Photo: Julia Demaree Nikhinson/AP Photo
If there was any conventional wisdom going into the vice-presidential debate in New York, it was that both candidates would probably be fiery and combative, with J.D. Vance pleasing his warrior-chief by whaling away at the radical left opposition and Tim Walz bringing up every single strange comment Vance had ever uttered about cat ladies, Haitians, and abortion. Instead, we witnessed a strangely civil tilt that was full of small gestures of courtesy and even agreement. Vance and Walz mostly spoke in complete sentences, did not once call each other a liar, and acted as though they lived in the same country.
Vance was the more fluid speaker and probably would have narrowly won a debate coach’s assessment of the encounter on points. He was very effective in again and again and again repeating Donald Trump’s most salient point in his debate with Harris: Why hadn’t she implemented any of her plans during the administration in which she serves as vice-president? Vance probably scored with swing voters by demanding that Harris be held accountable for an economy that Americans don’t like and don’t really understand and for an influx of migrants that (whatever you think of it) has convinced a shocking percentage of people to favor mass deportations of undocumented immigrants. And Vance may have even turned some heads by suggesting that his party had forfeited the trust of the public on abortion policy. This was not the base-pleasing demagogue we’ve seen on the campaign trail.
Walz wasn’t as slick as Vance, but he clocked him on several important subjects, particularly abortion (where the Republican essentially conceded defeat), health-care policy (where Vance absurdly suggested Trump saved Obamacare), and in the final topic of the night, January 6 and the simple fact that Trump (and now Vance) still won’t agree in advance to accept governor-certified results as the law of the land requires. To a considerable extent, any judgment of a “winner” or “loser” may depend on which of the issues (some dominated by Vance, some by Walz) voters and other observers care about most.
With the debate being so closely contested, the best guess is that it, like nearly every other vice-presidential debate in history, won’t have a tangible effect on the presidential race. Though you do have to wonder if the dramatic temperamental difference between Vance and Trump will reflect poorly on the latter among any voters still undecided. After all, Vance showed it was possible to embrace Trump’s policies without emulating his signature hatefulness and incoherence. Certainly Walz seemed more in sync with Harris and less of a departure in tone and attitude.
What the debate probably did for J.D. Vance was to solidify his position in the Republican Party as a plausible successor to Trump if the ticket wins and possibly even if it loses. Yes, there will be some MAGA zealots who will be angry at him for his civility and failure to call Harris and Walz deranged Marxists or lay into the puppet Joe Biden, whom Vance barely mentioned. And there may also be some progressives who are upset with Walz for his Minnesota Nice attitude at a time when Vance’s record offered a lot of rich targets.
In the end, the outcome of the election will depend, as it has all along, on the candidates at the top of the tickets. And it’s likely that as the two campaigns ravage each other in the days between now and Election Day, this weird moment of civility will be all but forgotten. But it was certainly yet another unexpected twist in a contest full of them.
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