🎥 The best of the Walz, Vance Vice President debate

WASHINGTON (AP) — Vice presidential candidates Tim Walz and J.D. Vance focused their criticism on Tuesday, engaging in a policy discussion that could be the final debate of the 2024 presidential campaign.

Click here to watch a full replay of the debate via CSPAN, courtesy of CBS

It was the first meeting between Minnesota’s Democratic governor and Ohio’s Republican senator after last month’s debate between Vice President Kamala Harris and former President Donald Trump. It’s just five weeks before Election Day, and millions of voters can now cast early ballots.

Tuesday’s confrontation came as the stakes in the rivalry rose again after Iran fired missiles at Israel while a devastating hurricane and a potentially crippling port strike plagued the country at home. In an attempt to introduce themselves to the country, Walz and Vance time and time again outlined the politics and character differences between their running mates.

Here are some conclusions from Tuesday’s debate.

While the Middle East is in turmoil, Walz promises ‘steady leadership’ and Vance offers ‘peace through strength’

Iran’s Tuesday ballistic missile attack on Israel sparked a contrast between Democrats and Republicans’ views on foreign policy: Walz promised “steady leadership” under Harris, while Vance promised a return to “peace through strength” if Trump returns to the White House.

Differing visions of what American leadership should look like have overshadowed the sharp political differences between the two positions.

The debate opened with the Iranian threat to the region and U.S. interests in the world, and Walz turned the topic to Trump’s criticism.

“Continued leadership is essential here,” Walz said, before referring to “almost 80-year-old Donald Trump talking about crowd sizes” and responding to global crises with tweets.

For his part, Vance promised a return to “effective deterrence” under Trump against Iran, pushing back against Walz’s criticism of Trump by attacking Harris and her role in the Biden administration.

“Who has been vice president for the last three and a half years and the answer is your running mate, not mine,” he said. He clearly noted that the Hamas attacks on Israel on October 7, 2023 occurred “during the administration of Kamala Harris.”

Vance and Walz hit each other instead

Vance and Walz trained most of their attacks not on opponents on stage, but on running comrades who were not in the room.

Both vice presidential candidates tried to keep a friendly face while criticizing Harris and Trump, respectively.

This was a reflection of the fact that most voters do not vote based on the vice president, but on the vice presidential candidate’s historical role as an attack dog on his running mates.

Walz lashed out at Trump for failing to fulfill his promise to build a physical barrier across the entire U.S.-Mexico border at the expense of the country’s southern neighbor.

“Less than 2% of this wall was built, and Mexico didn’t pay a penny,” Walz said.

Underscoring the focus at the top of the ticket, during an exchange on immigration, Vance told his opponent: “I think you want to solve this problem, but I don’t think Kamala Harris will.”

It was a strange political debate, with talk of risk pools, housing regulations and energy policy

In an age of world-class social media-optimized diss tracks, Tuesday’s debate was a departure from content. Both candidates took a low-key approach, and both dug into the minutiae with enthusiasm.

Walz delved into work on the Affordable Care Act when he was in the House in 2009, and pushed Vance to the senator’s claim that Trump, who tried to eliminate the law, actually helped preserve it. Vance, defending his claim that illegal immigration was driving up housing prices, cited a Federal Reserve study to support his thesis. Walz talked about how Minneapolis tinkered with local regulations to increase the housing supply. The two talked about the overlap between energy policy, trade and climate change.

It was a very different style than often seen in presidential debates over the past few election cycles.

Vance remains on the defensive on abortion

Walz repeatedly took aim at Vance over abortion access and reproductive rights, while the Ohio senator tried to argue that the ideal solution for the United States was to tabulate abortion laws by state. Walz responded that a woman’s “fundamental right” should not be determined by “geography”.

“It’s a very simple proposition: These are women’s decisions,” Walz said. “We trust women. We trust doctors.”

Walz wanted to personalize the issue by alluding to the death of Amber Thurman, who waited more than 20 hours in a hospital for a routine medical procedure called a D&C to remove tissue left behind after taking abortion pills. She contracted sepsis and died.

Rather than omit this reference, Vance at one point agreed with Walz that “Amber Thurman should still be alive.”

Vance turned the conversation to GOP ticket proposals that he believed would help women and children economically, thereby avoiding the need to terminate pregnancies. But Walz responded that such policies — tax breaks, increased child care assistance, a more equal economy — could be pursued while still allowing women to make their own decisions about abortion.

Both candidates presented the issue of climate change in a nationwide manner

In the wake of Hurricane Helene’s devastation, Vance asked a question about climate change and provided answers about jobs and manufacturing, moving away from Trump’s past claims that global warming is a “hoax.”

Vance maintained that the best way to combat climate change was to move more production to the United States because the country had the world’s cleanest energy economy. This was clearly a domestic reference to the global crisis, especially after Trump pulled the US out of the Paris international climate accords during his administration.

Walz continued to focus on climate change in the country, touting the Biden administration’s investments in renewable energy as well as record levels of oil and natural gas production. “We can see us becoming an energy superpower in the future,” Walz said.

It was a decidedly optimistic take on a pervasive and grim global problem.

Walz and Vance blame opposing presidential candidate for immigration impasse

Both candidates agreed that the number of undocumented migrants in the U.S. is a problem. But everyone blamed the opposing presidential candidate.

Vance echoed Trump by repeatedly calling Harris a “border czar” and suggested that she, as vice president, single-handedly roll back immigration restrictions imposed by Trump as president. The result, Vance says, is an uncontrolled flow of fentanyl, a strain on state and local resources and an increase in housing prices across the country.

Harris was never asked to be a “border czar” and was never specifically given responsibility for border security. In March 2021, Biden tasked her with addressing the “root causes” of migration from the Central American countries of Honduras, Guatemala and El Salvador, and urging leaders there and in Mexico to enforce immigration laws. Harris was not authorized to set U.S. immigration policy – only the president can sign executive orders, and Harris was not authorized as Biden’s attorney in negotiations with Congress over immigration law.

Walz outlined Democrats’ arguments that Trump single-handedly thwarted a bipartisan Senate deal to tighten border security and improve the system for processing immigrants and asylum seekers. Walz noted that Republicans only withdrew from the agreement after Trump said it wasn’t good enough.

Both candidates relied on tried-and-true debate tactics, including not answering difficult questions

Asked directly whether Trump’s promise to deport millions of undocumented immigrants would remove the parents of U.S.-born children, Vance never answered the question. Instead, the senator tried to make the most of Trump’s plan to use the military to help with deportations and focus on attacking Harris for a porous border. Asked to respond to Trump calling climate change a “hoax,” Vance also avoided answering.

The debate began with Walz asking whether he would support a pre-emptive Israeli attack on Iran. Walz praised Harris’s foreign policy leadership, but never answered the question either.

At the end of the debate, Vance did not respond to Walz’s direct question about whether Trump actually lost the 2020 election.

Walz stumbles and throws punches on an inconsistent night

Walz had several verbal lapses one evening during which he admitted that he often “spoke badly.” In the first moments of the debate, when discussing the Middle East, he confused Iran and Israel.

At one point he stated that he was “friends with school shooters” and came across explanations for false remarks about whether he was in Hong Kong during the 1989 Tiananmen Square massacre. (He wasn’t.)

But the governor clearly put Vance on the defensive on the abortion issue, asking a pointed question at the end of the debate about whether Trump would win the 2020 election.

Vance remains in a difficult position during the January 6 insurrection

The candidates tried to remain civil with each other until the end, when Vance did not back down from his claims that he would not acknowledge Trump’s defeat in the 2020 election.

Vance tried to turn the issue into saying that a “far greater threat to democracy” is Democrats’ attempts to censor people on social media. But Walz didn’t want to give up.

“This is disturbing to me,” Walz said, noting that he had just praised some of Vance’s responses. He rambled on about how Trump was trying to make up for his 2020 loss and noted that the candidate still insisted he won the contest. Walz then asked Vance if Trump actually lost the election.

Vance responded by asking if Harris was censoring people.

“That’s one heck of a no-answer,” Walz said, noting that Trump’s former vice president, Mike Pence, was not present on the debate stage because he defied Trump on Jan. 6, 2021, and presided over Congress’ certification of the former president’s loss.

“America,” Walz concluded, “I think you have a really clear choice in this election about who will honor this democracy and who will honor Donald Trump.”