The VP Debate: Vance Slicker Than Trump, Walz Peaks at the End
First up; I thought the CBS Evening News anchor and managing editor Norah O’Donnell and Face the Nation moderator and chief foreign affairs correspondent Margaret Brennan did a good job with what they had to work with.
Whether or not you agreed with the premises of their queries, they marched the two men through an impressive number of issues. They had questions, dammit, and were going to get through them all.
And I’ll give extra credit for inducing Sen. Vance to whine about fact checking.
If, in fact, CBS had insisted on fact checking as one of the ground rules, the debate might still be going on… without having finished the first question.
This was, in fact, a debate and not a circus. Both candidates played Midwest Nice at times and even feigned agreeing with each other. Both men interjected personal anecdotes to drive home their answers.
Stylistically, Sen. Vance was the better debater. He lied continually, but unlike Donald Trump, smiled while he was doing it. He repeated the party line on immigration and the economy even when he didn’t have to. And there seemed to be times when he sought to cleave a divide between Gov. Walz and Vice President Harris.
For purposes of this debate, President Joe Biden was dead. Kamala Harris was responsible for everything, adding up to Vance’s claims of four disastrous years in office. Donald Trump’s years in office were apparently much better than I remember them. I have to give Vance credit for keeping a straight face throughout the evening.
Former George W. Bush speechwriter David Frum went on CNN on Monday to suggest that Tim Walz could rile JD Vance during their upcoming debate, as Kamala Harris did to Donald Trump during their presidential head-to-head.
Trump’s running mate is “very brittle,” and his “public persona is a fake,” Frum noted.
“He’s someone that, when he’s exposed, becomes very petulant, very peevish, very angry, and very controlling,” he added. “That’s going to be the task at this debate: Is can Walz successfully hold the mirror up, keep it there, and let America see what its choice is?”
Vance did get peevish at a couple of points, but was disciplined enough to bounce back into debate persona quickly. The flash of arrogance in his eyes when informed that Haitian immigrants in Springfield had legal status revealed his assumption that the hot words like “illegal” were permissible as jousts in his quest to make Walz flail and Dear Leader happy.
Walz started off bumpy, mangling a foreign policy question even as he strung together the talking points he’d undoubtedly studied. As the debate went on, he became more confident, calling upon his experiences as Minnesota Governor to make points about childcare, housing, and abortion.
The policy focus of the debate surprised some pundits, who’d predicted a barrage of personal attacks. There were tons of unasked questions from the evening.
I would have liked to hear a follow up on his speech at the Christian Nationalist Courage Tour last weekend. Vance called public schools "radical organizations" that teach socialism instead of reading, math, and other subjects required for graduation. Then he called for ending public funding of all education.
If there was one gotcha moment in the debate, it came at the end, when Walz challenged Vance to admit that Trump lost the 2020 election. It was a point Vance couldn’t word salad his way out of, even as he tried to gloss the subject over by saying he wanted to talk about the future.
Cue MSNBC’s panel declaring victory. In no time the liberal bubble on social media was celebrating a perceived win. I liked Joyce Vance’s conclusion:
Even if no minds are changed, the debate was still illuminating. J.D. Vance is as uncommitted to the truth as Donald Trump is.
Right-leaning media were outraged about the nerve of having a fact-check moment.
My take is that both candidates did what they needed to, and that was to do no harm to the ticket. Walz ended up looking like a better man, and Vance got to repeatedly warp the truth.
CBS News and YouGov did a flash poll at the end of the debate. It was a draw, with debate-watchers scoring JD Vance (42 %) and Tim Walz (41%) as the winner. The remaining 17% called it a tie.
Via Politico:
That stands in contrast to the two presidential debates earlier this year. In flash polls conducted by CNN, Donald Trump was seen as a clear victor over Joe Biden in their June debate, while Kamala Harris clearly beat out Trump in last month’s meeting between the two nominees.
And in another turnabout from the top of the ticket, the vast majority of debate-watchers, 88 percent, described the tone of the VP debate as “generally positive.” Only 12 percent said it was “generally negative.”
Both running mates improved their image ratings among voters who watched the debate. Walz entered the night with 52 percent of this sample holding a favorable opinion of him; 60 percent said they did after it was over. Among the same group, Vance’s favorable rating improved by roughly the same margin, from 40 percent to 49 percent.
If you look at the debate from the point of view of what people asked Google about during that hour and forty five minutes, a different picture emerges;
This will likely be the last event prior to the election where voters will get the opportunity to directly compare candidates. Both Kamala Harris and Donald Trump were scheduled for back to back interviews on 60 Minutes on October 7, but the former president’s campaign backed out on Tuesday, citing CBS insistence on real-time fact checks.
I predict, based in part on Vance’s commentary, that fact checking will become more of an issue for Republicans broadly, who will claim it amounts to “censorship”.
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Wednesday News to Peruse
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Public Docs Show Supervisor Candidate Faulconer Advised Firm Involved in SANDAG Toll Problems by JW August at Times of San Diego
Faulconer, who is a candidate for the District 3 supervisor seat, worked as a consultant for the HNTB infrastructure design firm that supervised the work of ETAN Tolling Technology. The two companies were paid $12.7 million for their work on the problematic toll system. Public records show Faulconer received in excess of a $100,000 to represent HNTB.
Email messages and calendar entries from the San Diego Association of Governments, obtained through a Public Records Act request, indicate that Faulconer met frequently last year with then SANDAG CEO Hasan Ikharta, and arranged dinners and meetings with HNTB and top SANDAG officials.
The former mayor’s access was documented before and after the public would learn of a series of costly mistakes by ETAN Tolling, described in detailed internal audits that found “consistently poor system performance.”
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Have Government Employees Mentioned Climate Change, Voting or Gender Identity? The Heritage Foundation Wants to Know. by Sharon Lerner and Andy Kroll at ProPublica
Among 744 requests that Aamot, Jankowski and Howell submitted to the Department of the Interior over the past year are 161 that seek civil servants’ emails and texts as well as Slack and Microsoft Teams messages that contained terms including “climate change”; “DEI,” or diversity, equity and inclusion; and “GOTV,” an acronym for get out the vote. Many of these FOIAs request the messages of individual employees by name.
Trump has made clear his intentions to overhaul the Department of the Interior, which protects the nation’s natural resources, including hundreds of millions of acres of land. Under President Joe Biden, the department has made tackling climate change a priority.
Hundreds of the requests asked for government employees’ communications with civil rights and voting rights groups, including the ACLU; the Native American Rights Fund; Rock the Vote; and Fair Count, an organization founded by Democratic politician and voting rights advocate Stacey Abrams. Still other FOIAs sought communications that mention “Trump” and “Reduction in Force,” a term that refers to layoffs.
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Louisiana Reclassifies Abortion Pills as Controlled Dangerous Substances by Troy Matthews at Meidas News
In another blow to reproductive healthcare freedom in Republican states, Louisiana has reclassified the abortion drugs mifepristone and misoprostol as schedule IV controlled substances, which come with prison terms of up to five years for those caught in possession without a prescription.
Schedule IV is the classification typically given to highly addictive prescription drugs like Xanax or Ambien. Doctors warn that removing ready access to these drugs in hospitals and clinics can have dire health consequences for many women, as they are frequently used in potential emergency situations like miscarriage treatment.
Misoprostol, which is commonly used to treat hemorrhaging, must now be kept out of patient's rooms and locked away in secure areas due to the new classification. This can cause dangerous delays in getting treatment to someone who is actively bleeding out.
