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Vance and Walz bring a dose of civility to a heated election campaign: From the Politics Desk

Vance and Walz bring a dose of civility to a heated election campaign: From the Politics Desk

Welcome to a post-debate edition of the From the Politics Desk newsletter, breaking down all the action from today’s showdown between Ohio Sen. JD Vance and Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz.

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A nice evening in the Midwest: Vance and Walz agree to disagree in a largely civil debate

By Henry J. Gomez and Allan Smith

NEW YORK (AP) — 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 solve the problem, but questioned whether Vice President Kamala Harris really does.

Walz agreed with “a lot of what Senator Vance has said” about Americans not trusting Republicans on abortion. Vance said he and Walz “probably agree that we need to do a better job of combating gun violence.” And Walz acknowledged that he “agrees” with much of what Vance said about decades-long trade policies that allowed manufacturing jobs to move overseas.

On and on it went Tuesday night in the debate between Walz and Vance, where they met in person for the first time and delivered a prime example of “Midwest Nice”: feints at consensus that served as rhetorical fig leaves that were often too cutting, if even politely presented words gave way to attacks.

The running mates — Vance, a right-wing Republican, Walz, a progressive Democrat who wants to appeal to moderates — used the words “agree,” “agree” or “I disagree” more than a dozen times to describe their common ground to describe share.

With early voting underway in several states and Election Day exactly five weeks away, Tuesday’s face-off hosted by CBS News was an opportunity for Vance and Walz to make their campaigns’ closing arguments. Unless there is a change from Trump, who has resisted debating Harris a second time, it could be the last widely televised primetime moment of the race.

But a television audience expecting to see ferocious attack dogs from the vice president instead saw a few pooches seeking affection. The debate was reminiscent in some ways of the cordial conflict 24 years ago between vice presidential contenders Dick Cheney and Joe Lieberman. Cheney, as hated by the left then as Vance is today, escaped scrutiny. He and Republican George W. Bush won the first of two terms in office in the fall.

Read more from Henry and Allan →

Key takeaways from the Vance-Walz debate

By Sahil Kapur

It wasn’t really about Vance or Walz: It was immediately clear that the two prominent politicians on stage were merely proxies for their peers, using the questions as a vehicle to attack their top rivals and, on many occasions, going out of their way not to attack each other personally.

Walz used his first question about Iran’s attacks on Israel to target Trump’s age: “An almost 80-year-old Donald Trump talking about crowds is not what we need at this moment.” He then attacked “Donald” worldwide Trump’s capricious leadership.”

Vance responded: “Who has been vice president for the last three and a half years? And the answer is your vice president, not mine. Donald Trump has consistently made the world safer.”

Economic data under the microscope: Walz brought an argument to attack Trump over the economy, which is one of the GOP candidate’s strongest issues in the polls.

“Kamala Harris’s first day was Donald Trump’s failure on Covid that led to the collapse of our economy. “We were already in a manufacturing recession before Covid – about 10 million people were unemployed, the largest percentage since the Great Depression,” Walz said.

Vance responded by attacking Biden and Harris’ economic record as “cruel” and defending Trump.

“Honestly, Tim, I think you got a tough job here because you got to play Whac-A-Mole,” he said, accusing Walz of “having to act” as if Trump’s economy had improved wages and reduced inflation.

Vance defends his turn on previous criticism of Trump: Vance was well-prepared with an answer when asked to explain his past criticism of Trump. Among other things, he said he could be “America’s Hitler” and criticized Trump’s economic record as president.

“Sometimes, of course, I disagree with the president, but I have also been very open about saying that I was wrong about Donald Trump. First, I was wrong because I believed some of the media reports that turned out to be dishonest fabrications of his story,” Vance said, entering territory he and his campaign have discussed in media interviews and responses to reports.

Read more takeaways from Sahil →

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