It’s time for the veeps

What to watch in the Vance-Walz debate

Oct 01, 2024

Good morning! It’s Tuesday, October 1, 2024. Election Day is 35 days away.

Today is Jimmy Carter’s 100th birthday. Five other presidents have lived into their 90s — John Adams, Herbert Hoover, Gerald Ford, Ronald Reagan, and George H.W. Bush — but Carter is the first to make it to triple-digits.

“His lifetime has overlapped with that of 17 other presidents so far: William Howard Taft (the nation’s 27th president) was still alive when Carter was born and Calvin Coolidge was the president,” The Washington Post points out.

Recommendation: “His Very Best” by Jonathan Alter is a great overview of Carter’s life — before, during, and after the presidency.

persons left hand doing peace sign — Clash of the Number Twos.

Tim Walz and JD Vance have been circling each other for months.

Walz’s sudden vault to the top of the Democratic veepstakes this summer was partially a result of his attacks on Vance, who he was early to brand “weird.” Vance also quickly came out of the gate attacking Walz, launching several attacks at his military record just days after his VP rival was unveiled.

The two running-mate contenders have certain traits in common: both veterans, both children of working-class families who serve their tickets as Midwestern emissaries. As candidates, both potential veeps lean heavily on their biographies, which have been recounted breathlessly: Vance’s in his bestselling memoir “Hillbilly Elegy,” about his Appalachian roots; Walz’s in frequent quips about growing up in a small town.

Both are prominent elected officials who glom to other labels: Vance prefers to be seen as an outsider upstart, while Walz is more apt to go by “Coach” than “Governor.”

The similarities pretty much end there between the 40-year-old Ohio senator and 60-year-old Minnesota governor. The former is attempting to bring the Republican Party into a new generation of national conservatism; the latter is seeking to revive old-school, Humphrey-style liberalism.

Their personas on the trail are very different: Walz, with his aw-shucks, dad-joke schtick, calls himself a “joyful warrior”; Vance is often harder-edged, set permanently to attack mode. Despite rising to fame in Democratic politics through his go-anywhere media approach, Walz has been a “surprisingly bubble-wrapped campaigner,” giving almost as few interviews as his ticket-mate. Vance, meanwhile, often takes questions at the end of his events, grinning as his audiences boo and jeer reporters. While Walz remains on-script, Vance has even ventured ahead of Trump on policy at times.

These competing approaches have been on stark display as Walz and Vance prepare to meet tonight for their first and only debate.

Walz, who often looks out wide-eyed at his rally crowds with Harris, has been trying to appear the folksy, out-of-practice underdog, with CNN reporting that he is “nervous” about facing Vance and Politico adding that Democrats are privately worrying as well. (Some of this is likely genuine — it was reported when Walz was being vetted that he told the Harris team he was a “bad debater” — but don’t be completely fooled by the expectations-setting. As much as he tries to downplay the fact that he’s a career politician, it’s worth remembering that Walz is the canny veteran of six congressional and two gubernatorial campaigns.)

Meanwhile, Vance — the Yale Law-trained policy wonk who turned in several combative performances in his sole Ohio Senate election — has sought to project strength. “We have well developed views on public policy so we don’t have to prepare that much,” Vance said on a press call last week. “We feel a lot more confident and frankly, you don’t have to prepare if you don’t have to hide what you say.” (His running mate has gone even further, telling Kellyanne Conway yesterday: “He’s going up against a moron.”)

Whatever they say, behind the scenes, both candidates have been holding prep sessions, with Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigeg playing Vance for Walz (just as he played fellow Indianan Mike Pence for Harris in 2020) and Minnesota Rep. Tom Emmer playing his former House colleague Walz for Vance.

Expect a lot of zingers to fly both ways, with Vance trying to tie Walz and Harris to their liberal records (including a bevy of flip-flops) and Walz seeking to paint Vance and Trump as extreme (how many times will Project 2025 be brought up?)

Both candidates enter tonight’s debate with something to prove, as segments of their parties second-guessed their selections: many Democrats thought Harris should have tapped Josh Shapiro, the governor of must-win Pennsylvania; many of Trump’s closest advisers warned him against picking Vance, although not his adult sons. (Vance, after a rollout marked by focus on his “childless cat ladies” comment, is the least popular of the four national candidates, with a -11.2% net favorability rating. Walz, at +3.7%, is the most popular.)

Despite concerns from both parties about their VP candidates, tonight’s debate is unique in that it will be left to the No. 2’s to make the final case for their campaigns ahead of the election. With Trump refusing to meet Harris for a rematch, this will be the first campaign since presidential debates began in 1960 that the VP debate will be the last one before Election Day.

Still, tonight’s event is unlikely to match the 67 million viewers who tuned into the Harris-Trump debate — or have play much of a role in the campaign. As the political scientist Donald Trump said in July, when his Vance pick was gaining criticism: “Historically, the vice president, in terms of the election, does not have any impact. I mean, virtually no impact.”

On that score, he’s correct.

The vice presidential debate will be held at the CBS News studio in New York City from 9 to 10:30 p.m. ET. It will air live on all the major broadcast and cable news networks. You can also watch on YouTube here. CBS anchors Norah O’Donnell and Margaret Brennan will moderate.

More news to know

An interesting prelude to tonight’s debate… WaPo: VA staff got into Vance, Walz medical files, sparking investigation

CNN: White House believes Iran is preparing imminent ballistic missile attack against Israel

NBC: In the wake of Hurricane Helene, questions about government response emerge

CNN: Georgia judge declares state’s abortion ban unconstitutional, allowing procedure to resume beyond 6 weeks into pregnancy

The day ahead

All times Eastern.

President Biden will receive a briefing on the Hurricane Helene response and hold a virtual call with U.S. rabbis ahead of Rosh Hashanah.
VP Harris has nothing on her schedule.
Former President Trump will campaign in Waunakee (watch at 2:30 pm) and Milwaukee, Wisconsin (watch at 6 pm).
Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz and Ohio Sen. JD Vance will meet for their first and only debate (watch at 9 pm).
The House and Senate are on recess until November.

Before I go…

One more note on Jimmy Carter at 100. The 39th president hasn’t spoken much about his remarkable longevity — although he did set one goal for himself back in 2015.

“I’d like for the last Guinea worm to die before I do,” he said at a press conference that year, when announcing his cancer diagnosis.

Guinea worms are parasites that spread through contaminated drinking water and cause debilitating pain for those infected, who are often rendered non-functional for months.

The world has come incredibly close to meeting Carter’s goal, in no small part because of the efforts of the Carter Center, the charity he founded after leaving the White House.

In 1986, when Carter began his fight against Guinea worm disease, there were an estimated 3.5 million cases globally. Last year, just 14 cases were reported.