Writing about a debate on the morning after always feels more like theater criticism than political analysis. How did they look, how did they sound, did they come off as authentic and real or were they phony and glib? Were they believable to the faceless Real Americans watching being asked to decide which of them to vote for? But that’s what these televised debates really are. The substance is usually secondary because they’ve practiced their lines and have a specific message they want to impart regardless of the topic they’re being asked to address. They’re political rituals that we use to decide if the person appears to be someone we want to watch perform the role of whatever office they are seeking.
The worst debate ritual we’ve all ever witnessed happened last June when President Joe Biden was seen to be doddering and incompetent. It wasn’t that most Democrats disagreed with his policies to the extent that he articulated them or were unhappy with his record, quite the opposite. It was his performance, and it resulted in him having to withdraw from the race. One of the best debates of the last few decades was the one after that, when Vice President Kamala Harris wiped the floor with Donald Trump whose performance revealed him as unprepared and incompetent while she was effective and commanding. Trump has retreated into a negative feedback loop ever since.
The interesting thing about both of those debates, as consequential as they were, is that neither of them seem to have moved the polls very much. Biden was behind by about 2-3 points in the polling averages after the debate and today Harris has a 2-point lead in the same averages. It’s all within the margin of error. It’s mind-boggling to me how this race could be so close but if those polls are correct (a dicey assumption) the country is closely divided and nothing seems to change that.
We are cursed with having to re-run the last election because Donald Trump has convinced most Republicans that he has a right to be president because the last election was “stolen” from him. What he says or does is irrelevant to that question as far as they are concerned. They want a restoration. The rest of us are voting against that. It’s really not more complicated than that.
There are issues at stake, of course. Republicans are obsessed with foreigners being put in their place, whether it’s here at home or overseas (although they do seem to have a soft spot for American adversaries.) They don’t believe everyone should have access to affordable healthcare, that climate change is real, guns should be regulated or that women have a fundamental right to control their bodies. But they do believe the rule of law only applies to other people. Democrats believe the opposite. In the age of Trump, these issues have become proxies for which team you’re on and for the most part, those teams can easily be defined as Trump vs Not-Trump.
While Vance may have been nicer than expected they still liked Walz more.
In light of that, it’s very hard to see how a vice presidential debate could possibly change anything and last night’s event between JD Vance and Tim Walz almost assuredly will not. The two men obviously came into the debate with some very specific performance strategies and they both did what they needed to do. Vance obviously decided that his goal was to shed the intellectual extremist “cat ladies” persona and portray himself as the smart conservative who wrote “Hillbilly Elegy.” He is very adept at changing roles, having even changed his name several times, so this came very naturally to him. Walz clearly wanted to highlight his record and show his wonky side with lots of details. He came across as less polished than Vance but effectively made his points on the issues the campaign wanted him to raise even if his performance wasn’t as slick.
Mostly they were agreeable and collegial, just a couple of Midwestern guys having a friendly disagreement after which, under other circumstances, they would go out and have a beer together. That performance was a bit over the top, in my opinion, certainly Vance’s who has all the charm and warmth of a King Cobra. Walz is a genuinely nice guy but he could have been a little less accommodating to Vance’s shape-shifting.
I suspect that Vance may go viral with some of his answers though. His lies were overwhelming and the fact-checks were brutal. Walz got dinged for saying that he was in Hong Kong during the Tiananmen Massacre in 1989 when he was really only there for the demonstrations afterward (and he called himself a knucklehead for saying it). But Vance denied that he had supported a national abortion ban when there is written proof that he did. He whined about the moderators “fact-checking” him —- a real beta boy move. He mansplained to the female moderators, which is something he just can’t help doing even when he’s trying not to be a flagrant misogynist. And with Olympian-level chutzpah, he said that Donald Trump saved Obamacare. That’s just for starters.
And then there was the big one: Vance refused to answer whether the 2020 election was stolen. It came toward the end of the night but it was Tim Walz’s finest moment and the most memorable of the debate:
For everyone tonight, and I’m gonna thank Senator Vance, I think this is the conversation they wanted to hear and I think there’s a lot of agreement. This is one that we’re miles apart on. This was a threat to our democracy in a way that we had not seen. And it manifested itself because of Donald Trump’s inability to say—he is still saying he didn’t lose the election. I will just ask, did he lose the 2020 election?”
Vance responded with his clumsiest evasion of the night, a weird pivot to federal censorship, an issue that has urgency only among the most online right-wingers.
And then Walz delivered the coup de grace by bringing up the absence of Mike Pence:
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JD Vance has said in the past that he would have done what Mike Pence refused to do. Even with his slick delivery, he was unable to finesse that reality on the debate stage. We all know that if he had said anything otherwise, there is an orange man down in Florida who would have flipped his blond lid.
CBS ran a snap poll after the debate and this is what they found:
Politico’s snap poll of debate watchers found an obvious partisan split, with independents notably declaring Walz the winner 58% to Vance’s 42%.
It appears they both accomplished what they set out to do when it comes to issues and the debate watchers were happy to see a convivial debate. But while Vance may have been nicer than they expected they still liked Walz more. I suspect that may end up being more important than any single thing either of them said.
