Sen. JD Vance, Ohio, and Democratic vice-presidential candidate Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz participate during a vice-presidential debate hosted by CBS News, on Oct. 1.Matt Rourke/The Associated Press
It was generally agreed that Kamala Harris won the debate against Donald Trump last month. She smacked him right between the lie-balls.
But it didn’t move the needle. The polls hardly budged. That being the case with the top of the tickets, don’t expect Tuesday night’s civil debate put on by the undercard, the vice-presidential candidates, to redound with great impact.
Thanks to a disappointing showing by Tim Walz, who pawed more than he punched, the Democrats missed an opportunity to seize some momentum going into the election campaign’s home stretch.
If anyone gained, it was Donald Trump. A poised, articulate and duplicitous J.D. Vance made the former president, as well as himself, look almost normal – at the very least less threatening.
Over the course of almost two hours, Mr. Walz didn’t even utter the words convicted felon. As in, “Your presidential candidate, Mr. Vance, is a convicted felon.” Imagine an applicant for president with criminal sentencing pending, with other criminal cases against him waiting to be heard, with a rap sheet that includes being found liable for sexual abuse – and it isn’t even mentioned.
The Democrats have been shamefully cowed into barely talking about Mr. Trump’s crimes by the Republican argument that it’s a political prosecution staged by a weaponized Justice department. Mr. Walz could have and should have made mincemeat of that argument.
He’s known for his folksy charm, but throughout the debate he was tense and frenetic, so amped up that his words kept overrunning one another. The best zinger he got off all night was on himself. “I’m a knucklehead at times,” he said.
Six take-aways from the VP debate between Vance and Walz
For the Democrats to increase their chances of winning they have to appeal to fence-sitting voters by making the Republican ticket look too risky and dangerous, which it is.
But Mr. Trump’s image has been softened not only by this debate but by the recent assassination attempts. Moreover, a world aflame with wars in Ukraine and the Middle East make it look like the Democrats are the dangerous incumbents. There were no such wars during Mr. Trump’s presidency.
Mr. Vance was considerably lower in approval ratings than Mr. Walz going into the debate and the Ohio Senator’s challenge was to moderate his image. He did that by coming across as a more traditional conservative – not the flip-flopping hard-right misogynist, not the brutal culture warrior of “childless cat ladies” fame, not the jingoist who said that the mass deportation planned by him and Donald Trump was based on Christian principles. In the debate he even suggested Obamacare was not a bad thing and outrageously claimed Mr. Trump had worked to save it.
He repeatedly used a simplistic putdown of Ms. Harris. She promises all these great things, Mr. Vance stated, but where was she as vice-president for the past three and half years? Why didn’t she do them then? Mr. Walz could have batted that away by pointing out that, as any fool knows, power resides in the Oval Office not with constitutionally non-empowered vice-presidents.
The Minnesota Governor did have some good moments. One came when defending the Harris record on immigration and in pointing out that Mr. Trump only got two per cent of his fabled great wall built.
Another came on democracy when he asked Mr. Vance, “Did Donald Trump lose the 2020 election?” Mr. Vance lamely responded, “Tim, I’m focused on the future” and then tried to switch focus. Mr. Walz appropriately called it “a damning non-answer.”
But he often mangled his words, essentially giving Mr. Vance a pass on the big controversy he caused in chastising women who have chosen not to have children and on the absurd charges that Haitian immigrants were abducting the pets of residents of Ohio and eating them for dinner.
Ms. Harris has a huge lead among female voters and Mr. Walz’s task was to shore up some of the big shortfall she has with men. The former football coach needed to come across as a tough guy which some might argue is what the American white male wants, especially with a woman running for the top job. But he didn’t do it.
Most instant polls following the debate showed that it was judged a tie. Many pundits, however, gave the nod to Mr. Vance. That’s important because the folks who didn’t watch it live might be influenced by what is said in the media in the following days. Thanks to this debate, they might even come to think that the Trump-Vance ticket isn’t as frightening as they thought.