As the Middle East spiraled towards full-scale war, the US vice presidential debate focused largely on domestic issues, like school shootings and the cost of housing, healthcare, and childcare.
The CBS News debate moderators largely declined to factcheck JD Vance or Tim Walz, asking them instead to respond to each other.
Here are some key takeaways from the debate between the Republican senator from Ohio who wrote a bestselling memoir about poverty in Appalachia and the Democratic football-coach-turned-governor of Minnesota.
Walz was plodding and failed to attack Vance. Vance was polished and played nice
Walz won his place on Harris’s campaign in part because of his zesty and energetic attacks on Vance, whom he accused of being a faux supporter of struggling rural Americans, and of simply being “weird”.
But in the days before this debate, Walz also tried to manage expectations about his face-off with Vance, with news outlets running stories about Walz’s nerves and his belief that he is a bad debater.
And, in fact, Walz appeared anxious and uncomfortable in his debate with Vance. Instead of mocking or attacking Donald Trump’s unpopular vice-presidential pick, the Minnesota governor appeared to be working hard to land his prepared talking points, while a more relaxed Vance easily maneuvered around him.
Walz admitted that he “misspoke” in past comments, when he repeatedly recalled being in Hong Kong during the Tiananmen Square massacre, though news outlets found evidence he could not have been there at that exact time. Walz also said in a garbled comment on gun violence that “he became friends with mass shooters”, a gaffe that is now widely circulating in conservative media.
Vance, who has faced intense criticism for spreading racist misinformation about Haitian immigrants in Ohio, and has refused to apologize, appeared to be trying to present both himself and Trump as genial and affable moderates, describing Trump, for instance, as the savior of Obamacare, though fact-checkers noted the former president consistently attacked and undermined Obamacare.
By the end of the debate, both candidates appeared to be making some efforts to be cordial to each other, and to note moments of agreement with each other, as if trying to win points for “civility”.
Vance refused to say whether Trump had lost the 2020 election
In one of Walz’s stronger moments, he asked Vance to state clearly whether Trump had lost the 2020 election, which the former president still denies.
Vance would not say whether Trump had won or lost.
“Tim, I’m focused on the future,” Vance said, trying to pivot to accusing Harris of censoring Americans.
“That is a damning non-answer,” Walz said.
WALZ: Did Donald Trump lose the 2020 election?
— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) October 2, 2024
VANCE: Tim, I'm focused on the future
WALZ: That's a damning non-answer pic.twitter.com/D6tVg8HOFC
When questioned about threats to democracy and January 6, Vance responded by drawing a false equivalence between a violent mob storming the Capitol and forcing members of Congress to flee and hide, and Democrats protesting and complaining after previous presidential elections. Vance argued it was unfair for Democrats to describe Trump’s refusal to admit he had lost the 2020 election as undermining democracy, and said the claim “that this is just a problem that Republicans have had – I don’t buy that.”
“January 6 was not Facebook ads,” Walz responded, referring to Democrats’ allegations that Russia’s buying of ads in 2016 influenced the election. “I think a revisionist history on this – look, I don’t understand how we got to this point, but the issue was, that happened.”
Vance blamed a wide swathe of problems, from school shootings to the housing crisis, on undocumented immigrants and US border policy
Is there a social problem in America that, according to JD Vance, doesn’t come back to Harris’s supposed failure to secure the US-Mexico border?
Vance asserted that the US housing crisis was a result of undocumented immigrants competing with US citizens for homes, and suggested that Trump’s pledge to conduct mass deportations of undocumented people in the US would bring down rents and housing costs, a repeated suggestion that struck many commentators as troubling.
listing “mass deportation” as a housing proposal is literally fascistic pic.twitter.com/XzNG4sDwGS
— Alex Shephard (@alex_shephard) October 2, 2024
“Twenty five million illegal aliens competing with Americans for scarce homes is one of the most significant drivers of home prices in the country. It’s why we have a massive increase in home prices that have happened right alongside massive increases in illegal alien populations under Kamala Harris’s leadership,” Vance said.
“We should be kicking out illegal immigrants who are competing for those homes, and we should be building more homes for the American citizens who deserve to be here,” he said at another point.
The Associated Press’s factcheckers noted that, “Most economists blame a long-term decline in the housing supply for the steady increase in home prices” and “Homebuilders say they need the immigrants to build the homes,” meaning that mass deportations of workers would not in fact increase the supply of housing in the US.
When asked about school shootings and his opposition to gun control laws, Vance endorsed adding more security measures to schools. In response to gunmen opening fire at schools, he said: “We have to make the doors stronger. We have to make the windows stronger.”
But he also pointed a finger at Mexico, asserting that most gun violence in the US is carried out with illegally obtained firearms, and drawing a connection between the “open border” with Mexico and a rise in illegal guns in the US.
There is official data that shows a rising number of guns used in crimes have crossed the US-Mexico border in recent years. But it’s not Mexico sending guns to the US: it’s guns from the US fueling crime and violence in Mexico. As Reuters reported last year: “The great majority of illegal guns in Mexico come from the United States, Mexican and US authorities say,” noting that, “Mexico, a country of 127 million people, has tight gun laws – and just a single gun store, located on a military base.”
Vance talked a lot about the GOP needing to regain women’s trust on abortion policy
Vance paired a lot of soft rhetoric acknowledging American women’s concerns about the GOP’s extreme anti-abortion policies with a reiteration of his support for leaving abortion law to the states, many of which have passed laws that criminalize women who seek abortions and medical providers who assist them.
He opened his comments on abortion by talking about a friend who told him, years after having an abortion as a young woman, that her ability to have that abortion had been crucial to her life, and allowed her to escape an abusive relationship.
He also said that the state of Ohio’s 2023 referendum enshrining access to abortion as a right in the state constitution, when “people in Ohio voted overwhelmingly against my position”, taught him “that we have to do a better job at winning back people’s trust”.
When Walz mentioned one of the Georgia women who died of what an investigation found to be a “preventable” death that experts linked to a state law criminalizing abortion procedures, Vance agreed with Walz: “Amber Thurman should still be alive.”
But, of course, leaving abortion law to the states resulted in the Georgia law that Thurman’s family, as well as experts, blame for her death.
Thurman’s family was having none of Vance’s rhetoric. In a comment shared after the debate, they praised Walz for defending women’s rights and criticized Republican policies.
The family of Amber Thurman has issued a statement following discussions during the Vice Presidential debate about Amber and women’s reproductive rights:
— Ben Crump (@AttorneyCrump) October 2, 2024
Tonight, we commend Governor @Tim_Walz for telling Amber’s story and for his unwavering commitment to defending women’s… pic.twitter.com/SRUihCKvw2
There was only one question about the Middle East, which is on the brink of a regional war
On Tuesday, Iran launched a major missile attack on Israel. Israel pledged revenge. On Tuesday night, as Israeli missiles struck neighborhoods across Beirut, and Israel warned Lebanese civilians to flee their homes at 3am, the US vice-presidential debate largely ignored the escalating global crisis, instead focusing on questions about the economy and the priorities of US consumers.
Vance and Walz faced a single opening question about the Middle East: would they support a pre-emptive US strike on Iran? Both candidates more or less dodged the question, while emphasizing that they supported Israel. Walz added that Trump’s own defense advisers had decided he was unfit for office, and that the US needed a “steady” leader like Kamala Harris. Vance said it was up to Israel to decide the best way to keep themselves safe, and: “We should support our allies wherever they are when they’re fighting the bad guys.”
