister Toldjah, at least they spent time fixating on critical issues facing American voters in just 26 days. You know, important stuff like the “mark of the devil” fly that landed on Pence’s head at one point. [Yuuge eye-roll emoji.]

The bottom line.

As I suggested at the top, Tapper said far more than he realized.

If, as a woman, Harris feels she can’t “push as much or steamroll as much” as could a man — in a vice-presidential debate, no less — how would she fare sitting eyeball-to-eyeball with Vladimir Putin? Xi Jinping? Kim Jong-un? If (when) she became president if (when) Joe Biden steps down due to “you know what,” I mean.

The truth is Tapper was lying — or at the very least knew Harris’s performance had zero to do with her gender. The 1 1,064th Native American was a pretty good debater. As was the irascible Hillary Clinton. I suspect Republican Nikki Haley would perform just fine in a vice-presidential — or presidential — debate, as well.

Nice try, Jake — but I call BS on that one.