2 weeks ago
3
Well that was ... unexpected.
The first question is, was JD Vance kidnaped or did he voluntarily agree to swap places with his body double? The inoffensive, agreeable, occasionally empathetic GOP VP hopeful that showed up for the debate is not the JD Vance that ran for the Senate, turned up for podcasts or goes out and campaigns for Donald Trump.
Vance is intelligent and articulate. His trademark is adapting his convictions and his personality to the needs of the moment.
When he was pursuing the mainstream media while trying to sell his book, he was a reasonable, thoughtful Never Trumper. After Donald Trump won in 2016, Vance began courting the MAGAverse by appearing on alt-right podcasts and talking about how people without children should be treated as second-class citizens (even as he continued to disparage Trump in private). That culminated in him winning a seat in the Senate with Trump’s endorsement.
He morphed yet again when he was in the running for the vice-presidential nomination.
His latest incarnation is an effort to play to a national audience. If you had never heard of Vance before, you would have thought this was a thoughtful, moderate politician who is adept at reaching across the political aisle and finding common ground — not a guy who rants about childless cat ladies and immigrants eating household pets.
But Vance has forgotten, possibly to his peril, that when you are in Donald Trump’s orbit, there is an audience of only one.
JD Vance did a number of things during the debate that won’t sit well with his party’s standard-bearer. For example, he never said the word MAGA, not once. He refused to (falsely) claim that Donald Trump won the 2020 election. He talked about the “terrible epidemic of gun violence” — a phrase I don’t think any other Republican officeholder has ever used before. And he admitted that the American people "frankly just don't trust us" when it comes to reproductive rights. Vance even claimed, in one of the weirdest passages of the evening, that Donald Trump was personally responsible for saving ObamaCare.
But the worst thing Vance did was to upstage his boss. The Ohio senator’s performance was so good compared to the clown show that Donald Trump put on in the second debate that a lot of Republicans are now wistfully imagining what the race would look like if Vance were at the top of the ticket instead. That isn’t going to sit well with Trump after he broods over it for a few days.
While Vance was smooth throughout, Tim Walz got off to a shaky start. Walz wasn’t as articulate as Vance, but he was authentic and often passionate. And he really, really likes to fix things. At times, he sounded like this guy. The Minnesota governor has a ferocious command of detail when it comes to issues he cares about. But Walz never really found his footing, allowing his opponent to lead throughout much of the night.
As for substance, it was largely a draw. Vance was clearly primed to go after Kamala Harris’s record, returning again and again to the idea that nothing would change if she were elected president. His best line was, “She's been the vice president for three and a half years. Day one was 1400 days ago.”
I’ve never really understood this attack. While I’m sure Harris was a trusted adviser in the Biden administration, vice presidents are not co-presidents. Unless there happens to be a tie vote in the Senate, they could spend their entire time in office on the beach and no one would notice. I’m sure Donald Trump would be amazed to discover that Mike Pence was entitled to credit for anything at all.
Walz’s most effective moment came at the end of the night. When Vance dodged the question of whether Donald Trump had won the 2020 election, Walz called it a “damning non-answer” and described the election as a clear choice between “who's going to honor ... democracy and who's going to honor Donald Trump.”
Another of the most affecting moments of the debate was also, thanks to Trump’s intervention, one of its most awkward.
While Vance and Walz were having a sensitive discussion of school shootings, where Walz revealed how he had gotten to know some of the parents of the Sandy Hook school shooting victims and that his own son had been present at a shooting at a community center, Donald Trump was posting memes based on Walz misspeaking that he had become friends with “school shooters.” Predictably, MAGA world picked up on this, apparently thinking it was the defining moment of the debate.
There is not enough cringe in all the world.
Reactions were what you'd expect. MAGA world thought Vance crushed Walz, while a lot of Democrats thought Walz did OK but were disappointed that he passed up multiple opportunities to stick it to Vance. There is some truth in this; Walz could have spent half the debate dragging Vance about Springfield, Ohio, and the very real, very horrible consequences that Vance inflicted on his own constituents by spreading lies about Haitians eating pets.
But that would have been out of character for Walz. And given the shockingly civil tone of the debate, it would have made him look like a jerk.
In the end, like most vice-presidential debates, this won’t have much of an impact on the national audience. Whether it had an impact on an audience of one remains to be seen.
Chris Truax is an appellate attorney who served as Southern California chair for John McCain’s primary campaign in 2008.
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