Welcome to the post-debate edition of the Policy Desk newsletter covering tonight’s showdown between Sen. JD Vance of Ohio and Gov. Tim Walz of Minnesota.
Sign up here to receive this newsletter in your inbox every weekday.
A beautiful night in the Midwest: Vance and Walz disagree in a mostly civil argument
By Henry J. Gomez and Allan Smith
NEW YORK – Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz said he believes his vice presidential rival, Sen. JD Vance of Ohio, wants to solve the country’s immigration crisis, but questioned whether former President Donald Trump really does.
Vance acknowledged that Walz also wants to address the issue, but he questioned whether Vice President Kamala Harris actually did.
Walz agreed with “much of what Senator Vance said” about Americans not trusting Republicans on abortion. Vance said he and Walz “agree that we probably need to do better” on gun violence. And Walz admitted that he “agrees” with much of what Vance said about decades of trade policy that allowed manufacturing jobs to move overseas.
It continued in Tuesday’s debate between Walz and Vance, meeting in person for the first time, and delivering a textbook performance of Midwest nice: serving as rhetorical fig leaves in consensus, politely delivered but often giving way to more cutting. , attacks.
The running mates — Vance, a right-wing Republican, and Waltz, a progressive Democrat who aims to appeal to moderates — used the words “agree” or “disagree” more than a dozen times to describe common ground. share it.
With early voting underway in several states and exactly five weeks before Election Day, Tuesday’s showdown, hosted by CBS News, was an opportunity for Vance and Walz to make their campaign closing arguments. Barring a swing by Trump, who balks at the idea of a second run-in with Harris, this could be the last widely broadcast primetime moment of the race.
But television viewers expecting the ruthless vice president to attack the dogs instead saw a couple of mutts looking for love. The discussion reminded him in some ways A friendly clash 24 years ago between vice presidential candidates Dick Cheney and Joe Lieberman. Cheney, who hated the left then as much as Vance does now, was able to escape harsh scrutiny. He and Republican George W. Bush won the first of two terms in the fall.
Read more from Henry and Allan →
Key takeaways from the Vance-Walz controversy
By Sahil Kapoor
It wasn’t really about Vance or Walz: It was immediately clear that the two prominent politicians on stage were merely proxies for their running mates, using the questions as a vehicle to attack their best rivals, and in many cases going out of their way to avoid attacking each other personally.
Walz used his first question about Iran’s strikes on Israel to age Trump: “Donald Trump, who is almost 80 years old, talking about the size of the crowd is not what we need at this point.” He went on to attack the “volatile leadership of Donald Trump” around the world.
Vance responded, “Who has been vice president for the last three and a half years? The answer is not mine, but your running mate. Donald Trump has consistently made the world safer.”
Economic notes under the microscope: Walz was equipped with an argument to attack Trump on the economy, one of the GOP candidate’s strongest issues in the polls.
“Kamala Harris’ first day was Donald Trump’s failure on Covid, which caused our economy to collapse. We were already in a manufacturing recession before Covid – about 10 million people were out of work, the largest percentage since the Great Depression,” Walz said.
Vance responded by calling Biden-Harris’ economic record “wild” and defending Trump.
“Honestly, Tim, I think you’ve got a tough job here because you have to play Whac-A-Mole,” he said, challenging Walz to “pretend” Trump’s economy is improving wages and low inflation.
Vance defends his views on Trump’s past criticisms: Vance was well-prepared with a response when asked to explain his past criticisms of Trump, including by saying it can be “America’s Hitler” and his He criticizes Trump’s economic performance as president.
“Sometimes, of course, I don’t agree with the president, but I’ve also been very open about being wrong about Donald Trump. “First of all, I was wrong because I believed some of the media stories that turned out to be dishonest fabrications of his record,” Vance said, walking through the territory he and his campaign have covered in media interviews and responses to the stories.