What to see in the vice presidential debate between JD Vance and Tim Walz

Republican JD Vance and Democrat Tim Walz will face off on Tuesday in the only vice presidential debate of the 2024 election, bringing together candidates who have spent two months facing each other and the opposing candidates leading the major parties’ tickets. .

The debate, presented by CBS News in New York, may not have the same stakes as the Sept. 10 debate between former President Donald Trump and Vice President Kamala Harris. But it offers his top lieutenants a new opportunity to show up, vouch for their bosses and fulfill the traditional role of a running mate: attack dog. It will engage the largest television and online audience either candidate will see before Election Day.

Walz, the 60-year-old governor of Minnesota, and Vance, a 40-year-old U.S. senator from Ohio, have anticipated possible rapprochements for weeks. Walz, before Harris elected him, was the Democrat who coined the term “weird” as a pejorative term for the Republican ticket. Vance attacks the governor’s progressive record as evidence that Democrats are too left-wing for voters.

Vance has mocked his fellow veteran’s military service record. Walz criticizes Vance’s opposition to abortion rights and his views on family life. Both men have played up their small-town, middle-class American credentials, in contrast to Trump, the billionaire New York native, and Harris, a native of California’s Bay Area.

This sets up a potentially fierce night in Manhattan. Here are the dynamics to consider as the rivals meet face to face for the first time:

Is it more Walz vs. Vance or Harris vs. Trump?

The running mates have to do a balancing act. Their main job is to defend their bosses. But a vice presidential candidate’s credibility and connection to his audience are important factors in achieving that goal. If a voter doesn’t like the messenger, they are less likely to accept the message. Heading into the debate, a new AP-NORC poll suggests Walz is more liked than Vance, giving the Republican perhaps a tougher challenge.

The poll found that only a quarter of registered voters have a somewhat or very favorable opinion of the Ohio senator, while about half have a somewhat or very unfavorable opinion. About a quarter don’t know enough to say so. Walz is viewed positively by about 4 in 10 voters and negatively by about 3 in 10; the rest don’t know enough to say.

Still, Sen. Tim Kaine, a Virginia Democrat and 2016 vice presidential candidate, warned participants not to think too much about themselves. “The only advice that matters is to protect the top of the ticket,” Kaine insisted, recalling the 2000 confrontation between Republican Dick Cheney and Democrat Joe Lieberman. “Cheney continued to attack (Al) Gore, and Lieberman, instead of defending Gore, tried to make himself nice… You can’t leave attacks unanswered.”

Abortion rights and views on family will feature prominently

Democrats believe abortion rights and reproductive health care will motivate their base voters and sway undecided voters.

Walz has already tried to take advantage of this by mixing his story with the plot. The governor often talks about how he and his wife, Gwen, needed fertility treatments to have their daughter. Democrats have criticized Vance for his 2021 joke about “childless cat women” who are shaping American life. And Walz has been eager to echo Harris’s emphasis on abortion rights as the anchor of her overarching campaign theme: “Freedom.”

Vance and Trump, on the other hand, have struggled for a consistent message on abortion rights, a reflection of how politically charged the issue is for Republicans as support for abortion access has risen since the Supreme Court decision. of 2022 to overturn Roe v. Wade and end a woman’s constitutional right to terminate a pregnancy.

Trump boasts of naming conservatives who helped overturn Roe and return abortion regulation to state governments. Many Republicans now want to go beyond state bans and impose federal restrictions on the procedure, but Trump has indicated that overturning Roe is enough. He has also wavered over how he will vote in a referendum in Florida that would expand abortion rights.

Vance said in August that Trump would veto a national ban if it passed Congress. A couple of weeks later, during Trump’s debate with Harris, the former president hesitated over an answer, saying, “I didn’t talk about it with JD.” Harris’ campaign has amplified audio of Vance saying as a Senate candidate that he would like to see abortion banned nationwide.

Vance and Walz compete for an advantage in the economy

Vance often offers clearer arguments than Trump about boosting American manufacturing, helping workers and punishing corporations. He regularly attacks the Biden-Harris administration over inflation. If there’s one broad issue where Vance wants to put Walz on the defensive and tie the Democratic ticket to President Joe Biden, it’s the economy.

For her part, Harris declares that “building the middle class will be a defining goal of my presidency.” He acknowledges the struggles of many consumers, while generally defending Biden’s overall record of economic growth, low unemployment and rising wages since he inherited a COVID-19 free fall.

Both campaigns have competing sets of economic proposals, including various tax cuts and subsidies for certain sectors. The running mates can be expected to spend considerable time trying to convince the shrinking portion of persuadable voters that their ticket is more in tune with the day-to-day economic concerns of most American households.

Both are expected to talk about their roots in the American middle class
Although the debate revolves around Harris and Trump, the running mates got here largely because of their respective biographies.

Trump’s election was a move to further cement the Republican Party’s ticket as the choice for the American middle class. Vance, author of the memoir “Hillbilly Elegy,” who grew up in a small Ohio town, has roots that match his economic populism in ways that billionaire Trump does not.

Walz and Harris grew up middle class, but Walz remains firmly rooted there, going from his childhood on a Nebraska farm to Minnesota high school classrooms before running for office. It is both a juxtaposition and reinforcement of Harris’ story as the daughter of an Indian mother and a Jamaican father.

Both men have made their families part of their political identities. They each have working spouses. Walz has two children, one a young adult and the other a teenager. Vance has three young children. The Walzes and Vances are more traditional political families than those of the presidential candidates: Harris has adult stepchildren from her decade-long marriage to Doug Emhoff; Trump has five children from three marriages.

Hopefully both running mates, even as they try to keep the spotlight on their bosses, will highlight their own stories.

The responsibility of verifying the facts will fall on the candidates
CBS announced Friday that the candidates will have to be honest with each other in Tuesday’s debate, a sticking point from previous debates this year.

In the June debate between Trump and Biden, ‘s Jake Tapper and Dana Bash limited follow-up questions and did not fact-check any of the participants. In the September debate between Trump and Harris, ABC’s David Muir and Linsey Davis weighed in with practical corrections to some of Trump’s most glaring misstatements.

[Con información de The Associated Press]

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