Republican Sen. JD Vance of Ohio and Democratic Gov. Tim Walz of Minnesota faced off Tuesday night in what is expected to be the only debate between the two vice presidential nominees and, most likely, the last debate of the presidential election.
Voting has already begun in 20 states in a contest that polls show is essentially a toss-up. Their debate, which lasted nearly two hours, was far more civil than last month’s clash between Vice President Kamala Harris and former President Trump.
Here are some takeaways:
Stability is on the ballot
The debate took place on a day when it felt like the world was falling apart. Iran showered missiles on Israel, risking an even broader regional conflict in one of the most volatile corners of the world. Residents living in the aftermath of Hurricane Helene were running out of water and other essentials as authorities counted the deaths, which have exceeded 150. East Coast port workers went on strike, threatening the nation’s economy and supply chain.
Both candidates appealed to the anxiety on voters’ minds, with a recognition that choosing which candidate is likeliest to calm the waters will be a subjective decision for many of them.
Walz contrasted “a nearly 80-year-old Donald Trump talking about crowd sizes” who flatters autocrats with Harris’ “steady leadership.”
Vance downplayed Trump’s volatility, making the case that Trump made the world around him less dangerous and that Harris, as a sitting vice president, bears responsibility for the current chaos.
“Criticize Donald Trump’s tweets,” he said. “But effective, smart diplomacy and peace through strength is how you bring stability back to a very broken world.”
Vance tries to soften his image
Vance came into the debate less popular than Walz, especially with female voters. But the controversial vice presidential nominee of the campaign trail, the guy who mocked “childless cat ladies” in a 2021 interview, was replaced by a toned-down candidate who attempted to soften his image.
Nowhere was that clearer than in his discussion of abortion rights, one of his and Trump’s biggest political vulnerabilities. He spoke in personal terms about a friend who had an abortion and said that he loved her and that his party needed to do better “at earning the American people’s trust back on this issue where they, frankly, just don’t trust us.”
“Donald Trump and I are endeavoring to do as a Republican Party, to be pro-family in the fullest sense of the word,” he said, promising help on fertility treatments and housing affordability.
He tried to lower the volume on many of Trump’s most controversial policies. Instead of attacking immigrants as criminals or invaders, as Trump often does on the campaign trail, he spoke about Trump’s deportation plans in economic terms. He avoided repeating Trump’s false claim that Haitians in Springfield, Ohio, were stealing cats and dogs to eat them and instead argued that eliminating the lowest-wage jobs would reduce migrants’ incentives to come and boost wages for native-born Americans.
“We don’t want to blame immigrants for higher housing prices, but we do want to blame Kamala Harris for letting in millions of illegal aliens into this country,” he said.
Vance also attempted to recast Trump’s role in encouraging the violent mob that stormed the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, falsely claiming that Trump was simply seeking a peaceful protest and made no effort to thwart the peaceful transfer of power.
Vance’s tonal shift was an attempt not just to rehabilitate his own image but to help his ticket appeal to the last remaining undecided voters, who are likely to be more moderate than the base supporters who cheer him and Trump at rallies.
Walz argued that he and Trump cannot undue the damage by changing the rhetoric. Women have still lost their reproductive rights; children are in danger when they walk to school in Springfield because of Trump’s and false claims; Trump still refuses to accept he lost the 2020 election and Vance has declined to condemn his attempts to keep power.
“140 police officers were beaten at the Capitol that day, some with the American flag,” Walz said of Jan. 6. “Where is the firewall if he knows he can do anything, including taking an election?”
Are experts any good?
One of the most striking moments of the night came when the two men debated the role of experts.
Democrats have criticized Republicans for dismissing experts and science during the Trump era. Walz said he was keeping track.
Paraphrasing Trump and Vance, he said, “Economists don’t know — can’t be trusted. Science can’t be trusted. National security folks can’t be trusted. Pro tip of the day: If you need heart surgery, listen to the people at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minn., not Donald Trump.”
Instead of disputing that they had attacked authorities, Vance took up the cause against them, arguing that they had misled the country about outsourcing manufacturing jobs overseas.
“Those same experts for 40 years said that if we ship our manufacturing base off to China” it would create cheaper goods and make the middle class strong, he said. “They lied.”
Walz, who is going after the same white working-class voters as Vance, said he agreed, and saw the same tragedy unfold in Minnesota. He blamed the decline of manufacturing on loss of union clout.
Walz eases into the dad vibes
Walz, like Vance, was introducing himself to many voters who probably knew nothing about him. Unlike Vance, who has been doing media interviews and looked more comfortable, Walz appeared uneasy at the start of the debate.
But after a few minutes, he mostly settled in and began to define himself as a Midwestern everyman. “I’m of an age where my shotgun was in my car so I could pheasant hunt after football practice,” said Walz, explaining why he changed his views on gun control. “That’s not where we live today.”
Still, he stumbled with his words a few times, saying at one point that he made friends with school shooters when he appeared to mean the victims of shooters.
Walz also eased into the political tradition of not answering questions, declining to say, for example, whether he’d support a preemptive strike by Israel on Iran. Vance did answer that question, sort of — he said it was up to Israel — but also dodged topics, never answering when asked if Trump lost the 2020 election.
The guy on stage with me is fine. It’s your boss who is horrible
The candidates were remarkably friendly toward each other, insisting fairly often that they agreed with their opponent on a central issue or believed they could at least find common ground. Walz’s main beef was with Trump while Vance had his problems with Harris.
“Sen. Vance has said that there’s a climate problem in the past. Donald Trump called it a hoax and then joked that these things would make more beachfront property to be able to invest in,” Walz said when they were discussing climate change.
When the topic turned to gun violence, Vance said, “And I think that Gov. Waltz and I actually probably agree that we need to do better on this. The question is, just, how do we actually do it?”
Even on the topic of immigration, Vance told Walz, “I think you want to solve this problem, but I don’t think that Kamala Harris does.”
It was hard to reconcile all that happy talk with the Trump-Harris debates or the nasty ads. In truth, the two men have sharp disagreements on climate change, abortion rights, gun control, immigration, taxes, housing and almost everything else they discussed Tuesday night.
Part of the relative civility is explained by the odd dynamic of vice presidential debates. Few voters make their decision based on the running mate. Vice presidents don’t dictate policy. They are there to attack the other team and assure voters that, in case of emergency, they can be trusted to run the country.