Welcome to The Campaign Moment, your guide to the biggest moments in the 2024 election, including when politicians occasionally agree on some things.
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The big moment
Sen. JD Vance (R-Ohio) and Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz (D) took part Tuesday night in the only scheduled vice-presidential debate of the 2024 election — and what for now looks to be the final debate, period.
It was a chance for the long-unpopular Vance to try to right the ship, while it presented Republicans with a chance to lay a glove on Walz in ways they’ve thus far failed to. And of course, the name of the game was not so much building themselves up as helping their tickets.
So how did they do? And what were the key moments?
Below, my takeaways.
1. Walz struggled, Vance tried to recast himself
Before the debate, word leaked out of Vice President Kamala Harris’s campaign that they were worried about Walz as a debater. It could have been dismissed as lowering expectations, but they clearly had at least some reason to worry.
It wasn’t great. And Vance appeared much more comfortable in his own skin, pitching a more broadly acceptable version of himself than what we’ve seen so far in his political career.
Walz began with a strained answer on the Iran-Israel tensions, repeatedly stumbling over his words at a time when many voters were first being introduced to him. He often looked down right after giving an answer. He seemed nervous, especially early on.
Even when delivering attacks on former president Donald Trump and Vance, Walz often didn’t explain what he was talking about in a way that was intelligible to casual viewers. (For instance, he cited Vance saying he would “create stories” about migrants in Springfield, Ohio, without saying he was talking about Vance’s defense of his false claims about Haitian migrants eating Springfield residents’ pets.)
It was especially awkward for Walz, though, when the debate turned to his apparently false statements about being in Hong Kong during the 1989 Tiananmen Square protests in Beijing.
Walz tried to talk around the question and focus on his biography and work in China, before trying to get past the question with, “I’ve not been perfect, and I’m a knucklehead at times.”
But moderator Margaret Brennan wanted a firmer answer.
“All I said on this was — is I got there that summer and misspoke on this. So I will just — that’s what I’ve said,” Walz said.
When things turned silent, Walz added that he was in the area during democracy protests and added, “And from that I learned a lot of what needed to be in governance.” (Walz appears to have traveled to Hong Kong several months after the Beijing protests ended in a massacre.)
That should be one of the lasting moments of the debate.
Vance’s performance was mostly confident, and he seemed to take care to appear as a relatively standard-issue conservative Republican — to borrow a phrase from George W. Bush, a “compassionate conservative.” That included repeatedly emphasizing empathy — in contrast to the culture warrior he has fashioned himself as in recent years with his comments on “childless cat ladies” and the like. Vance even seemed to suggest Obamacare was working (while suggesting Trump had somehow saved it, despite failing in his efforts to replace the health-care law).
Whether this has an impact on the popularity gap between the two, we’ll have to see.
2. Vance tried to massage the abortion issue
Perhaps no issue has troubled the Republican ticket like abortion, which has swung significantly in Democrats’ direction since the Supreme Court in 2022 overturned Roe v. Wade. Trump has strained to avoid taking specific positions, saying it should be a state issue and trying to leave it at that.
And Vance’s handling of it really drove that home. Vance went for a moderate tone, without going into too many details.
Vance cited a woman he knew who was in an abusive relationship who said that an abortion likely saved her life.
He added that “as a Republican who proudly wants to protect innocent life in this country, who proudly wants to protect the vulnerable … my party — we’ve got to do so much better of a job at earning the American people’s trust back on this issue where they, frankly, just don’t trust us.”
But rather than moderate on abortion, Vance pitched policies that make having children easier.
When pressed to square his comments about winning back trust with his past hard-line abortion stance, Vance claimed, “I never supported a national ban.” He said he just wanted a “minimum national standard.” But Vance also described himself in recent years as “100% Pro-Life.”
3. Vance wouldn’t let go of the Haitian migrants issue
One moment where Vance might have gotten a little over his skis was when the topic turned to the Haitian migrants in Springfield.
Vance and Trump have spun a baseless tale about the Haitian migrants stealing and eating pets, and Walz broached it early in the debate. But Walz didn’t go into detail or really say what the claim was.
Vance, though, repeatedly sought to litigate the issue and defend his comments and his focus on problems brought on by migrants, even when he could have turned to other things and when the question posed to him was about Congress’s role on the border.
When Brennan tried to conclude the segment by noting that the Haitian migrants are legal ones with temporary protected status, Vance again wouldn’t let it go. He accused Brennan of fact-checking — which CBS said before the debate that it wouldn’t do — and dove into the technical details of immigration status.
“The rules were that you guys weren’t going to fact-check,” Vance said. (Vance hadn’t specifically called the Haitian migrants “illegal,” but he has in the past.)
Ultimately, when Vance and Walz continued to argue about the point, their microphones were shut off. Again, a moment that will live on.
Americans believe Trump’s and Vance’s claims about Springfield are false by a margin of 2-1, and Vance could easily have skirted the issue. It probably would have passed viewers by. But he made the exchange a centerpiece of the debate.
4. It was a remarkably civil debate
Running mates are often tasked with being attack-dogs for their tickets. And both Vance and Walz got their licks in as the debate wore on — including a testy exchange on democracy and the Jan. 6, 2021, attack at the end.
But it was also a remarkably substance-focused and largely civil debate.
One of Walz’s most interesting strategies was in not so much attacking Vance, but in casting him as someone who might actually be reasonable — in contrast to Trump.
“I believe Sen. Vance wants to solve this,” Walz said of immigration, “but by standing with Donald Trump and not working together to find a solution, it becomes a talking point.”
After Vance’s comment on abortion, Walz responded: “I agree with a lot of what Senator Vance said about what’s happening. His running mate, though, does not. And that’s the problem.”
Walz also repeatedly cited Vance’s past strong criticisms of Trump and suggested he knows better about his running mate.
“Senator Vance has said that there’s a climate problem,” Walz said. “In the past, Donald Trump called it a hoax and then joked that these things would make more beachfront property.”
It was notable that Walz would suggest Vance isn’t actually that bad, given Vance’s high unpopularity. But the name of the game seemed to be defining Trump rather than Vance — pitching Trump as too extreme and unwieldy even for his running mate.
Vance also said he agreed Walz wanted to solve the country’s immigration problems, and he largely passed on opportunities to drive home Walz’s less-resounding moments, including on Hong Kong.
It seemed both candidates believed the debate was unlikely to move the needle too much in the race, and the name of the game was in pitching their own competencies and not getting tripped up in angry exchanges.
“I’ve enjoyed tonight’s debate, and I think there was a lot of commonality here,” Walz said. “And I’m sympathetic to misspeaking on things.”
“Me too, man,” Vance responded.
5. Walz landed a moment on Jan. 6
Toward the end of the debate, Walz had some of his strongest moments, and they related to the attack on the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.
Vance compared Jan. 6 to Democrats’ past claims about Russian interference, saying this “has been going on for a long time, and if we want to say that we need to respect the results of the election, I’m on board.”
Walz took the cue to press Vance on whether Trump actually lost the 2020 election, and Vance avoided the question by talking about the Biden administration’s efforts to crack down on covid misinformation.
“January 6th was not Facebook ads,” Walz shot back, citing Russian efforts to help Trump in 2016. Walz added: “That is a damning non-answer.”
It was indeed tough to see how Vance squared his emphasis on respecting election results with Trump’s many false claims about voter fraud, which Trump continues to focus on to this day. And Walz drove that home.
Walz added of Vance’s predecessor as Trump’s VP nominee: “When Mike Pence made that decision to certify that election, that’s why Mike Pence isn’t on this stage.”
