Tuesday night’s debate between Ohio Senator J.D. Vance and Minnesota Governor Tim Walz was a restrained affair with few fireworks as each vice presidential candidate discussed matters of policy rather than attack each other.
Was there a winner? That might depend on what camp the voters were in to begin with. As Nancy Sims, a political science lecturer at the University of Houston, observed post debate: most debates fail to change anyone’s mind.
Perhaps the biggest departure in manner was Vance who remained even keeled rather than his online and media appearance persona of hurling insults and manufactured stories. Walz remained his affable self although he made some missteps along the way.
“Downright polite. They were being civil to each other,” said Sims.
The diplomatic approach both candidates took starkly contrasted with the dynamic that was center stage in September during the presidential debate between Republican nominee former president Donald Trump and Democratic nominee Vice President Kamala Harris.
There were points within the roughly 90-minute back-and-forth where both challengers even indicated they agreed on what the other mentioned and a moment where Vance empathetically apologized to Walz after the governor said his son witnessed a shooting while he was playing volleyball.
While there were snapshots of slight contention, notably, Vance provided what Walz described as a “damning non answer” when asked to acknowledge that his running mate lost the 2020 election, the candidates’ disagreements — and sometimes agreements — largely centered on policy and issues.
Sims said this was the other significant difference in the discourse between Walz and Vance and Harris and Trump. “They had some substantive issue discussions,” Sims noted. “I think they held their own on policy.”
Many of the high voter-interest issues their running mates were tasked to touch on in September resurfaced in the series of questions CBS moderators Norah O-Donnell and Margaret Brennan asked the two vice presidential hopefuls.
These topics included foreign relations, immigration, abortion, climate change, the economy and election integrity.
Although Vance, unlike Trump, did not use the debate stage as another platform to perpetuate widely debunked claims he made about Haitian migrants eating dogs and cats in Springfield, Ohio — he did continue to tie chaos to those coming across the border illegally.
The senator crowned Harris as the culprit, describing her “open border” policies as the real “family separation policy” contending that immigrant children were being sex trafficked or used as drug trafficking mules.
Vance’s link between criminal activity and undocumented immigrants comes amid continued research that disproves a relationship between the two and indicates that those who enter the country illegally are less likely to commit crimes than Americans born in the country.
“The current claims around Haitians are really beyond false or misleading or racist comments that connect immigrants to crime and chaos,” said Dr. Julie Sweetland, a sociolinguist and a senior adviser at the Frameworks Institute. “It is that, but it’s escalating that rhetoric not just to other or to [cause] fear, but for disgust. It paints the alleged wrongdoers as inhumane or perhaps nonhuman.
Walz did criticize Vance’s comments about immigrants saying they worked to “dehumanize” and “vilify” other human beings. The governor seemed to take a page out of more conservatively-affiliated religious Republicans, quoting scripture from the Book of Matthew in the Bible.
“To the least amongst us, you do unto me,” Walz said. “I think that is true of most Americans. They simply want order.”
Walz then indicated that support for the bipartisan border bill that Trump-backed congress members ultimately killed would create security and allow for the country to “keep our dignity in how we treat people.”
“[Walz] is using a lot more of the antidote to otherism, emphasizing people’s shared faith, common destiny and shared humanity,” Sweetland added.
Remnants of Walz’s approach to immigration were seen in his points related to the status of reproductive health care. Jeronimo Cortina, a professor of political science at the University of Houston, said where Republicans’ winning issue is immigration, Democrats’ is abortion.
“I think that that’s one of the most important topics that Democrats have available to them,” Cortina said. “To clearly highlight how Republicans have — one way or the other — curtailed reproductive rights for women. It’s one of the strongest points Democrats have to their advantage.”
Walz used his coined “mind your own damn business” catchphrase when the topic came up Tuesday night and reinforced the Harris campaign’s support to reinstate the constitutional right to abortion.
Texas was at the center of his arguments for access to this care across the country, as Walz brought up the case of Amanda Zurawski.who nearly died from sepsis after being denied an abortion when her water broke at 18 weeks.
Walz also took the opportunity to recognize the death of Amber Thurman, a Georgia resident, who died driving back from trying to get the care she needed in North Carolina.
Vance reiterated Trump’s policy stance of leaving it up to the individual states to decide where they land on access to abortion. The senator did indicate that Republicans needed to do better to regain “the trust of the American people” on this issue by instituting more public policy measures to assist families.
He drew on his real-life experience of growing up in a working-class area of Ohio where many women had unplanned pregnancies and chose to terminate them. Vance called out a friend he declined to name, who he said aborted a pregnancy because she was in an abusive relationship at the time.
This slightly softened stance on abortion comes on the heels of female politicians on both sides of the aisle criticizing Vance for alienating himself from female voters after making what many perceive as misogynistic remarks.
Vance previously described the country as being run by a “bunch of childless cat ladies” who were “miserable.” Since these remarks resurfaced, the likes of former South Carolina governor Nikki Haley and international pop star Taylor Swift, alongside many other notable female figures, have registered their criticism.
Walz got caught up in his comments when asked to explain reported discrepancies between claims that he was in Hong Kong during the Tiananmen Square protests. He described himself as being a “knucklehead at times” who misspoke.
The governor fumbled a reply when he said he had “befriended school shooters,” not school shooting victims while discussing gun violence.
Tuesday night’s debate marked what is likely to be the only vice presidential debate before Election Day on November 5. Since September’s showdown, Trump and Harris have not agreed on a follow-up debate
Unlike in the Trump-Harris debate, microphones did not start out muted and were only put on mute in one instance when Vance and Walz attempted to talk over Brennan. There were no opening statements, and there was no live audience in the crowd.
The two candidates were already situated behind their respective podiums. That did not stop them from what appeared to be a jovial exchange at the start of the debate, accompanied by a friendly handshake, where both candidates met in the middle.
