The opinions expressed belowW are from Jon Keller, not WBZ, CBS News or Paramount Global.
BOSTON – Live from New York, it was the battle for the second bananas on Tuesday evening: Republican Senator JD Vance from Ohio and Democratic Governor Tim Walz from Minnesota. For a campaign season that has been one of the nastiest in history, the vice presidential debate was remarkably polite.
Unless the mind is playing tricks, we’ve heard each candidate agree with the other a few times.
Contrast of styles
There was a contrast between styles: Vance had the bright polish you’d expect from a U.S. senator with countless live TV recordings under his belt, albeit robotic at times. Walz started nervously, but increased the intensity as the debate progressed.
Both men demonstrated the debater’s skill at turning their answers into political scoring.
On the subject of foreign flashpoints, Walz quickly turned to the age issue: “The world saw it on that debate stage a few weeks ago: an almost 80-year-old Donald Trump talking about audience size is not what we have in this situation need. moment,” he said, before citing Trump-era officials who have labeled the former president as dangerous.
“As much as Governor Walz just accused Donald Trump of being an agent of chaos, Donald Trump actually brought stability to the world and he did that by establishing effective deterrence,” Vance responded.
The immigration debate
On immigration, Vance sharpened his attack: “American citizens’ lives have been destroyed by Kamala Harris’ open border… it’s a shame.” And in an apparent attempt to drive a wedge between Harris and Walz, Vance said he agreed with Walz on some of the possible solutions to immigration problems. “I think you want to solve this problem, but I don’t think Kamala Harris does,” he said.
Walz’s response: “Donald Trump had four years, he had four years to do this, and he promised America how easy it would be: ‘I’ll build you a big, beautiful wall and Mexico will pay for it.’ Less than two percent of that wall was built, and Mexico didn’t pay a dime.”
And during a lengthy discussion about the economy, Walz noted Vance’s habit of summarily dismissing pundit criticism of Republican Party policies. “Economists cannot be trusted, science cannot be trusted, national security people cannot be trusted. Look, when you become president, you don’t have all the answers. Donald Trump believes so. My pro tip of the day is: If you need heart surgery, listen to the people at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota, not Donald Trump.”
But after challenging free trade advocates for underestimating the economic displacement that globalism would cause, Vance concluded of the experts that “they were wrong, and for the first time in a generation, Donald Trump had the wisdom and courage to say : that bipartisan consensus: ‘we don’t do it anymore.'”
When they inevitably get a word cloud out of the transcript of the debatethe words “Harris” and “Trump” will certainly dominate. That’s what voters choose between, not these two.
Vance handled himself skillfully. But the Harris campaign’s strategy has been to ensure that swing voters who broke for Joe Biden four years ago are reminded of what they didn’t like about Trump, aiming to find all the negatives Trump can attribute to Harris to overwhelm. That strategy was well executed by Walz last night.
And fortunately, we only have to wait another five weeks or so — with a few more lawsuits — to see if Harris’s goal has been achieved.
Jon Keller
