Analysis and highlights from the Vance and Walz vice presidential debate

I can’t believe that we went that entire debate without either Walz or the moderators bringing up one of the most memorable of Vance’s many weird statements. In 2021, Vance said on a podcast that the country is being run “by a bunch of childless cat ladies who are miserable at their own lives and the choices that they’ve made, and so they want to make the rest of the country miserable, too.”

In a word: Yikes. But while I can understand the moderators wanting to stick to policy and substance, you’d think that given Vance’s statements about child care and families, that someone would have mentioned his deeply unfortunate belief that people without kids are somehow “more sociopathic” and worthy of scorn.

Chris Hayes speaking on MSNBC moments ago:

JD Vance is very good at this. I mean, this is what he’s been doing since he was in college, talking to libs and being kind of like, “Well, I sort of agree with you here but here’s the other part of this,” and he did that all perfectly fine tonight.

Walz, on the other hand, delivered on the substance, particularly on health care, the basics of the tax cuts and who he’s fighting for — the meat and potato core messages.

Joy Reid speaking on MSNBC moments ago:

A smooth lie is still a lie. Vance is incredibly smooth but during those 90 minutes, he managed not to say anything memorable. There’s nothing clippable in what he said. They were just all smooth, bland lies. 

Vance got outdone by Walz. He was relatable and delivered on the substance. He didn’t go in there to slay Vance, he went in there to show himself and he showed himself to be bipartisan. He showed himself to be reasonable. He showed himself to be practical. 

A lot of people are complaining that he didn’t knock Vance out and that he wasn’t rhetorically cruel but that was not his job. It was obvious that his job was to sell Harris as president and he did that very well. He won the debate.

These comments have been slightly edited for length and clarity.

In a statement after the debate, the Harris campaign praised Walz’s performance and, in particular, highlighted his argument against Vance’s defense of Trump’s election denialism — while also calling for Trump to debate Harris a second time, just days ahead of the election.

“Vice President Harris believes that the American people deserve to see her and Trump on the debate stage one more time,” the campaign said. “She will be in Atlanta on October 23 — Donald Trump should step up and face the voters.”

Nicolle Wallace speaking on MSNBC moments ago:

Vance spent the night building an intricate and beautiful fort out of toothpicks and it was perfect. But in the end, he sneezed on it and the whole thing fell apart and he had to walk out of that room over the broken toothpicks. 

God bless the people who watched the whole thing and stayed locked in on it. I checked in with about 20 people, all of whom do this and watch this for a living, and they were kind of in and out of some parts of it. But no matter how you watch this, if you cannot say what happened in 2020 when the only reason you’re there is because what happened in 2020 is that Trump sent his supporters to hang Mike Pence, then you lose. 

This debate was devoid of personal attacks, and we saw the candidates repeatedly agreeing with each other on certain proposals and sentiments. Both men were cordial onstage and they largely focused on discussing policy — a huge difference from last month’s presidential debate, where Trump grew increasingly agitated and unleashed ugly personal attacks on Harris.

The veep debate is a lower-stakes event, and the candidates had the difficult task of touting their campaign’s platform while defending their presidential nominee from attacks. Vance had a harder job on that front. At the very least, Vance showed tonight that he is a far more disciplined — though no less extreme — politician than Trump.

I approached tonight’s debate expecting it to depict the stark contrast between the affable Walz and the acerbic Vance. And that’s exactly what happened.

From start to finish, Walz kept up his nice-guy affect, declining to take potshots at Vance and limiting his Trump criticism to policy. Vance, on the other hand, was amicable toward Walz at times and seemed to have entered the debate intent on presenting a gentler image than he has shown on the trail.

But Vance’s prickliness and extremism were on full display at various points, including his false claim that Harris is allowing children to be sex trafficked and used as drug mules, as well as his refusal to acknowledge that Trump lost the 2020 election.

In most debates, candidates typically refer to each other by their titles: “As the governor has said,” “I disagree with you, Senator,” etc. Walz stuck with this, calling his opponent “Senator Vance” throughout the night. Vance did that at first, referring to “Governor Walz.” But then, time and again, he used his opponent’s first name. “Look, I think what Tim said just doesn’t pass the smell test,” he said at one point. “It is a disgrace, Tim,” he said at another point. In one instance, he even squeezed in calling moderator Margaret Brennan by her first name at the same time: “I want to talk about this tariff issue, in particular Margaret, because Tim just accused this of being a national sales tax,” he said.

There are a lot of moments from this debate that will stand out as we hash this out over the coming days. But there was a small aside that caught me at the time and is going to stick with me. Vance was defending Trump’s approach to housing, arguing that federal lands should be used to build new homes. “We have a lot of Americans that need homes,” he said. “We should be kicking out illegal immigrants who are competing for those homes.”

That sums up so much of the Trump 2024 campaign: blaming immigrants for every ill that America faces and proposing that mass deportation of millions would solve those problems. It’s a troubling proposition, and one that a lot more Americans support than I’d like.

Rachel Maddow speaking on MSNBC moments ago:

I wouldn’t describe Vance and Walz as evenly matched. They are so different, so different in style and so different in substance. 

I think the big-picture takeaway from the debate is that one of these candidates is much slicker than the other. One is much more of a practiced professional debate-style speaker and the other is not. It's that other candidate who won.

There was one bad moment for Walz in this debate where he got mixed up and embarrassed in answering a question about exactly what month he had been in China in relation to the Tiananmen Square protest. But then on guns, on Jan. 6, on Obamacare, on the economy, on the border, on health care, on abortion — on every issue of substance, Walz won. 

I can’t say I recognize the Republican Party that Vance advocated on the stage during tonight's debate. In answer after answer, Vance talked about policies that sounded nothing like anything that any Republican has advocated during this election cycle. It certainly doesn’t sound like an administration that his running mate is likely to put into place should he win in November.

Vance worked to assure the audience that there was actually a lot that he and his Democratic opponent agreed on and implied that Trump would look for bipartisan solutions if returned to the White House.

It honestly sounded nice, a throwback to a semi-mythological era where things got done in Washington as both sides compromised for the good of the country. But like most of the most promising words that come out of his and Trump’s mouths, it’s absolutely too good to be true.

Arguing that certain forms of disinformation are not protected speech, Walz made the “you can’t yell ‘fire’ in a crowded theater” analogy, claiming that the Supreme Court holds that position. But it doesn’t.

The “fire in a crowded theater” hypothetical comes from a 1919 Supreme Court decision that targeted socialist anti-draft protesters during World War I. That ruling was partially overturned by Brandenburg v. Ohio in 1969, which limited prohibited speech to direct incitement to likely imminent violence or other criminal activities. Disinformation isn’t that. 

Bernie Sanders. Dick Cheney. Taylor Swift.

Three very different people who have all endorsed the Harris-Walz ticket. Walz name-dropped them in his closing statement and, I'll be honest, it's odd to hear the names of those three in one sentence.

Vance gave a baffling defense of Trump’s election denialism, and Walz took the chance to make his most emphatic plea of the night to voters, drawing a stark contrast between Harris and the former president:

Trump has claimed that his broad tariffs economic policy will bring in tons of money to the U.S. Treasury. Vance is now saying that the supposed boost in revenue will be used to help bring down child care costs. That is bonkers when you consider that I cannot name a single GOP member of Congress who is currently in favor of Biden and Harris’ plans to subsidize child care and lure people to those jobs using federal money.

Walz rightly noted that Trump’s tariffs will actually raise prices for Americans, making any money they receive to help out with child care will then immediately be sucked up by higher costs.

From "childless cat ladies" to lies about Haitian immigrants, there are plenty of remarks from Vance's past and present for Walz to pounce on. And Vance was expected to bash Walz for his handling of the 2020 police brutality protests in Minneapolis and potentially needle Walz for at times embellishing his background.

But neither candidate went after each other on those personal controversies. At times, the moderators brought up some of these issues — Vance's lies about Haitian immigrants in Ohio and Walz falsely claiming he was in Hong Kong during the Tiananmen Square protests — but neither candidate made these attacks a central part of their debate strategies.

It was another way Vance sought to sell Trump's vision while approaching the debate in an entirely different manner than his running mate.

Vance claimed “we’re going to cover Americans with preexisting conditions” in a second Trump administration. The way he framed it, that will be the one thing that the Trump administration will keep in their health-care policy, whatever that “concept of a plan” becomes. He then talked up the way that Trump has said we should “allow states to experiment a little bit on how to cover both the chronically ill but the non-chronically ill.”

Walz pointed out that that the whole concept of what Republicans are actually arguing would tank the insurance market for people with pre-existing conditions: “What they’re saying is, if you’re healthy, why should you be paying more? So what they’re going to do is let insurance companies pick who they insure.”

The decision to largely avoid fact-checking by the moderators has been much lamented, but I’m not sure it would have made much of an impact here. Effective fact-checking at a debate is something like “Actually, the crime rate has gone down” or “You voted for that bill.”

Vance has said a lot of things that aren’t quite true, but not in a way that’s easy for the moderator of a fast-moving debate to correct.

Walz wasn’t about to let Vance claim that Trump somehow “saved” Obamacare instead of trying to kill it. “All right, here’s where being an old guy gives you some history,” he said, reminding people that he was still a member of Congress “at the creation of the ACA.” Walz went on to walk the audience through Trump’s longtime opposition to Obamacare, and the fact that Republicans almost repealed it entirely during his first term.

Vance was asked to provide evidence for his false claim that immigrants are the driving force behind high housing costs in the U.S. This claim has been debunked by experts, for the record: Even the conservative National Review sniffed it out as a lie.

Vance, however, claims his evidence is in a Federal Reserve report he says he’ll share after the debate. That’s some big “I have a girlfriend, she just goes to another school” energy from Vance right there.

It’s a tight race, but in the contest for Trump’s weirdest campaign proposal, his pitch for holding a contest to design and create 10 “Freedom Cities,” built from scratch on federal land, is close to the top. After throwing it out there in early 2023, Trump has mostly stopped talking about the idea, but Vance just brought it up:

Walz responded by noting that federal lands are typically “there for a reason,” such as protecting watersheds.

Vance said that the only real answer for school shootings is to harden schools:

Walz, in contrast, noted that a lot of the time “what we end up doing is we start looking for a scapegoat. Sometimes it just is the guns. It’s just the guns, and there are things that you can do about it.”

The Minnesota governor said his son, Gus Walz, once experienced gun violence at a community center as he was playing volleyball. Vance, during his turn to speak, said he did not know that about Walz’s son and expressed sympathy for him. It was a gracious moment between the two men before they resumed attacking each other’s campaigns.

When asked about school shootings, Vance noted that “the gross majority, close to 90% and some of the statistics I’ve seen of the gun violence in this country is committed with illegally obtained firearms.” He then added that “thanks to Kamala Harris’s open border, we’ve seen a massive influx in the number of illegal guns run by the Mexican drug cartel.”

Well, the thing about that is the majority of those guns originated in the United States, which are then trafficked back into the U.S. by cartels. It’s the guns that are the problem, and they’re coming from inside the country.

Walz kept debate over the issue of abortion grounded by getting specific about three specific women: 

• Amanda ​​Zurawski, a Texas woman who nearly died carrying a nonviable fetus after she was refused an abortion due to a state law

• Hadley Duvall, a Kentucky woman who faced sexual abuse and rape by her stepfather as a child and has become an abortion rights advocate

• Amber Thurman, a Georgia woman who died after waiting 20 hours for a hospital to treat her for complications from taking an abortion pill

“If you don’t know Amanda or a Hadley, you soon will,” Walz said. 

Zurawski and Duvall have both campaigned for Harris-Walz, but being able to talk about specific women helped keep the focus on the effects of abortion restrictions. 

The former president's caps lock button is stuck:

Trump’s lie about Walz supporting a law allowing abortion in the ninth month made it into a Norah O’Donnell question. This was a made-up abortion horror story Trump pushed during the last debate, but Walz used the opportunity to pivot to true abortion horror stories, including the story of Amanda Zurawski, who was denied an abortion in Texas. She qualified for emergency abortion care once developing sepsis during the pregnancy.

Credit where it’s due, Vance gave a good answer when confronted with the GOP’s abortion restrictions. He brought up the fact that a woman in his life had had an abortion because carrying the pregnancy to term would have ruined her life. He then talked about how much Republicans need to do to prevent those kind of choices:

It’s a masterful response, but one that is hard to believe when Vance has been on record against helping people with child care and many of his colleagues have opposed increased funding for helping kids, like expanding the Child Tax Credit.

Asked about the discrepancy of his claim that he was in Hong Kong during the protests, Walz admitted that he gets “caught up in the rhetoric” and said that he “misspoke on this.”

Walz has exaggerated certain aspects of his background, and Republicans have tried to point to that as proof that he’s not as authentic as the Harris campaign touts him to be. Walz stumbled over his response a bit, and him getting caught in yet another instance of overstating his experience is not great. Whether that line of criticism against him resonates with voters remains to be seen.

Vance got called out for past statements critical of Trump, including recently unearthed messages from 2020 that said that the president hadn’t delivered on his economic problems. “If you become vice president, why should Americans trust that you will give Donald Trump the advice he needs to hear, and not just the advice he wants to hear?” he was asked.

Vance did not give debate watchers much confidence on that front, blaming his past critiques on his having “believed some of the media stories that turned out to be dishonest, fabrications of his record.” He then went on to say that he was just wrong about Trump’s supposed successes. What he didn’t say was anything that indicated that he’s going to be willing to deliver hard truths to his boss when (or, rather, if) he’s ever asked for his input.

Walz dinged Vance for not trusting experts, saying that he was arguing that “economists can’t be trusted, science can’t be trusted, national security folks can’t be trusted.” Vance responded by saying that, heck yeah, he doesn’t trust experts.

The Republican began by saying that “experts” had said that goods would be cheaper if more manufacturing was done overseas. “They were wrong about that,” he said. He then went a step further, flirting with anti-vaxxer logic.

“So many of the drugs, the pharmaceuticals that we put in the bodies of our children, are manufactured by nations that hate us. This has to stop, and we’re not going to stop it by listening to experts,” Vance said.

Margaret Brennan asks both men about Harris and Trump’s economic proposals, and the Wharton School’s assessment that Trump’s plan will balloon the deficit by many times more than Harris’ will. Walz focuses on lowering prescription drug costs and ramping up home construction. Vance promotes Trump’s tax cuts, which largely favored the wealthy, and suggests economic experts critical of Trump’s plan shouldn’t be trusted.

Vance tried to say when talking about immigration that it was migrants like those in Springfield, Ohio, who are reducing the housing supply and driving up costs. The logic sounds good but then falls apart when you start to wonder how on earth newly arrived migrants, even with potential help from the government, are affording those rising housing costs and thereby taking those units away from American citizens.

Thankfully, Walz helped correct the record, pointing to Harris’ plans to build millions more housing units and give assistance both to first-time homebuyers, as well as encouraging construction of affordable housing.

One of Vance’s big lines against Harris tonight is to note that she’s been in power. In response to a question about the deficit, Vance noted that Harris has proposed a lot of ideas and then said, “She had the opportunity to enact all of these great policies” over the last three and a half years and didn’t.

Of course, the vice president does not actually have much power to enact policy, other than breaking a tie in the Senate. Either Vance and Walz are going to have four years to learn exactly how little the vice president does pretty soon, however.

Walz hit Vance with the Gospel to make the case for making legal immigration more effective. “I don’t talk about my faith a lot, but Matthew 25:40 talks about ‘to the least amongst us, you do unto me,’” he says. “I think that’s true of most Americans. They simply want order to it. This bill does it.” 

Again, as Walz has pointed out, this is all about a Senate bill that Trump spiked because he wanted to keep immigration as a campaign issue.

CBS News moderator Margaret Brennan noted that Springfield, Ohio, has a large number of Haitian immigrants with legal status. As fellow moderator Norah O’Donnell tried to pivot to the economy, Vance talked over them about an asylum application. Then, Walz tried to fact-check Vance, and both candidates’ mics were muted.

Coined in 2020, “sanewashing” has recently become a hot term among media critics who think that coverage of some of Trump’s speeches ignores his more outlandish remarks. And that's basically what Vance is trying to do tonight. When pressed by the moderators about Trump calling climate change a “hoax,” for example, Vance deflected. Instead of answering yes or no, Vance tried to “interpret” for Trump. 

The fact is, Trump has said rising sea levels means "a little more beachfront property” and suggested the noise from wind power “causes cancer.” Vance can’t wish those comments away.

Responding to a question about Americans’ support for mass deportations, Walz said the Trump campaign is less interested in finding a solution than they are in “dehumaniz[ing] and villainiz[ing] other human beings,” a clear reference to Vance’s false claim about Haitian immigrants in Ohio, which has unleashed chaos on the small city of Springfield and put residents’ lives in danger.

Vance claimed that Biden and Harris should have stuck with Trump’s immigration policies: “Real leadership would be saying, ‘You know what? I screwed up. We’re going to go back to Donald Trump’s border policies.’ I wish that she would do that. It would be good for all of us.”

The reality is that the Biden administration either willingly kept some of Trump’s policies in place for years or struggled to be able to overturn them, thanks to conservative judges. And in trying to focus on border security instead of a pathway to citizenship, Democrats writ large have ceded to GOP talking points.

For a guy who’s come across as deeply awkward and impersonable on the campaign trail, Vance seems in his element tonight. In this venue, he’s essentially a pundit, addressing a camera.

Walz, answering the question about climate change, accomplished two things with his response to a question about climate change. He made a point of mentioning Trump’s deranged comments downplaying the seriousness of climate change.

“Donald Trump called it a hoax and then joked that these things would make more beachfront property to be able to invest in,” Walz said.

Walz also used the opportunity to pivot to its impact on constituents, including farmers.

CBS News anchor Margaret Brennan informed the audience that the “overwhelming consensus among scientists is that the Earth’s climate is warming at an unprecedented rate.” It’s not the strongest fact check, but it is letting the audience know that Trump’s claim that it is a “hoax” is incorrect.

When asked if he agreed with Trump’s climate change denial, Vance immediately pivoted to attacking Harris. Expect that to be a consistent pattern from him tonight as he’s asked about Trump’s own words.

Vance didn’t seem to really agree that carbon emissions are the largest driver of climate change and that if that were the case, you’d see Democrats try to reshore American manufacturing and strive for U.S. energy independence. The thing is, that is exactly what the Biden-Harris administration has been doing, overseeing a major uptick in domestic petroleum production and heavily investing in U.S. manufacturing and producing clean energy.

Unlike the ABC News debate with Trump and Harris, tonight's moderators — CBS Evening News” anchor Norah O’Donnell and “Face the Nation” moderator Margaret Brennan — will not be aggressively fact-checking the candidates during the debate. Instead, CBS News is advertising live fact-checking on its website.

This has sparked backlash from some viewers and pundits, who say it's the moderators' role to fact-check the candidates.

"It turns out that the executives running CBS News did not like what they saw [ABC News debate moderator] David Muir do at the ABC debate, and they have forbidden these moderators from doing that," MSNBC's Lawrence O'Donnell said minutes ago on air. "No fact-checking. That's their decision. They did not announce the journalistic principle they used to arrive at that decision."

Vance tried to spin Hamas' attack last Oct. 7 into being Biden and Harris’ fault because it happened during their term, claiming that Trump “made the world more secure.” That is exactly the kind of revisionist history that Walz was talking about, taking advantage of the fact that many voters have gotten fuzzy on the details of all of the global chaos that Trump’s administration sparked.

The staid, serious format of a televised debate is helping Vance, who’s giving practiced and detailed answers to questions. It’s a much better format for him than the conservative podcasts, cable TV news hits and Trump rallies that he’s been doing. Vance is coming off as more of a traditional, buttoned-down politician and less of a guy ranting about childless cat ladies.

The opening question was directed at Walz and focused on the Middle East. Namely: If he was the last person sitting in the Situation Room, would he support a pre-emptive strike by Israel to prevent Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon?

His first answer missed the mark, but given the chance to follow up,  he mentioned that Trump is the one who pulled out of the Iran nuclear deal and gave Iran the space to get a nuclear weapon more quickly.

Walz started off a little shaky at the debate, seeming a little nervous as he was asked whether he would approve a pre-emptive strike on Iran. He hit the theme of “steady leadership” that he’d clearly prepped for a question about foreign policy, but he didn’t actually answer the question.

Walz and Vance shook hands at the start of the debate.

It’s a weird thing to note because for decades it was routine that the two candidates would shake hands — but in the Trump era, it has not been a given. That has just drawn more attention to what would normally be a routine formality.

During last month’s presidential debate, Harris made a beeline for Trump to shake his hand.

Symone Sanders speaking on MSNBC moments ago:

The Harris campaign, understandably so, is trying to lower the expectations for Gov. Walz. They’re setting the bar low so that when he does do well tonight then it just looks like debate prep works.

But Walz is a former high school teacher. He coached football. His oratory skills were honed in the lion’s den. He’s a former chairman of the Democratic Governors Association. He knows how to go in and lay down an argument. He was the architect behind Democrats’ “weird” messaging. 

So the idea that he’s someone that’s just not as good as Yale graduate Vance, I understand the messaging strategy at play, but I don’t buy it. 

These comments have been slightly edited for length and clarity.

Let’s be clear: Undecided voters are not watching the debate tonight.

In general, voters who haven’t made up their minds between Harris and Trump are not free thinkers who independently evaluate each candidate’s policy proposals and biography — if they ever were. 

Instead, the truly undecided are just tuned out. They don’t pay attention to politics. They don’t watch cable news. And they certainly done’t tune in for vice presidential debates.

It’s possible that a major flub by either Vance or Walz — especially if it points to a weakness of their running mate — could circulate enough on social media and general conversation over the next few days to move some segment of voters one way or the other.

But I wouldn’t bet on it.

Vance and Walz are relatively new faces in the national spotlight; however, through their respective runs for political office, they have experience debating. Both rely heavily on their Midwest backgrounds, are skilled at one-line clapbacks, and effectively dodge the tough questions. Here are some defining moments from their past debates: 

It’s become de rigueur to ask Trump if he will respect the results of an election, but Vance also has some history on the subject.

When running for the Senate in 2021, he claimed without evidence in an interview with an Ohio newspaper that there had been massive fraud in the 2020 presidential election, including “people voting illegally on a large-scale basis” and a conspiracy by Big Tech companies.

More recently, he has said that if he had been vice president after the last election, he would have told contested states to send multiple slates of electors, something that Mike Pence did not do.

As Vance counts down the moments until tonight’s debate, the candidate atop his ticket just wrapped up one of his typically unhinged speeches. Some of the clips that have emerged from Trump’s campaign stop in Milwaukee are truly eyebrow-raising. For example, here’s Trump appearing to mix up the president of Iran with North Korean strongman Kim Jong Un, claiming that the president of North Korea is “basically trying to kill me”:

There have been reports of an Iranian plot to assassinate Trump. There have been no such reports about the North Korean dictator, Trump’s pal, attempting something similar.

In a little over a decade, Americans saw two vice presidents assume the presidency midterm: Lyndon B. Johnson and Gerald Ford. By 1976, as Ford was running for re-election, a renewed focus was placed on the importance of the role as a backup president. With Ford and Democratic nominee Jimmy Carter restarting televised debates, their running mates — Sens. Bob Dole of Kansas and Walter Mondale of Minnesota, respectively — followed suit as well. 

As Time magazine wrote at the time, the first ever vice presidential debate “turned out to be a tart and often engrossing display of political theater, a duel between two evenly matched men whose debating skills had been sharply honed during the wars on Capitol Hill.” Despite both Walz and Vance having Capitol Hill experience, I somehow doubt this will get a similar write-up.

You can prep for a debate all you want, but the hardest question can be about something that just happened. And there’s a lot that’s happened recently.

Among other things, Vance and Walz can expect to be asked about:

• Iran’s launching of more than 100 ballistic missiles at Israel today.

• The devastation in North Carolina, Tennessee and elsewhere due to Hurricane Helene.

• A massive dockworkers strike that has shut down ports on the East Coast and Gulf Coast.

Joy Reid speaking on MSNBC moments ago:

Most of the time vice presidential debates don’t matter. But I would argue that there were two times in our recent political lifetimes that they did: In 2008 when Biden stood on the debate stage and now. 

In 2008, the debate mattered because the country was trying to get comfortable with the idea that a Black guy named Barack Hussein Obama could be president. That same issue is at play in 2024, except it’s a Black woman. The question is, can people get comfortable with that? 

What a vice presidential candidate can do is show the American people who they are. They’re the presidential nominee’s first chief hire and their most senior partner. If they get voters to feel comfortable with them, they can make voters comfortable with the presidential candidate. That’s one of the things Walz will have to do tonight.

These comments have been slightly edited for length and clarity.

The vice president doesn’t have many jobs, constitutionally speaking. The No. 1 task the office is charged with: be ready to replace the president if they die or are unable to perform their duties. As I wrote earlier:

You can read my full essay on the matter below.

The conventional wisdom may say that vice presidential debates don’t matter, but if the state polls are to be believed, this race is close enough that anything could make the difference in the end. FiveThirtyEight’s polling averages, for example, have Harris and Trump within the margin of error in seven different states. Most election models give Harris somewhere between 55% and 60% odds of winning.

Yet it’s worth noting that if we elected the president by popular vote, national polls still consistently find Harris up several points. In a real democracy, tonight’s debate wouldn’t be about a race on a knife edge, but Vance trying to make up ground.

A new ad from Harris’ team dropped just ahead of tonight’s debate — and it’s brutal in its accuracy. The 49-second spot highlights the ways Vance is a potential threat to democracy and “a heartbeat away from the presidency” should Trump win. It also oh so subtly reminds viewers that Trump has both been convicted of felonies and shown the signs of his age. (Wow, it’s like they read my piece from this morning.)

I’m fairly certain Vance will launch some kind of attack on Walz accusing him of single-handedly turning Minnesota into a crime-ridden hellscape or something.

One of the main attack lines Republicans have used against Vance is that he’s weak on crime — and they’ve pointed to demonstrations against the police killing of George Floyd as an example. That line of attack is undermined by the fact Trump was recorded praising Walz’s handling of the protests. And as Media Matters noted, Republicans have misled the public about crime statistics under Walz’s governorship. While crime in Minnesota increased with national trends during the Covid pandemic in 2021, it reached a 60-year low in 2023.

In a statement on social media, CBS News’ “60 Minutes” said that after “initially accepting 60 Minutes’ request for an interview with Scott Pelley, former President Trump’s campaign has decided not to participate.” The interview would have been part of the news program’s prime-time election special, set to air next Monday. Harris will still sit for an interview with correspondent Bill Whitaker. 

Trump press secretary Steven Cheung called the statement “Fake News” and insisted that “nothing was ever scheduled or locked in.”

“They also insisted on doing live fact checking, which is unprecedented,” he wrote on X.

Then again, live fact-checking wouldn’t be a problem if his candidate told the truth.

Viewers will get to see Walz, a twice-elected Minnesota governor and former member of Congress for 12 years, square up against Vance, a political neophyte who’d never been involved in politics before he was elected to the U.S. Senate in 2022. 

Both men have some work to do to win over voters tonight. Many voters are still unfamiliar with them, according to polls, but Vance may have a steeper hill to climb in that regard, considering his unfavorability numbers.

If you’re in a rush tonight and don’t have time to watch the entire 90-minute debate, here’s a hack: Tune in about 45 minutes after it starts.

A live, nationally televised debate is more of a marathon than a sprint, and the halfway mark is about the point where both Vance and Walz will have run out of canned talking points, prepared zingers and, most importantly, patience.

It’s at that point in the debate where you’ll get to see how they are under pressure. Some Democrats are reportedly concerned that Walz does not deal well with being criticized while under stress, but Vance has also shown a snippy side in some recent encounters. 

The odds are pretty good, then, that the second half of the debate will be a little ugly as both sides burn out and get a little cranky.

Claire McCaskill speaking on MSNBC moments ago:

One thing Walz must do tonight is expose what's at Vance's core. We don't know what his core character is. How do you go from saying Trump is “America’s Hitler” to saying he’s a wonderful man who I would follow to the ends of the earth?

What is the core character of someone who goes from that to that? We’re not talking about changing position on an issue. We’re not talking about fracking or not fracking. We’re talking about going from saying a man is horrible to saying he’s my guy.

These comments have been slightly edited for length and clarity.

The Trump-Vance campaign has tried to portray Walz as untrustworthy throughout the campaign, with allegations that Walz lied about his military service and his family’s use of fertility treatments.

To be clear, Walz and his wife did use fertility treatments to grow their family. Walz has described the treatment as IVF, but it was actually a different treatment called IUI. People often try IUI before proceeding to IVF. (This MSNBC video helps contextualize the accusations against Walz.)

One of the wildest things I learned while writing my piece about Vance’s preparedness was how he stacks up against former Gov. Sarah Palin, his 2008 counterpart:

Aside from being deeply funny, the fact that Vance is seen as less experienced than Palin actually does track. After all, she was mayor of Wasilla, Alaska, and headed the state board that oversees the state’s oil and gas fields. That’s not enough government experience to be president but still somehow better than Vance.

The vice presidential debate has a unique place in American politics as the only major event where the two participants are arguing on behalf of someone else.

In any other debate, the two people onstage are talking about themselves. 

But the job of the running mate is to defend the candidate who picked them, which sometimes means making arguments that they previously disagreed with or defending conduct that they didn’t do themselves.

Tensions in the Middle East are intensifying as a full-scale regional war seems more and more possible by the hour. Israel continued its offensive in Gaza and Lebanon this week. And earlier today, Iran launched a retaliatory attack on Israel for assassinating Hezbollah's leader, Hassan Nasrallah, in Beirut over the weekend. Israel vowed swift retaliation for Iran's ballistic missile attack in Tel Aviv, which did not result in any casualties.

To the dismay of many voters sympathetic to Palestinians, Harris hasn't strayed from Biden's unwavering support for Israel and his refusal to condition military aid to the country. "My commitment to the security of Israel is unwavering," Harris said in response to the Iranian attack on Israel today. She has called for a cease-fire in the region and said the Biden administration is working "tirelessly" to secure one. Walz has, of course, echoed her stance.

Like Trump, Vance has said he supports Israel's bombardment of Gaza and the United States' continued aid to the country.

Would you have certified the 2020 election results?

It’s a simple question that moderators can ask at Tuesday’s vice presidential debate between Democrat Tim Walz and Republican JD Vance.

Indeed, it shouldn’t be a matter of debate.

But here we are, thanks to Vance’s comments seeking to cast doubt on former Vice President Mike Pence’s certification of the 2020 presidential election, which Trump lost to Joe Biden.

Normally ahead of a debate, a campaign tries to raise expectations about the opposing candidate(s). That’s what Trump’s campaign did in a phone call Monday with reporters.

“Tim Walz is very good in debates,” senior adviser Jason Miller said. “I want to repeat that: Tim Walz is very good in debates — really good.” 

But in what’s become a pattern for the former president, Trump couldn’t stay on message. Vance is “going up against a moron,” he told his former adviser Kellyanne Conway on her Fox Nation show, “A total moron — how she [Harris] picked him is unbelievable.” And if Vance loses, Trump already has his usual excuse ready to go: the debates are “so rigged and so stacked. You’ll see it tomorrow with JD, it’ll be stacked.”

After months of speaking to die-hard Trump supporters at campaign rallies, the debate will be an opportunity for Vance to appeal to undecided voters and those who are unsure about Trump.

Vance is widely considered a running mate who was picked to carry the torch for the next MAGA generation, and he has faced a lot of criticism for comments he has made in the past, as well as more recently. It’ll be interesting to see whether Vance will — or can — speak to voters beyond his campaign’s base tonight.

Walz’s years of experience as a high school teacher could serve him well tonight.

As any teacher can tell you, teenagers talk back and to maintain control of a classroom you’ve got to be quick on your feet. Whether it’s the smart aleck sassing from the back of the room or the straight-A student undercutting your authority with tough questions, teachers have to respond in a way that’s authoritative but also funny.

That dynamic may be even more in play as Vance has the air of the disruptive smart kid about him. If Vance starts getting too cute by half when scoring points against Walz, the Democrat may be able to effectively parry Vance with a shrug and a light joke.

It may not win points with the judges at a formal debate, but vice presidential debates are not that. They’re won on vibes, and the funny teacher everyone likes shutting down the annoying student is not a bad vibe to have.

Let’s start with the obvious, we know Vance is not Trump. He clearly doesn’t have the same charisma as the former president. But he is committed to Trump’s MAGA mission ... no matter the cost. Vance has shown that, like Trump, he is willing to push whatever story fits their narrative regardless of the truth. 

But while he may still push the same Trump lies, he probably won’t fall for the same traps at the debate that Trump did. If the past is any guide, Vance is not a bad debater. Unlike the former president, he’s a bit more disciplined and a bit more on message.

In today’s edition of How to Win, an MSNBC email newsletter examining what candidates must do to win the 2024 election, we asked five political experts what they'll be watching watch for at tonight's debate.

MaddowBlog writer Steve Benen said he will keep an eye on how much Vance struggles to defend Trump’s bad behavior. Republican analyst Brendan Buck said he will focus on whether Walz can take a punch. And for progressive podcaster Brian Tyler Cohen, the key is whether Walz can beat Vance on relatability. Read more about what they’ll be watching below.

Like with the Harris-Trump debate last month, there’s no live audience to address tonight. But for the last several election cycles, vice presidential candidates have sat during their one chance to debate each other.

The New York Times recently said that’s because the Commission for Presidential Debates “sought an aesthetic difference for the vice-presidential contests by having the candidates be seated.”

But this time around, as my colleague Anusha Mathur noted earlier, with the campaigns and networks calling the shots directly, Walz and Vance will get a chance to stretch their legs as well as their policy chops as they face off from behind lecterns.

I anticipate we’ll see two distinct portrayals of manhood from Vance and Walz tonight.

As I wrote in the kickoff for my “MAGA and Masculinity in 2024” series this week, Vance and Trump have effectively branded their campaign as the destination for broken men — or men who feel broken due to some bogus sense of loss Trump and Vance have enlivened in them.

Trump and Vance embody a performative bravado that demonstrates power by conquering others, while the Harris-Walz campaign has promoted the idea that a man shows strength in the ways he cares for others.

It’s a key difference, and I expect it to be on full display as the acerbic Vance faces off against the affable Walz.

There’s a long list of rules for tonight, some of which shake up veep debate precedent:

Logistics: The debate begins at 9 p.m. ET and will last 90 minutes. Like the presidential debates this summer, there will be no live audience and the topics won’t be revealed beforehand. Walz and Vance will be given a notepad, pen and water bottle. Props and pre-written notes are prohibited. 

Positioning: For the first time since 2008, the veep candidates will stand rather than sit. Walz will appear on the right side of the TV screen and Vance on the left. They’re required to remain behind their podiums for the duration of the debate. 

On “Saturday Night Live” last weekend, Walz was portrayed by comedian Jim Gaffigan. During Vance’s final debate rehearsals, the task of playing the Minnesota governor fell to a fellow Minnesotan: Rep. Tom Emmer.

As NBC reported:

Yet another native Midwesterner — Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg — played the role of Vance during Walz’s own debate prep.

Debates tend to be remembered for one particular moment, but that’s especially true for vice presidential debates.

Lloyd Bentsen telling Dan Quayle he was “no Jack Kennedy” in 1988. Joe Biden telling Paul Ryan that his answer was a “bunch of malarkey” in 2012. A fly landing on Mike Pence’s head in 2020.

Because the running mates aren’t as important as the top of the ticket, the technical question of who “won” the debate doesn’t matter as much. 

The debate will be hosted by CBS News in its New York studios at 9 p.m. ET, without a live audience. MSNBC will simulcast the debate live, with prime-time coverage beginning at 7 p.m. ET.

Two of CBS News’ veteran anchors, Norah O’Donnell of “CBS Evening News” and Margaret Brennan of “Face the Nation,” will be the moderators.

Read more here: