JD Vance turned in an excellent performance last night. He was the most coherent and, I think, the most likable of any of the four candidates who have taken the debate stage this cycle. In comparison, Tim Walz presented a sad spectacle. He got off to a terrible start, visibly nervous and largely incoherent. He got a little stronger as the evening went on, but the damage was done. And his “I am a knucklehead” will go down in presidential debate annals.
But since people don’t care much about vice presidents, the real targets in the debate were Donald Trump and Kamala Harris. Vance’s mission was not to outshine Walz–a low bar–but to seize every opportunity to remind voters that on the economy, the border and international peace, things were better under Trump. Also, to call Harris on the absurd pretense that she has no responsibility for he last three and a half years, and rather is a fresh face running on a platform of “joy.” Vance succeeded in these missions as well as he could.
It was disappointing that the moderators had no interest in Walz’s record as Governor of Minnesota. Vance and his team had been armed with data demonstrating that Walz’s tenure (like that of the Biden/Harris administration) has been a comprehensive failure. But they didn’t have a good opportunity to use it. Instead, Walz got away with misrepresenting conditions in his home state. He suggested that Minnesota had taken effective action to address the high cost of housing and child care, while in fact, both housing and child care are unusually expensive in Minnesota, due to our state’s liberal policies. And Walz flat-out lied about the abortion law that he signed into effect. Another whopper was his claim that in the last two years, Minnesota farmers have witnessed both a “500 year drought” and a “500 year flood.” This was sheer fantasy; Walz just made it up. He is unusually dishonest for a politician.
The conventional wisdom is that vice presidential debates don’t have much importance, and in general I think that is true. But the election this year is almost unbelievably close. Polls in every swing state show the race within a point or two, and sometimes a dead heat. While polls are never perfect, I doubt that they will be off systematically this year as they sometimes have been in the past. The era when polls consistently underestimated Republican strength is over. So I think the race really is this close. In that context, the small nudge in the GOP’s direction that likely came out of last night’s debate could turn out to be significant after all.
I was on the Bolt Report on Sky News Australia immediately after the debate ended. I will post that interview once it is available, although I think it may only be audio.
UPDATE: Here is the Bolt Report segment:
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