Vance’s Deceitful Answer on 2020 Election Will Be the Indelible Moment of Veep Debate Against Walz

It was Yale Law School Slick versus Minnesota Nice, as Vance for much of the night displayed his superior and polished media skills. Walz’s aw-shucks style, along with his occasional deer-in-the-headlights split-screen visage, time and again was too slow and too respectful to challenge his rival’s lies on abortion and immigration, call out his sane-washing of Trump’s incoherence or counter some over-the-top attacks on Kamala Harris.

But near the end of the 107-minute affair, broadcast from New York by CBS, debate moderator Norah O’Donnell (finally!) asked about the issue of democracy, and the January 6, 2021, riot that Trump fomented in a bid to stop the formal counting of electoral votes in Joe Biden’s victory. It was the first time in the nation’s history there has not been a peaceful transfer of power

Vance, in an example of the kind of glib super-spin that he employed repeatedly throughout the evening, tried to pivot away from the January 6 violence by saying that Trump “peacefully gave over power on January the 20th.”

“Did he lose the 2020 election?” Walz immediately parried, looking directly at Vance.

“Tim, I’m focused on the future,” Vance fatuously responded, quickly trying to add a misdirection attack on Democrats as being the true anti-democracy party because of Facebook’s censorship of anti-vaxxers. Or something.

Walz wasn’t having it: “That is a damning non-answer,” he said, praising then–Vice President Mike Pence for defying Trump’s wishes and certifying the election.

“That’s why Mike Pence isn’t on this stage,” the Democratic vice presidential nominee said, calling Pence a “firewall against Donald Trump” that would not exist in a second term, because Vance would go along with whatever Trump ordered him to do.

It was by far the most dramatic, and most consequential, moment of the debate, and the Harris campaign put out the word shortly after the event ended that they already were making an ad out of it. Given the consistent, too-close-to-call polling on the campaign, the nation’s bitterly divided tribal politics, and the fact that vice-presidential debates rarely matter much in any case, it is likely to be the most lasting exchange of the night.

Three other takeaways.

Immigration. Vance dominated the first half of the debate, offering rose-colored recollections about the economy during the Trump years, and landing blow after blow on immigration, with flurries of statistics and sharp arguments about purported amounts of fentanyl, child trafficking, and criminals coming into the country illegally over the Mexican border under the Biden-Harris Administration. Walz defended against the onslaught only weakly, and failed to prosecute the case about Trump and Vance’s vicious and reckless attacks on legal Haitian immigrants in Ohio.

Abortion. Walz’s best sustained moments came in the exchanges about abortion rights. While Vance unctuously said his party had “to win back people’s trust” on abortion rights and flat-out lied about his previously stated support for a national ban, Walz told the stories of three women who had died, suffered, or, in the case of a 12-year old rape victim, been forced to carry a baby to term because of restrictive state abortion laws passed since the 2022 repeal of Roe. v. Wade, making clear why Trump’s facile argument about sending abortion back to the states is dangerous and deadly.

Civility. For the most part, however, Walz and Vance were cordial, at times affable, and sometimes even agreeable with each other, in sharp contrast to the kind of rudeness, crudeness, and nasty name-calling with which Trump characteristically fills his own debate performances. It was the kind of substantive and courteous debate that used to be unexceptional in American campaigns, and the fact that it was notable is a sad commentary on how he has coarsened and damaged our politics and culture.