Walz vs. Vance: Midwesterners Two Miles Apart Stand Up for Debate in Politics | US elections 2024

TThe football coach and the “Yale Law Guy” will go head-to-head in New York City on Tuesday night as two Midwesterners with very different styles and very different messages argue about the future of the United States.

Tim Walz, the Democratic governor of Minnesota, faces Ohio Republican Sen. JD Vance in a vice presidential debate that is expected to be unusually significant in this red-hot election year. They will compete for 90 minutes, anchored by CBS News, to give their respective competitors – Kamala Harris and Donald Trump – a leg up on the White House.

Walz has been preparing for the debate in Minneapolis with US Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg, who is posing as Vance. (Buttigieg may have had déjà vu — he impersonated Mike Pence during Kamala Harris’ prep sessions before the 2020 vice presidential debate.)

Vance held mock debates with U.S. House Republican Tom Emmer, who represented Walz. Emmer is from Minnesota and therefore has the advantage of having studied Walz up close.

The two running mates bring different strengths to the gladiator ring. Vance is an experienced debater who will enjoy confrontations under the glare of television lights.

“Look, he’s a lawyer from Yale,” Walz said of his opponent. “He will be well prepared.”

In contrast, Walz can rely on skills he learned in school. Walz was a public school teacher for 17 years, so he knows how to think on his feet – and deal with a disruptive child.

“I expect a very heated debate,” Robby Mook, Hillary Clinton’s 2016 presidential campaign manager, told CBS News.

One of the big questions of the evening will likely be whether Vance can redeem himself after a rocky start to his candidacy. Will he be able to overcome all the “weirdness,” as Walz put it, and bring consistency to the messaging of an often chaotic Trump campaign?

From awkward encounters with donut shop employees to the ongoing uproar over his “childless cat ladies” remark, Vance has been the subject of online ridicule that at times seemed to engulf him. He also seems stuck in the same culture war themes that preoccupy Trump.

“Vance does not appear to have won any additional voters for Trump because the controversies he is getting into are exactly the same as those of the former president,” said Barry Burden, a political scientist at the University of Wisconsin, Madison.

Most egregious, Vance has doubled down on the false and racist narrative that Haitian immigrants eat pets in Springfield, Ohio, despite local authorities categorically denying this. He recently admitted to CNN that he was willing to “write stories” if it would result in him attracting media attention.

Such comments have sunk Vance in the minds of the voting public — his negative rating is 11 points higher than his positive rating, according to FiveThirtyEight.

In contrast, Walz basks in the glow of a positive four-point gap between his favorability ratings, which presents him with a completely different set of challenges on debate night. He must fend off Vance’s attempts to paint him as a misinformation candidate based on misrepresentations Walz made about his military career, debunk his rivals’ claims that he is dangerously liberal, and refuse to be sidelined.

“Walz just needs to get in and out of the debate without causing trouble for his ticket,” Burden said.

John Conway, strategy director for Republican Voters Against Trump, said Walz would be best advised to follow Harris’ strategy. The day after Harris’ debate with Trump, he organized focus groups involving voters from five battleground states that supported Trump in 2016 but switched to Biden in 2020.

Focus group participants were excited by Harris’ dual approach to the debate – attacking Trump for his lies and felony convictions, but also presenting a positive plan for the country’s future. “That’s the blueprint that Walz needs to follow,” Conway said, “attacking when appropriate but also being substantive about the matter.”

Since the first debate between Senators Bob Dole and Walter Mondale in 1976, the vice presidential debates have featured several memorable television moments. Most famously, the 1988 incident occurred when Democrat Lloyd Bentsen rebuked George H. Bush’s vice president, Dan Quayle, for comparing himself to John F. Kennedy.

“Senator, I served with Jack Kennedy. I knew Jack Kennedy. Jack Kennedy was a friend of mine. Senator, you are no Jack Kennedy.”

“That was really inappropriate, Senator,” Quayle whined.

More recently, John McCain’s vice presidential running mate, Sarah Palin, teased Joe Biden, the Democratic vice presidential nominee who ran with Barack Obama in 2008, by telling him, “Oh, tell me it’s not like that, Joe.”

These were nice quotes that found their way into the lexicon. But it’s notable that neither Bentsen nor Palin were rewarded where it counts – at the ballot box.

In fact, the vice presidential debates have tended to be disappointing in terms of the lasting impression they left on the US election. Larry Sabato, a politics professor at the University of Virginia, pointed out that the race remains even after the dynamic presidential debate between Harris and Trump earlier this month, which was watched by 67 million television viewers and which Harris was widely believed to have won essentially a neck-and-neck race in the critical battleground states.

Sabato said that given the lack of consequences from the debate at the top of the election, he expects Tuesday’s vice presidential battle to be equally inconclusive. “I don’t expect the vice presidential debate to have any impact,” he said.

Still, this is no ordinary choice. The departure of Joe Biden and the sudden rise of Harris, as well as Trump’s refusal to participate in a second debate with her, have raised the stakes.

Tuesday’s spectacle is likely to be the last debate before Election Day on November 5th. “This is really the last big national moment in the campaign, so I think it’s important,” Mook said.

Aside from the economy, immigration and foreign wars, which are sure to be addressed in the debate, a more amorphous battle is likely to take place on stage: Who will own the mantle of “authentic Midwesterner”? Will it be the Nebraska-born Walz or the bestselling author of Hillbilly Elegy, Ohio’s Vance?

The rivalry goes beyond mere aesthetics or regional loyalties. In the states where the election could be decided – the three so-called “blue wall” states of Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania – it is well received.

“I don’t know if the word ‘Midwest’ will be used in the debate, but sentiments about the Midwest will be expressed,” Burden said.

The candidates offer a diametrically opposed vision of the heartland. Walz’s Midwest is folksy and homey, a world where neighbors look out for one another, where football coaches act as local heroes (Walz coached the sport at Mankato West High School beginning in 1997) and where joy is in the air.

Vance paints a much darker picture of drug addiction, broken families and the threat of immigration. It is the Midwest of Trump’s dystopia of “American carnage.”

Two completely opposite visions. Two tough and determined candidates. Gentlemen, shall we begin?