Vance came off as reasonable, steady, and thoughtful\u2014not at all “weird”\u2014which will please those independents who dislike Trump. Unlike Trump, Vance didn’t take the bait and stayed on message instead of relitigating the 2020 election, etc. More important, Vance came off as presidential. Those who are holding their noses to vote for Trump and those who are vacillating between the candidates, can put up with Trump for four years and see Vance transition into the top job.<\/p>\n

Additionally, Vance looked young and vigorous compared to Walz, who looks much older than his 60 years. And by not being strident, Vance wasn’t off-putting to suburban soccer moms or to young voters unhappy about their job prospects and being unable to afford their own apartment or home.<\/p>\n

Vance used the first question (“If you are the final voice in the situation room, would you support or oppose a preemptive strike by Israel on Iran”) as an opportunity to tell voters who he is, why he is running, and what he and Trump want to accomplish in office. When he directly addressed the question at hand, he made sure to hit back against Walz’s assertion that Trump is “dangerous when the world is this dangerous” by pointing out that “Trump delivered stability in the world by establishing effective deterrence. People were afraid of stepping out of line” and explaining how Biden-Harris failed foreign policy emboldened Iran enough to directly attack Israel.<\/p>\n

Vance also deftly turned Walz\u2019s attacks and rebuttals back on him. During his rebuttal of Vance’s answer to the first question, Walz asserted that Trump withdrew from a deal that “boxed Iran’s nuclear program in in the inability to advance it … and put nothing else in its place … So Iran is closer to a nuclear weapon than they were before because of Donald Trump’s fickle leadership.”\u2014and Vance immediately reminded Walz that Harris has been vice president for 3.5 years, adding, during the four years Trump was president was “the last time that an American president didn’t have a major conflict breakout.”<\/p>\n

Vance also adroitly handled the immigration question\u2014which was framed in terms of mass deportations and separating parents here illegally from their American-born kids, as well as the unauthorized “fact-check” by CBS moderators Norah O’Donnell and Margaret Brennan:<\/p>\n

\nWe have a historic immigration crisis because Kamala Harris … wanted to undo all of Donald Trump’s border policies. Ninety-four executive orders suspending deportations, decriminalizing illegal aliens, massively increasing the asylum fraud that exists in our system, that has opened the floodgates.\n<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

And when he was pressed about “the children,” he hit back: “My point is that we already have massive child separations thanks to Kamala Harris’s open border” [referring to the 300K missing unaccompanied minor children who entered our country illegally].<\/p>\n

There was a lot of back-and-forth between the candidates on the economy in which Vance also came out on top. When Walz tied “Donald Trump’s failure on COVID that led to the collapse of our economy” to his not trusting “experts” because “Trump thinks he has all the answers,” Vance rebutted:<\/p>\n

\n[T]hose same experts for 40 years said that if we shipped our manufacturing base off to China, we’d get cheaper goods. … if we shipped our industrial base off to other countries, to Mexico and elsewhere, it would make the middle class stronger … if we made America less self-reliant, less productive in our own Nation, that it would somehow make us better off. … And for the first time in a generation, Donald Trump had the wisdom and the courage to say to that bipartisan consensus, we’re not doing it anymore.\n<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

And later on, Vance hit it out of the park:<\/p>\n

\nI think you\u2019ve got a tough job: you’ve got to pretend that Donald Trump didn’t deliver rising take home pay, you’ve got to pretend that Donald Trump didn’t deliver lower inflation, and then you’ve simultaneously got to defend Kamala Harris’s atrocious economic record, which has made gas, groceries, and housing unaffordable for American citizens. I was raised by a woman who would sometimes go into medical debt so that she could put food on the table in our household. [W]e can get back to an America that’s affordable again. We\u2019ve just got to get back to common sense, economic principles.\n<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

On the question of “reproductive rights” Vance correctly pointed out that the bill Walz signed in Minnesota allows doctors “discretion” on whether to terminate the life of a baby who survives a botched abortion, and calls upon the GOP to adopt more family-friendly policies … “support fertility treatments … make it easier for moms to afford to have babies … make it easier for young families to afford a home so they can afford a place to raise that family” if they truly want to save innocent life. He hit that one out of the park as well.<\/p>\n

Vance also missed several opportunities to hit Harris and Biden on policy and lack of leadership.<\/p>\n

However, Vance also missed several opportunities to hit Harris and Biden on policy and lack of leadership:<\/p>\n

A question about Hurricane Helene was framed as a “climate change” issue (of course), and Vance’s answer and rebuttal focused on how Trump’s energy policy reduces carbon emissions and is environmentally friendly. All well and good. But he should’ve first pointed out that Biden, Harris and Walz were slow to acknowledge the devastation caused by the hurricane; that Biden was vacationing on the beach, while Harris and Walz kept campaigning and fundraising without missing a beat before, during, and after the storm; and that locals in the affected states have yet to see any sign of FEMA.<\/p>\n

During the back-and-forth over Vance supporting an abortion “ban” at one time\u2014he said he supported “a minimum national standard”\u2014he missed a huge opportunity to rebut Walz invoking the death of Amber Thurmond, a pregnant Georgian who died because she had to travel to North Carolina to get “care,” by pointing out that she had taken an over-the-counter abortifacient without medical supervision and died because standards for administering that potentially fatal drug had been loosened by the FDA, which underscores the need for states to regulate abortion.<\/p>\n

However, he still managed to hit a home run when he asked Walz, “Do you want to force Catholic hospitals to perform abortions against their will? Because Kamala Harris has supported suing Catholic nuns to violate their freedom of conscience.” Of course, Walz dodged the question, even when Vance asked it again during the back-and-forth discussion.<\/p>\n

Vance won the coin toss, and like Trump, opted to have the last word in the debate.<\/p>\n

In his closing statement, Walz tried to make the case that he and Harris are “change agents”:<\/p>\n

\nKamala Harris is bringing us a new way forward. She’s bringing us a politics of joy. She’s bringing real solutions for the middle class. And she’s centering you at the heart of that, all the while asking everyone, “Join this movement. Make your voices heard. Let’s look for a new day where everybody gets that opportunity and everybody gets a chance to thrive.\n<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

But what is it that they are bringing change from? Failed policies, that she is responsible for. Nobody outside the base is buying this.<\/p>\n

Vance exploited this disconnect in his closing statement:<\/p>\n

\n[E]very American, whether they’re rich or poor, ought to be able to turn on their heat in the middle of a cold winter night. That’s gotten more difficult thanks to Kamala Harris’s energy policies. … [Y]ou ought to be able to afford a nice meal for your family. That’s gotten harder because of Kamala Harris’s policies. … [Y]ou ought to be able to afford to buy a house. You ought to be able to live in safe neighborhoods. You ought to not have your communities flooded with fentanyl. And that, too, has gotten harder with Kamala, because of Kamala Harris’s policies. … [Harris] says that on day one she’s going to work on all these challenges … Day one was 1400 days ago. And her policies have made these problems worse.\n<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Four runs batted in.<\/p>\n

Now having said all this: The real<\/strong> debate is: Does Walz look more like Uncle Fester, Elmer Fudd or Don Rickles?<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

What the VP debate told us about Walz and J.D. Vance.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":84,"featured_media":10448,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_bbp_topic_count":0,"_bbp_reply_count":0,"_bbp_total_topic_count":0,"_bbp_total_reply_count":0,"_bbp_voice_count":0,"_bbp_anonymous_reply_count":0,"_bbp_topic_count_hidden":0,"_bbp_reply_count_hidden":0,"_bbp_forum_subforum_count":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[5,9],"tags":[503,693,502,744],"class_list":["post-10449","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-art-of-living","category-politics","tag-donald-trump","tag-fascism","tag-politics-2","tag-usa-2024"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesavvystreet.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10449","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesavvystreet.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesavvystreet.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesavvystreet.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/84"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesavvystreet.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10449"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/thesavvystreet.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10449\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10453,"href":"https:\/\/thesavvystreet.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10449\/revisions\/10453"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesavvystreet.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/10448"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesavvystreet.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10449"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesavvystreet.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10449"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesavvystreet.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10449"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}