Just like vice presidents themselves, in US politics, debates don’t really matter until they do. The most recent debate (and likely the last of the 2024 election cycle) between aspiring vice presidents Senator JD Vance and Governor Tim Walz isn’t likely to matter much at all.
Hosted by CBS, the vice presidential debate took place under much the same rules as the first and only debate between presidential candidates Kamala Harris and Donald Trump. There was no audience and very little fact-checking. The only real difference was that the microphones weren’t muted when a candidate wasn’t speaking – a setup that only really got away from the two moderators once.
A shallow, optics-focused analysis would suggest that the format favoured Vance; that he successfully projected an image of himself as a sensible, commonsense candidate. But Walz also performed entirely adequately, reinforcing his steady, nice-guy image.
