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VP Debate Analysis: Return of the Classic Parlance
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Join us as we dissect the exchanges between JD Vance and Tim Walz, where Vance's polished intellect and Walz down-home narratives took center stage.
From Vance's candid admission of the Republicans' struggles with abortion rights to Walz attempts at framing the debate around foreign policy and Trump's global influence. Tune in for an engaging and thorough analysis of a political clash that promises to shed new light on the vice-presidential race.
And welcome back everybody. It is October 2nd 2024. I'm coming to you with post-debate analysis between JD Vance and Tim Walls in the first and only vice-presidential debate of 2024. I must say I thought about naming this episode Return of the Jedi or Return of the Classical Debater. Both men did fairly well stylistically. Vance did much better in terms of being quick on his feet, repartee and subtlety, and this was so relieving to see two people bringing their mind to bear on the topic, speaking with substance, whether you like one party or the other, or you think one man is a better fit for the country than the other. I'm first talking stylistically, in terms of presentation. I really enjoyed seeing two people come to the debate and perform like this.
Speaker 1:Jd Vance was very polished. He was, I think, prepared to have an ABC news debacle like unfolded with Trump and Harris, where it was essentially the two moderators and Harris against Trump. Again, whether you vote Republican or Democrat. That was pretty obvious to just about everybody and CBS, I think, was cautious not to step into that space again. There was one moment where they did fact check Vance and they said they were not going to do that. They were going to let the debaters fact check one another, as should be done in my view. Let the debaters fact-check one another, as should be done in my view. And Vance actually stopped the show and called them on that in a very compelling moment and after that they didn't do it again. It was really you could tell when he was doing this that he had them in some sort of I don't know pause button might be the word, and they looked like they felt caught is the impression that I got. I thought that Vance and Walls were very cordial to one another and even gracious. Again, whether that's performative is another thing, but if you've listened to me before, I actually think those kinds of parlances in our public space, in our politics in particular, are vital for the country to display a kind of congeniality, a certain kind of warmth. Performative or not, it is important because I think it signals to the rest of the country how we ought to be behaving toward one another. So this is nice to see.
Speaker 1:Getting into more of the styles Vance again. He was so sharp and his intelligence came through his obvious debate preparation and history perhaps of formal debate preparation at the Ivy Leagues was shining through. He was even able to get through issues like abortion rights, which the Republicans are not doing well on, and he said some things that really haven't been said before. One is he said we have to earn back America's trust. That Americans don't trust Republicans with this issue right now. That's an acknowledgement. It's a candid kind of acknowledgement that you don't tend to see in our politics anymore. You certainly don't see that from the likes of Donald Trump. He would never say that. His ethos is to never admit any kind of weakness. It's to always double down and hammer down on things. Some people like that. Some people think it's effective. I don't particularly, and so that was quite an interesting moment from Vance. Walls was able to be compelling on abortion rights in certain moments where he brought up specific people by name who had catastrophic events as a result of abortion restrictions. I have not looked into those cases so I can't speak credibly on them, but my point is he came across credibly on those matters.
Speaker 1:With respect to immigration, vance won the night there. Walz was not very compelling, whereas Trump tripped up in his own debate and was not able to hammer the point that Kamala Harris has had three and a half years in office to essentially effect change at the border. Whether you think that she really had that ability or not within the Biden administration, I don't know. But again, stylistically, trump didn't do so well there. He got tripped up on his own ego and goaded out into defending himself. It was an epic debate fail. Vance was not so foolish. He hammered down that Kamala had three and a half years to do something at the border and he kept going that direction. He didn't get sidetracked out into somehow being on the run there. It was pretty effective.
Speaker 1:The night kicked off on foreign policy and the initial presentation that Walls tried to provide was that Donald Trump is this deranged guy who nobody takes seriously and who destabilizes the world. Vance did fairly well in rebutting that and responding to it, where he pointed out that, however you would like to characterize Trump's personality, there were no new wars, there was global stability, prices were down, etc. Etc. And I thought the most important part of the evening had to do with economics. Vance was able to look back on the record from 2020 onward and remark on rising prices, inflation, housing costs, etc. And I noticed something pretty interesting here. Vance started to sound with respect to child care as well as housing costs, etc. And I noticed something pretty interesting here. Vance started to sound with respect to child care as well as housing prices. He started to sound like a classical Democrat where he's saying we want to provide affordable housing I'm paraphrasing there and we want to make sure people have child care, etc.
Speaker 1:This is not something that you would hear a Republican talking about in years past, but I think that this is part and parcel to the populist movement which is. It always moves toward the central tendency. That's what populism means, and so you're starting to see people like Vance and Trump say things that are really typical of a 1970s and 80s Democrat, where they're courting unions, they're talking about childcare, they're talking about things like affordable housing and how the government can amplify that and even provide it. This is not generally something that you would find in the Republican Party of old, and I think another topic for down the road is how Trump ironically turned the Republican party, at least on face value, into the party of the working poor, specifically, obviously, the country working poor. It's a Democrat flip, and the Democrats are being perceived now by many in the country as allied with highfalutin, high society issues.
Speaker 1:And so, turning to how this might affect the race, we all know that vice presidential debates are low impact, high stakes, meaning if you screw up badly then that could have an effect on the race because it's going to dominate headlines for a period of time. But if you do well, or well enough, it's not going to make much of a dent. I don't expect much of a change in any kind of immediate polling here. At the top of the ticket People are basically decided between Trump and Harris at this time. But it's possible that in very specific areas of the country where you have election outcomes hinging upon very informed independent voters, those people may have been tuned in last night. And I'll say this if they were open to being persuaded by the debate performance, then Vance could have made an impact there. I don't think there's a lot of fish to be caught in that net, but if there were any out there watching with that lens, it's possible Vance persuaded them.
Speaker 1:Again, you're going to hear and see all kinds of different outrage machine news stories that claim that Walsh was terrible and so forth. I just don't think he was terrible. I think he was a bit hokey, kind of a bit too stumbly with his pauses and so on, and he looked like a deer in the headlights at times. But he was not a disaster. He just was not as good of a debater as Vance. He did fairly well on his own substance, though looking occasionally hapless with some halted facial expressions, looking occasionally hapless with some halted facial expressions. From where I was sitting I just didn't think that this was a disaster for Walls. He just was not quite as quick and he wasn't as polished and capable in the debate as Vance. I'd love to hear your thoughts. At realclearpodcastcom. You can comment on the post.