Who Won the Shockingly Normal VP Debate? Here’s What Happened

From CBS News:

And the civility worked on the CBS poll respondents:

And from CNN:

As I explain in my new post, Vance probably won the debate, but Walz did fine, too. And the civility was the most notable part, not that any of it will change that many minds:

Yes, there will be some MAGA zealots who will be angry at [Vance] 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.

You can read the rest here.

I just rounded up the most notable things Trump said (or complained about) on Truth Social during the VP debate — including his objections to Walz taking notes, his attacks on the moderators and CBS, and his celebrations of himself. See them all here.

From my instant review of the debate:

Trump’s method has been famously summarized as malevolence tempered by incompetence. Vance is a picture of a future in which Republican authoritarianism is not tempered by incompetence. That future, fortunately, has not yet arrived.

Read the rest here.

From Walz:

And then from Vance:

During an exchange on January 6, Walz asked Vance directly if Trump lost the 2020 election. Vance did not answer him. “Tim, I’m focused on the future. Did Kamala Harris censor Americans from speaking their mind in the wake of the 2020 COVID situation?” Vance said. Walz responded, “That is a damning non-answer.”

And the Harris campaign is already highlighting it:

The question to Vance notes his defense of Trump’s attempted autogolpe in 2020 and asks if he will do it again. He refuses to say he won’t challenge the next election, saying he wants to focus on the future, even though the question was about the future. He claims Trump did nothing more than call for peaceful discussion of the election, when in fact he was trying to overturn the republic.

“We ought to debate out differences,” he says smarmily, in defense of an attempt to cancel an election outcome.

Walz’s best moment came when he turned to Vance and asked him if agrees Trump lost the 2020 election. Vance didn’t even pretend to address the question. It captures Vance’s entire embrace of authoritarianism to facilitate his rise to power, throwing in with a candidate he once likened to America’s Hitler before deciding that he wanted to be on the side of the authoritarian.

Vance was asked about his past comments on the 2020 election certification when he said he would’ve submitted slates of alternate electors, something advocated for by Trump and his allies in the scheme to overturn the presidential results. But the senator would not promise to accept the results of the 2024 election and pivoted to the subject of censorship, claiming that it poses a bigger threat to the country than fears about election integrity.

“Kamala Harris is engaged in censorship at an industrial scale. She did it during COVID. She’s done it over a number of other issues and that, to me, is a much bigger threat to democracy than what Donald Trump said when he said protesters should peacefully protest on January 6,” he said.

After brushing off the January 6 insurrection as having nothing to do with Donald Trump, Vance also brushed off the opportunity to agree that he will accept the results as certified by governors, as required by the Electoral Count Reform Act. He couldn’t, of course, since Donald Trump would have a conniption fit.

We’re already seeing focus-group assessments declare that Vance is “winning” the debate, and that judgment could simply reflect his superior fluidity as a speaker. If a debate coach were scoring the contest, Vance probably would be the winner on points. This does not translate to an actual debate “win” in terms of changing the dynamics of the presidential contest, or even mean it will affect that contest at all. Given what we know about veep debates, the odds are very high this debate will in retrospect be viewed as a pure draw.

Times columnist Ross Douthat thinks Vance is “making a case for Trump’s record far more effectively than Trump has ever been capable of doing.” He also thinks his media experience is paying off:

I think one question raised by this performance so far is why the Harris campaign has basically kept Walz away from one-on-one interviews while Vance has been out there dealing with hostile questions from Day 1 of his candidacy. It feels as though the Minnesota governor would have benefited immensely from spending some more time being grilled on the Sunday shows before he was sent out to do battle with a Republican vice-presidential nominee, who, whatever his other weaknesses, clearly knows how to debate.

Asked directly if a second Trump administration would protect people with pre-existing conditions if they repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act, Vance dodged the question. Walz, however, laid out exactly what life in America was like before the ACA became law. (Some of us remember what that was like. Younger voters may not.)

Insurance companies had the broad leeway to provide shoddy, expensive coverage — or deny coverage altogether — if someone had survived cancer or been pregnant or had, say, migraines. Walz’s descriptive answer was among his sharpest of the night, as Vance struggled to assure voters that the Trump health-care plan would not mean rampant discrimination and suffering for millions of people.

J.D. Vance’s response on health care was slick but insanely dishonest. He tried to claim that Donald Trump saved Obamacare. Trump tried and failed to repeal Obamacare. He never developed a replacement. When he was president of the United States, 3 million more Americans lost their health insurance.

Vance has said Trump wants to roll back regulations that force insurers to make insurance affordable to people who are old and sick, so that the young and healthy can pay less.

Vance dodged follow-up questions about how he would ensure people with preexisting conditions would stay covered if he rolled back those regulations. The reason is that Trump’s plan would not do that.

Defending Trump’s notorious “concepts of a plan” on health care, Vance uncharacteristically rambled through comments about Trump trying to be bipartisan on the subject to angels-dancing-on-a-pin differences in pharmaceutical prices to a very odd claim that Trump saved Obamacare. He never really explained what he and Trump wanted to do, and Walz handed him his ass in a response.

In a conversation about ballooning housing costs in the U.S., Vance proposed building houses on federal land — despite federal land largely being located in the West, far from population centers. Vance also suggested that Trump’s housing policy is actually an immigration policy. He claimed that undocumented migrants have driven up housing costs and deporting them would drive costs down.

Another Democratic operative texted me with a view that I’ve been picking up from plenty of people close to that party’s senior ranks tonight: real frustration that Vance is a smooth performer and not being put on defense more over his more extreme views (remember “childless cat ladies?”). This Democrat’s view: “It is scary that a sitting U.S. senator, a VP candidate, can put on such a show and lie about the Trump record with a straight face. It is revisionist history and dangerous. He’s slick. He’s a professional sugar-coater.”

In perhaps the most shocking development of this unusual debate, Tim Walz was told his time for answering a question had expired and he apologized for running over. When’s the last time that happened in a presidential or vice-presidential debate? Stolen time is considered pure gold!

I asked a top Democratic strategist what he made of the debate during the commercial break. His take: “This debate just reminds people of what politics COULD be like if Trump was off the scene. What it was like before he came down the escalator (and what it might be like if he’s taken away on a conveyor belt.) It could be a debate on policy instead of a divisive debate about personalities.” He didn’t say it, but that, of course, is the undercurrent of Kamala Harris’s whole pitch.

In response to a question about gun violence in America, Vance proposed increasing security at schools across the country. “We have to make the doors lock better. We have to make the doors stronger. We’ve gotta make the windows stronger,” he said.

When posed the same question, Walz pushed back on that thinking. “Do you want your schools hardened to look like a fort — when we know there are countries around the world that their children aren’t practicing these types of drills,” he said.

As he was explaining why his position changed on how to address school shootings. Presumably he misspoke?

J.D. Vance has repeatedly referred to Kamala Harris as a “border czar” with no objection from Tim Walz. If he does it again it would be helpful for Walz to note this is a fake title made up by Donald Trump that in no way describes her role in the administration’s immigration policies.

Republicans are loving the debate so far. One senior GOP aide left astounded by the first half of the debate. “Uh, It’s completely one-sided,” they texted of Vance’s performance.

To Ben/David’s point, what this actually feels a bit like is the Tim Kaine–Mike Pence debate of 2016. All of the talk was about Trump, except when it was occasionally on the top of the Democratic ticket. The main performance-based takeaway that night was that the Republican candidate was smoother than expected (Vance is a veteran of the punditry circuit, Pence an ex-radio host), whereas the Democrat was a bit less steady than his voters would like … and the next morning everyone returned to their focus on the top of the ticket and basically forgot the debate ever happened.

The back-and-forth over abortion was in some ways a microcosm of the entire debate. Vance is much sharper, faster, and more clever than Walz. He has more facts at his disposal and marshals them more coherently. Vance used these skills to dodge and weave, distancing himself from Donald Trump’s record on ending Roe v. Wade.

Walz’s response was more flustered and choppy. He did get across the basic idea that the Democrats support women’s rights and Republicans don’t. I think that idea would probably sink in for whatever voters may not understand the policies of the two tickets. So Walz may well “win” the exchange, even if by any traditional debate metric, Vance ran circles around him.

As Senator Vance argued that the GOP needed to regain Americans’ trust on abortion, Governor Walz brought up one story that may make it difficult for voters to do as Vance wants. Amber Thurman died in the state of Georgia after a hospital neglected to perform a medically necessary abortion when she needed it. The story, which was originally reported by ProPublica, went viral and quickly became a talking point for Vice-President Kamala Harris and for Walz. A medical-review board in Georgia determined that the state’s draconian abortion ban led to Thurman’s death — making it a difficult story for Republicans to ignore or refute.

In a pretty sharp departure from Donald Trump’s claim that everyone is happy with “sending it back to the states” on abortion policy, J.D. Vance, more identified with abortion restrictions than his Boss, admitted the American people don’t trust his party on the subject. He called for an effort by the GOP to “re-earn” that trust, and become a party that supports women who are pregnant.

CBS asked Walz about a CNN report saying that he falsely claimed to have been in China during the democracy protests of 1989. Walz replied by reciting his biography, seemingly having prepared for a question implying he was some kind of Chinese agent, as conservatives have wildly charged. When pressed on the discrepancy, Walz nervously stated that he “misspoke.” Not a very effective response.

Senator J.D. Vance didn’t repeat the lie that Haitian immigrants are eating cats and dogs in Springfield, Ohio. He pivoted to another falsehood instead, claiming that the Haitian community consists of illegal immigrants who have completely overwhelmed Springfield. The truth is that they’re asylum seekers who are in the country legally — and Vance’s rhetoric put them in danger, as his opponent, Governor Tim Walz, later pointed out. Walz said that Ohio’s Republican governor “had to send state law enforcement to escort kindergartners to school,” and said also that, “By standing with Donald Trump and not working together to find a solution, it becomes a talking point, and when it becomes a talking point like this, we dehumanize and villainize other human beings.” But the humanity of immigrants does not appear to concern Vance very much.

After J.D. Vance denounced economic globalization and the bipartisan “experts” who promoted it, Tim Walz noted that he was “a union guy,” and agreed it was a mistake to allow outsourcing of manufacturing jobs. Walz did not, however, endorse the massive new tariffs Trump is proposing, so there’s still something to debate.

After CBS moderators fact-checked J.D. Vance’s incorrect characterization of Haitian immigrants at the end of an exchange about immigration, Vance cut in and tried to fact-check the fact-checkers. But Norah O’Donnell was having none of it, and promptly cut Vance’s mic — as well as Walz’s.

During an exchange on immigration, Vance did not explicitly rule out separating children from their parents. Instead, the senator turned his response into a criticism of Biden-Harris administration, claiming that the government has lost hundreds of thousands of children.

“We have 320,000 children that the Department of Homeland Security has effectively lost. Some of them have been sex-trafficked, some of them, hopefully, are at home with their families. Some of them have been used as drug-trafficking mules,” he said.

Vance continued, “The real family-separation policy in this country is, unfortunately, Kamala Harris’s wide-open Southern border.”

The debate has only begun, but in terms of their civility toward each other and their ability to answer questions and speak in complete sentences, Vance and Walz are like Disraeli and Gladstone as compared to their principals.

Vance does not acknowledge or defend Donald Trump’s belief that climate change is a hoax. Instead he calls for domestic production of clean energy without acknowledging this is what the Biden-Harris administration has done.

At one point, Vance says, “We haven’t built a new nuclear facility in 40 years.” We just this week finalized plans to reopen two new nuclear facilities, at Three Mile island, and in Michigan.

So far he’s called Walz dumb: “A great defense of me and the Administration of fake charges made by an obviously not very bright Governor.”

And complained that he’s writing too much:“Walz is taking so many notes — Never seen a Candidate take more! He needs the notes to keep his brain intact.”

So if you didn’t bother to sign up for a Truth Social account, you’re not missing anything.

Lots of chatter already about Vance’s smooth communication style. It makes a lot of sense if you look at him as a pundit. In some ways, he’s always been most comfortable as a commentator, be it on TV or on podcasts (or on the Senate floor), and that’s been true for years. It’s clearly one reason Trump likes him!

One of the questions the Trump-Vance campaign has to deal with is whether to treat Kamala Harris as a stand-in for Joe Biden or a radical departure from him? In the first question on the Middle East, J.D. Vance twice referred to the “Kamala Harris administration” and didn’t even mention Joe Biden. So it seems like they’re ready to move on.

The first question of the night was on the crisis in the Middle East, specifically the Iranian airstrikes on Israel earlier in the day. The moderator asked Governor Walz if he would approve of a preemptive strike from Israel on Iran. Walz, sounding initially unsteady, reiterated his support for Israel, but focused largely on comparing Trump’s temperament on foreign policy to his running mate Kamala Harris. “”A nearly 80-year-old Donald Trump talking about crowd sizes is not what we need in this moment,” he said.

Vance, appearing more comfortable in this setting, opened his response with his biography, introducing himself to the viewers at home. The Ohio senator attributed the instability in the Middle East to the Biden-Harris administration. Neither candidate directly answered the question.

We’re just one question in, and he’s already called out Margaret Brennan and Norah O’Donnell, posting on Truth Social, “Both young ladies have been extremely biased Anchors!”

Brennan is 44 and O’Donnell is 50.

Not much! Trump posted this weird video filmed on his plane in which he promised to be “fair” in his assessments of the debate, then quickly amended that to “somewhat fair” but “maybe not 100 percent fair”:

Here are the people joining the spin room post-debate for both vice-presidential nominees:

And Triumph:

They exercise in Central Park!

They roll around with Donald Trump Jr.!

CBS will be embedding a QR code on screen in their broadcast (only on CBS) that takes viewers to a website where 20 journalists will be live fact-checking the candidates. That may end up being one journalist for every viewer who makes use of the QR code.

Walz will be attacking him, and Vance will be performing for him:

One of the metrics by which tonight’s debaters will ultimately be judged is how they strike voters as politicians in their own rite. Are they popular or unpopular, and does that add or detract from the strength of the presidential ticket on which they serve?

By any measure, Tim Walz goes into the debate as a more popular pol. Indeed, he has the best “favorability” ratio of any of the four presidential/vice-presidential candidates. According to the FiveThirtyEight polling averages, Walz has a 40 percent favorable/36.5 percent unfavorable rating. Vance meanwhile is at 34.8 percent favorable/45.8 percent unfavorable. Their ticket mates have a pronounced popularity gap as well: Kamala Harris is at 47.5 percent favorable/46.2 percent unfavorable, while Donald Trump is at 42.9 percent favorable/52.6 percent unfavorable.

A favorability advantage does not, to be clear, necessarily mean an advantage in vote share; in 2016, Trump had a decided favorability deficit against Hillary Clinton — though both candidates were “underwater” — and he won anyway, partly because of an Electoral College advantage and partly because he did a lot better than Clinton among voters who disliked both of them (the so-called “double haters”). But Team Trump would definitely like to see Vance’s popularity improve and Walz’s popularity suffer after this debate. Indeed, Vance himself needs that to happen so that he isn’t written off by Republicans as at best a cipher in the race and at worst a millstone making victory more difficult.

Trump and Harris had both agreed to do (separate) interviews for a special edition of the show airing Monday night, but Trump has now backed out, CBS announced earlier today.

Now they’ll air interviews with Harris and Tim Walz that night instead.

The Trump campaign says they never agreed to the interview, which “60 Minutes begged for,” campaign spokesperson Steven Cheung tweeted in response to the CBS announcement. He also suggested live fact-checking was one of the reasons the campaign turned it down:

That was apparently a lie:

I collected some of the highlights from debates past in a post last month, including this ’08 Biden-Palin exchange:

Typically, vice-presidential debates draw significantly lower viewership than presidential debates, as you might guess. In 2000, for example, the debate between Dick Cheney and Joe Lieberman drew just over half the audience won by the first Gore-Bush debate. But there was one exception: In 2008, the Joe Biden–Sarah Palin debate has significantly higher viewership than any of the three Obama-McCain debates, likely reflecting Palin’s novelty and momentary pop-culture status. It was no blowout, but Biden did get in a dig at Palin by comparing a McCain health-care plan to a “bridge to nowhere,” a term Palin had made famous in criticizing a project in Alaska:

You can read the rest of that post here.

Expect a lot of Truth Social commentary from the guy not onstage tonight:

The Walz-Vance debate is being broadcast on CBS and simulcast on all the major networks, including C-SPAN and the cable news channels. You can also stream it on most of those networks’ websites, and via this YouTube link.

CNN reported earlier today that Walz has both exaggerated how many times he’s been to China and may have made up a story about being in Hong Kong when the Tiananmen Square massacre happened on June 4, 1989:

Walz’s claims that he was in Hong Kong during the Tiananmen Square protests have been repeated in media reports. But contemporaneous newspaper reports first resurfaced by the Washington Free Beacon, a conservative news outlet, place Walz in Nebraska around that time. An issue of the Alliance Times-Herald dated May 16, 1989, features a photo of Walz touring a Nebraska National Guard storeroom. In the photo’s caption, the paper notes that Walz “will take over the job” of staffing the storeroom from a retiring guardsman and “will be moving to Alliance,” Nebraska. A separate newspaper article about Walz’s planned trip to China published by a Nebraska-based outlet in April 1989 reported that he planned to travel to China in early August of that year.

When asked by CNN if Walz was in Hong Kong during the Tiananmen Square protests, the Harris campaign was unable to provide evidence to substantiate Walz’s claim.

Though I remain skeptical this or any-vice presidential debate will matter at the polls, earlier today I wrote about what the candidates need to do and what I’ll be watching for — including whether or not J.D. Vance can make a coherent case against Harris and Walz:

[T]here are undoubtedly swing voters who need to hear a coherent case for the kind of change a restoration to power of the 45th president would offer as opposed to the obvious risks.

Unfortunately, Vance brought to the ticket an extraordinary number of provocative statements of his own (particularly involving childless women and pregnant women) that have interfered with his potential as a conservative “populist” able to utter the kind of complete thoughts that don’t require a MAGA decoder ring to understand. Vance needs to address his own logorrhea succinctly and pivot to a clear case that he and Trump represent the best option for those with a sour view of the status quo and the direction of the country. If he can reinforce already strong perceptions that current levels of inflation and immigration are intolerable and that life was indeed better from 2017 until the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, he may be able to sway some of the undecided voters (particularly Trump-skeptic Republicans) still up for grabs. Trump himself seems to alternate constantly between asserting that Harris offers nothing more than a continuation of the Biden administration and proposing a dangerously radical new departure. Vance would be well advised to stick to one main line of attack and drive it home.

You can read the rest here.