It might be remembered for the plexiglass, or for the relative tameness, or perhaps not at all given the chaos back in Washington and the frenetic pace of the campaign as a whole.

Or it might be remembered for searing attacks not just on opposing plans but on entirely different portrayals of the past and visions of the near future, amid a pandemic that seldom has felt more urgent.

At a moment of intense focus on the health of a president, and with two historically old candidates topping the ticket, the running mates engaged in an emotional and highly personal debate – just one lacking the insults and outsized personalities of President Donald Trump and former Vice President Joe Biden.

[Read more of ABC News Political Director Rick Klein's analysis](43806451takeover2headlineshed>).

The vice presidential candidates for president faced off on Wednesday for their first and only debate, giving Americans a much more substantive look at the ticket — though often not the substance that they were prompted for.

The candidates repeatedly dodged the questions from moderator Susan Page, remaining focused on one thing: correcting the wrongs of last week’s debate.

Here are the key takeaways.

--ABC News' Cheyenne Haslett and Meg Cunningham

PENCE'S CLAIM: "President Trump and I are fighting every day in courthouses to prevent Joe Biden and Kamala Harris from changing the rules and creating this universal mail-in voting that will create a massive opportunity for voter fraud."

FACT CHECK: Pence echoed Trump's attempts to cast doubt on the widespread embrace of vote-by-mail across the country this election by suggesting that universal mail-in voting could lead to massive fraud.

That is historically not true.

Kim Wyman, the Republican secretary of state in Washington -- a state that adopted statewide mail voting in 2011 -- told The New York Times in June that while any voting method could potentially be susceptible to fraud, in her experience as the chief elections official in the state, fraud with mail ballots is low.

"How do you respond to someone that makes an allegation that there's rampant fraud?" she said. "You show them all the security measures that are in place to prevent it and detect it if it does happen."

Ben Ginsberg, a Republican election guru who has spent years looking for voter fraud, wrote in a Washington Post op-ed, "Four decades of dedicated investigation have produced only isolated incidents of election fraud."

"These are painful conclusions for me to reach. Before retiring from law practice last month, I spent 38 years in the GOP's legal trenches. I was part of the 1990s redistricting that ended 40 years of Democratic control and brought 30 years of GOP successes in Congress and state legislatures. I played a central role in the 2000 Florida recount and several dozen Senate, House and state contests," he wrote. "The truth is that after decades of looking for illegal voting, there's no proof of widespread fraud."

Tom Ridge, a Republican who previously served as the governor of Pennsylvania and was the nation's first secretary of Homeland Security, previously told ABC News, "There is absolutely no antecedent, no factual basis for (President Donald Trump's) claim of massive fraud in mail voting."

--ABC News; Kendall Karson

PENCE'S CLAIM: "It's probably why Newsweek magazine said that Kamala Harris was the most liberal member of the United States Senate in 2019, more liberal than Bernie Sanders, more liberal than any of the others in the United States Senate."

FACT CHECK: Harris certainly has a very liberal Senate voting record, and an analysis cited by Newsweek in 2019 did find her to be the most liberal in the U.S. Senate.

However, that particular analysis does not consider some important caveats, the founder of the organization who conducted it told ABC News.

, an independent and nonpartisan group, found that Harris was the "most liberal" of her Senate colleagues in a 2019 survey, which compared the number of bipartisan bills a senator co-sponsored to the total number of bills he or she signed onto. Harris had the smallest percent of bipartisan bills in 2019, making her the most-liberal senator by this metric.

Harris certainly has one of the more liberal voting records in the Senate: She has voted to increase gun control and block conservative judicial nominees, for instance.

But there are nuances that the organization's founder, Jonathan Tauberer, said GovTrack's model doesn't account for, like the complexity of Harris' political views, the distinctions between different wings within each major political party, the specific approach Harris might take to achieve her desired outcome, or the unwillingness of Republicans to work with Harris during a presidential year.

--ABC News' Allison Pecorin

Pence has stood by and pushed the Trump campaign message of "law and order" and has remained a vigorous defender of police. In an interview with ABC News Live Anchor Linsey Davis, Pence said that he and Trump "reject the notion from Joe Biden and others that there's an 'implicit bias' towards minorities in law enforcement."

"The president and I know we don't have to choose between supporting law enforcement and supporting all of the families that live in our major cities," Pence told a crowd of supporters in Lititz, Pennsylvania. "We have done both for the last three and a half years, and we're going to support law enforcement and support our African American and minority families for four more years in the White House."

The vice president has dismissed the "defund the police" movement and has called for more resources and better training and accountability in law enforcement.

On matters of racial discrimination in policing and use of force, Harris has called for the rooting out of racial discrimination. In the aftermath of George Floyd's killing while in police custody she participated in protests in Washington, D.C.

During an appearance on ABC's "The View" in June, Harris was asked by co-host Meghan McCain if she supports the "Defund the Police" slogan, but did not give a direct answer on where she stands.

"We need to re-imagine how we are achieving public safety in America. And to have cities where one-third of their entire budget is going to policing but yet there's a dire need in those same cities for mental health resources, for resources going into public schools, for resources going into job training and job creation. Come on. We have to be honest about this that there isn't a consensus around this because if there were, we would actually see a smarter distribution of resources in our country to address the issues that need to be addressed."

After the shooting by police of Jacob Blake, she met with Blake's family in Wisconsin and spoke with Blake over the phone. She also told NBC News, "I think that there should be a thorough investigation, and based on what I've seen, it seems that the officer should be charged." She's also kept in contact with Tamika Palmer, the mother of Breonna Taylor who was shot by Louisvill, Kentucky, police while she was sleeping in her home.

Harris has called for economic and educational investment in communities of color to create safer, healthier communities. She and Biden have called for an end to no-knock warrants, chokeholds and carotid holds. They want to create a national excessive force standard and create a database to track cops who use excessive force and break the rules. The pair want to end cash bail and private prisons.

"We have to understand that you can't think that the only way to create safe communities is to put more police on the streets, that's not how it's going to work," Harris told pop star Lizzo on an Instagram Live stream in September.

In contrast, Harris wrote in her 2009 book "Smart on Crime," "if we take a show of hands of those who would like to see more police officers on the street, mine would shoot up."

-ABC News' Justin Gomez and Averi Harper