The biggest winners and losers from the Vance-Walz vice-presidential debate

Plus: How to help after Hurricane Helene, dreading the upcoming Supreme Court session, and more. October 2, 2024 [View in browser]( 3 winners and 2 losers from the Walz-Vance debate [Republican vice presidential candidate JD Vance, left, and Gov. Tim Walz of Minnesota, the Democratic VP candidate, during the vice presidential debate] Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images The vice presidential debate between Tim Walz and JD Vance on Tuesday was something of a stalemate, though it offered a preview of what presidential politics might look like once Donald Trump is off the stage. It isn’t clear yet how genuinely undecided voters responded to the debate — a[CBS poll afterward]( showed 42 percent of debate watchers thought Vance won and 41 percent thought Walz did, while 17 percent thought it was a tie. A[CNN poll]( showed 51 percent thought Vance won and 49 percent thought Walz did (CNN didn’t offer the “tie” option). Scored purely on affect and debating technique — without regard to factual accuracy — Vance did a bit better. He stuck to his two-pronged strategy: first, to blame Kamala Harris for everything voters don’t like that has happened under the Biden administration; and second, to put a reasonable-seeming face on Trumpism. In doing so, though, Vance said many misleading or totally untrue things, such as that Donald Trump saved Obamacare, that immigrants caused the US housing crisis, and that Trump was merely peacefully discussing “problems” with the 2020 election rather than blatantly trying to steal that election from the rightful winner, Joe Biden. Walz’s performance was rockier, and while he spoke effectively about health care, abortion, and Trump’s threat to democracy, his answers were less disciplined and more scattershot. He seemed flatfooted[by a question]( regarding his past, reportedly untrue claims to have been in Hong Kong at the time of the Tiananmen Square crackdown in 1989 – not exactly the most important and pressing issue of the day, but something he probably should have prepared a better answer for. So, on points, Vance may have won by a nose. But he did so in a way that is unlikely to matter very much, if at all, for the presidential contest. In general, vice presidential debates[very rarely impact the polls](. And this debate almost certainly didn't change the race — we may not even be talking about it for much longer — but there were some interesting moments that told us more about the candidates and the politics of 2024 as we head into the campaign’s final month. —Andrew Prokop Winner: JD Vance’s code-switching abilities Say what you will about JD Vance, but the man knows how to code-switch. When he attended Yale Law School and when he promoted his book Hillbilly Elegy, he knew[how to sound appealing]( to liberal elites. When he tried to cultivate the far right to win the Ohio Senate primary in 2022, he[went all-out]( saying absurd and offensive things (in a way that has hurt him this year, when his[remarks]( about “childless cat ladies” resurfaced). And on the debate stage Tuesday, he was laser-focused on sweet-talking swing voters. Vance didn’t engage in bomb-throwing. He assured viewers that he felt their pain and that their pain was all Kamala Harris’s fault. When abortion came up, Vance — who[said in 2022]( that he “certainly would like abortion to be illegal nationally” and[said in 2023]( that he wanted to prosecute people who sent abortion pills through the mail — took the unusual rhetorical tack of[admitting]( the public didn’t trust the GOP on the issue and that he and his fellow Republicans needed to earn their trust. For those worried about the whole “Trump tried for months to prevent the peaceful transfer of power to Joe Biden when he lost the election” thing? Well, let Vance set your mind at ease. Trump “peacefully gave over power on January 20th,” 2021, after all. Who cares what happened in the two months before that, anyway? The real threat to democracy, Vance claimed, was the “censorship” of Kamala Harris. That last pivot may have been a bit too smooth because when Walz asked Vance directly who won the 2020 election, Vance dodged again, claiming he was “focused on the future.” For anyone who remembers how Trump’s months-long campaign of lies helped cause the chaos of January 6, 2021, Vance’s answer will likely not be convincing. —Andrew Prokop Loser: The narrative that Tim Walz is a media phenomenon When Kamala Harris suddenly became the Democratic presidential nominee and needed a running mate, Walz stood out from the crowd of Democratic hopefuls by doing some compelling media appearances, including the one where he[memorably dubbed]( Republicans as “just weird.” In retrospect, those strong Walz interviews were all with friendly interlocutors, not in the oppositional, high-stakes setting of a debate. Indeed, when the Harris camp vetted Walz for VP, he admitted that he was a “bad debater,” CNN[reported in August](. And once the debate kicked off, some commentators watching it[wondered]( where the Tim Walz who was good on TV had gone. Walz’s performance was not disastrous. Far from it. He seems to have come off just fine to viewers,[per CBS’s post-debate poll](, and he had several good moments. For instance, it was smart of him to ask Vance directly whether Biden won the 2020 election, and to call Vance’s dodge a “damning non-answer.” It was not exactly a masterful showing, though. Walz seemed uncomfortable in the format compared to the smooth-talking Vance, he didn’t really seem to have one overarching message that he kept returning to, and he often missed opportunities to call out Vance’s lies and misrepresentations. —AP Winner: Obamacare One of Vance’s more remarkable lies of the night was this: Donald Trump saved Obamacare. He said the law “was crushing under the weight of its own regulatory burden in health care costs” before the former president took office in 2017 and started loosening some of its rules. “I think he can make a good argument that it salvaged Obamacare, which was doing disastrously until Donald Trump came along,” the Republican vice presidential candidate said. Donald Trump supported[the Republican Congress’s effort to roll back most of Obamacare](, including undoing some of[the regulations for preexisting conditions]( and making[major cuts to Medicaid](. It failed because of[John McCain](. Trump dramatically[cut funding for enrollment outreach](. He tried to introduce[Medicaid work requirements]( for people covered by the ACA’s expansion (but was stopped by the[courts](). He deregulated[short-term insurance plans]( that left people vulnerable to thousands of dollars in bills if they had a serious medical emergency. In 2016, when Donald Trump was elected, the ACA marketplaces[covered]( 12.7 million people. In 2020, when he lost the election to Joe Biden, they covered 11.4 million. After four years of Biden, 21.4 million Americans are getting their insurance through HealthCare.gov or one of its state counterparts. Voters have come to trust Democrats on health care[much more]( over the years since the law Republicans tagged as “Obamacare” passed. More than 60 percent of Americans now say they[like]( the ACA. In 2010, Obamacare was[the culprit]( for the Democratic wipeout in Congress, but its political fortunes have turned dramatically. In 2018, Democrats[won the House](, largely by running on a message that without a Democratic check, Trump’s myriad efforts to topple the law would succeed. Ever since, it has been a political asset for them against Republicans — forcing Vance to simply pretend that Trump’s health care record is different from what it is. —Dylan Scott [CBS News anchors Norah O'Donnell, left, and Margaret Brennan during the first vice presidential debate at the CBS Broadcast Center in New York, US, on Tuesday, Oct. 1,] Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images Loser: The moderators From the start, Norah O’Donnell and Margaret Brennan, the CBS news moderators, made it clear they did not think it was their job to keep the candidates grounded in reality. “The primary role of the moderators is to facilitate the debate between the candidates, enforce the rules, and provide the candidates with the opportunity to fact-check claims made by each other,” Brennan told viewers. And for the most part, the moderators allowed the candidates’ answers to go unchecked. The questions themselves were either not probing enough or poorly framed. When Brennan turned to Vice President Kamala Harris’s campaign promise to build 3 million homes, for example, she confoundingly asked Walz where those homes would get built, not how. And despite Trump’s continued election denial and Vance’s previous statements that[he would not have certified]( the 2020 election results, the moderators left questions about the fate of American democracy till the very end. ABC News’ David Muir and Linsey Davis did a much better job moderating last month’s presidential debate, fact-checking the candidates in real time — making it hard for even Trump to get away with lying — and not letting the candidates dodge questions entirely. O’Donnell and Brennan won’t going to stand out; they’re not the only debate moderators who have stumbled in the Trump era. The voters, on the other hand, are the unlucky ones. —Abdallah Fayyad Winner: A surprising amount of decency After nine years of increasingly toxic political discourse and six weeks of mud-slinging between the two No. 2s on the trail, it was reasonable to expect a nasty affair when Trump and Harris’s [attack dogs]( were unleashed on one another on the debate stage. So it was a little shocking that Walz and Vance not only refrained from hurling personal attacks at one another, but even found common ground at many points. Midwest Nice prevailed: kind on the surface, followed by the occasional sting. While Vance was criticizing Harris’s approach to the southern border, he seemed apologetic: “Tim, I agree with you,” Vance said. “I think you want to solve this problem, but I don't think Kamala Harris does.” Later on, the two would find comity over the effects of off-shoring and trade deficits. “Much of what the senator said, I am in agreement with him on,” Walz said. And after Walz mentioned his son had witnessed a shooting, Vance reacted sympathetically: “I didn't know that your 17-year-old witnessed a shooting and I'm sorry about that. I want to say — Christ have mercy. It is awful.” This seems to be the way the debate will be[remembered](, if at all. It made both candidates seem more normal, civil, and human than they had seemed before — a particular advantage for Vance, who came in needing to soften his image. It may have been strategic politeness, but it was notable in an era when so much politeness has been dispensed with. —Christian Paz   [Listen]( Israel’s escalation Tanks, rockets, missiles, and the death of Hassan Nasrallah. Israel is asserting itself as the most powerful player in the Middle East. [Listen now](         [A photo shows two people hugging amid destruction caused by hurricane helene] Megan Varner/Getty Images How to help those affected by Helene: The Southeast US was devastated by the effects of Hurricane Helene, which left many businesses, homes, and roads destroyed over the weekend. According to FEMA, the best way to help is to donate money. [Here are some organizations that are collecting funds for rescue, recovery, and critical supplies.]( Factory farms are also feeling the impact of Helene: Georgia is the nation’s top chicken producer, processing 1.3 billion chickens annually. Gov. Brian Kemp has reported that 107 poultry facilities in the state were “damaged or totally destroyed by the storm,” and estimates suggest[2.14 million to 5.56 million birds may have died due to the hurricane.]( The Supreme Court on “ghost guns”: Next week, the Supreme Court will consider a case concerning “ghost guns,” which are sold in ready-to-assemble kits. Three Trump appointees on the United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit previously concluded that [ghost guns are exempt from laws requiring background checks and serial numbers](, which makes it easier for people with violent felony convictions to obtain them. The Georgia chemical plant fire, explained: Just days after Hurricane Helene flooded Atlanta, Georgia, a plant fire in nearby Conyers released potentially toxic gas across Atlanta suburbs. 90,000 people have been told to shelter in place. [Here’s what we know so far about the risks associated with long-term chlorine exposure, and who’s being held responsible.]( What Monsters gets wrong: Monsters, the Ryan Murphy Netflix drama about Lyle and Erik Menendez — who were convicted of murdering their parents in 1989 — fictionalizes details, even going as far as to suggest that the brothers may have had an incestuous relationship. [Here’s what the show gets wrong about the case.]( And elsewhere ... From your mouth to Merriam-Webster’s ears: Iconic dictionary Merriam-Webster has added 200 new words to their catalog, including “For You page,” “shadow ban,” “touch grass,” and “nepo baby.” [[Merriam Webster](] Jimmy Carter turns 100: Tuesday marked former president Jimmy Carter’s 100th birthday. He is the oldest surviving and longest-living US president, becoming the first to reach the triple digits. Commemorative events have been planned in his home state of Georgia. [[Axios](] [President Jimmy Carter pictured in 1978.] Matt Brown/E+   What comes after such a betrayal? “It’s hard not to feel a sense of dread as the Supreme Court justices return to Washington for their new term, which, by law, begins on the first Monday in October, on October 7. [The Court] so recently showed such astoundingly poor judgment, in a case that could lead the United States down the grim road to dictatorship, that it’s far from clear why anyone would trust them to judge a beauty contest — much less to sit on the nation’s highest Court,” writes Vox senior correspondent Ian Millhiser on Trump v. United States, which saw the Court rule that former president Donald Trump was allowed to [use his official powers to commit crimes while in office](. Here’s what’s on the docket [this term, including guns, trans rights, vapes, porn, and more.]( [A photo of the Supreme Court building of the United States] Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images   Are you enjoying the Today, Explained newsletter? Forward it to a friend; they can [sign up for it right here](. And as always, we want to know what you think. 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