Tuesday night’s vice-presidential debate was, in many ways, exactly as expected. Neither Gov. Tim Walz nor Sen. JD Vance actually answered the questions asked of them. Much like the presidential debate, the candidates instead used their time to rehash the same campaign talking points over and over. (I highly recommend the fact checks of both candidates from Snopes or FackCheck.org.) In that regard, it was yet another disappointment.
But debates are less about what the candidates say (since they’re going to say whatever they want anyway) and more about how they present themselves to the American public.
In that regard, Tuesday was a resounding success for Vance. And that should concern us all.
Walz started the night obviously nervous: posture stiff and speech stilted. He did eventually settle in, his speech patterns smoothing out and his presentation more animated and vigorous.
Vance, meanwhile, was cool and confident from the outset. His speech was smooth and clear and his countenance was unflustered. He calmly but forcefully articulated his points, and even congenially agreed with Walz occasionally.
And that’s what makes his performance so terrifying to those of us who have been closely following these campaigns.
When former President Donald Trump yells and raves on national television about immigrants eating pets, he looks and sounds exactly as unhinged as he is. Only his most devoted followers accepted his claims at face value, while much of the rest of the world started memeing it and marking their pets “safe from pet-eating immigrants” on Facebook.
When Vance, however, insisted again and again that immigrants are the reason there’s a housing shortage (they’re not), he took the same anti-immigrant fearmongering and framed it in a way that almost sounds sensible to low-information viewers.
A perceptive viewer may have got the moment Vance gave the game away: After his comments about the immigrants in Springfield, Ohio, the moderators clarified the Haitian migrants there have legal status and Vance immediately interrupted, exclaiming, “Margaret, the rules were that you were not going to fact check …”
Then later, Vance tried to rewrite American history, saying that Trump “saved” Obamacare. Anyone who has lived through the last decade knows Trump not only campaigned heavily on repealing and replacing the Affordable Care Act, he repeatedly tried to do so once in office. (Though he never did present an actual replacement plan.) Sen. John McCain’s famous thumbs down saved the ACA from Trump’s allies in Congress.
But through all the misleading statements and outright lies, Vance always presented himself as sincere and confident — a stark contrast to his running mate, and even to Vance’s own reputation as Trump’s attack dog. For one night, politics almost seemed … normal, as the candidates shook hands, engaged (mostly) with respect and even lingered to chat after the debate ended.
But what Vance and Trump bring to the table is not normal. They are running on a campaign of revenge and retribution against political opponents, weakening relations with traditional allies while strengthening connections to known dictators and human-rights violators, dismantling the nonpartisan bureaucracy that keeps our country running and implementing economy-destroying tariffs on imported goods. Trump may be distancing himself from Project 2025, but his closest allies helped create it. Even if Trump himself won’t spearhead its policies, all he has to do is appoint Project 2025’s architects to a handful of key positions, and they’ll take care of the rest.
If there was a winner on Tuesday night, it was probably Vance. His performance was exactly what Trump’s campaign needed to trick undecided voters into thinking the Trump-Vance platform isn’t as extreme as it really is.
Tuesday was a resounding success for Vance and, by extension, Trump. That doesn’t bode well for America.
J. Nelson - Writer 