Walz and Vance dispute in a polite manner during a policy-heavy vice-presidential debate

Democrat Tim Walz and Republican JD Vance fought at a vice presidential debate on Tuesday. The debate was surprisingly polite for the end of an ugly campaign that had been marked by hate speech and two failed assassination attempts.

During the campaign, the two foes have been very mean to each other, but they mostly kept a friendly attitude. They saved their anger for the top of their parties’ lists, which included Democratic Vice President Kamala Harris and Republican former President Donald Trump.

The tense moment happened near the end of the debate, when Vance avoided a question about whether he would fight this year’s vote if Trump loses. Vance has said that he would not have voted to certify the results of the 2020 election.

In response, Walz said that Trump’s false claims of voting fraud were what led to the attack on the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021, by a group of people who wanted to stop the certification of Joe Biden’s 2020 election but failed.

Walz turned to Vance and said, “He is still saying he didn’t lose the election.” “Did he lose the 2020 election?”

Again, Vance avoided answering the question and instead said that Harris was trying to shut down websites that had different points of view.

Walz said, “That is a damning non-answer.”

Walz, 60, is the liberal governor of Minnesota and a former high school teacher. Vance, 40, is a best-selling author and the fiery conservative U.S. senator from Ohio. They have both said that they are from the Midwest and have very different views on the problems facing the country.

At the last discussion before the Nov. 5 election, the candidates each tried to make a lasting impression by arguing about the economy, immigration, taxes, life in the Middle East, and climate change.

But overall, the two men seemed determined to show what it means to be “Midwestern nice.” They thanked each other while criticizing their running mates, which is a common role for vice presidential candidates.

Vance asked Harris why she hadn’t done more to deal with issues like inflation, immigration, and the economy while she was working for Biden. This was an ongoing attack that Trump often failed to deliver on when they debated Harris last month.

“If Kamala Harris has such great plans for how to address middle-class problems, then she ought to do them now – not when asking for promotion, but in the job the American people gave her 3-1/2 years ago,” he said.

Walz said Trump was an unstable leader who only cared about millionaires. He also turned Vance’s criticism on its head when it came to immigration by saying Trump was to blame for getting Republicans in Congress to drop a bipartisan bill for border security earlier this year.

Walz said of immigration, “Most of us want to solve this.” “Donald Trump had four years to do this, and he promised you, Americans, how easy it will be.”

The tone of the night was very different from how the campaign has been divided. Trump has insulted Harris many times, using racist and sexist language, and his life has been threatened twice. In the past, Walz had called his Republican opponents “weird,” and Vance was criticized for calling some Democrats “childless cat ladies.”

TRUMP BLOGGING LIVE

The talk at the CBS Broadcast Center in New York started with the growing crisis in the Middle East. On Tuesday, Israel kept attacking southern Lebanon, and in response, Iran fired missiles at Israel.

According to Walz and Vance, Trump has made the world safer during his term, while Trump himself says he is too “fickle” and likes strongmen to be trusted to handle the rising conflict.

When asked if he would back Israel taking action against Iran before it was time, Vance said he would let Israel decide, while Walz didn’t directly answer the question.

As Trump watched the debate on TV, he was posting wildly on his Truth Social site, sometimes twice a minute, attacking the CBS judges and calling Walz “pathetic” and “low IQ.”

A SHARP EDGE

Political experts say that vice presidential debates don’t usually change the result of an election. Still, even a small change in public opinion could make the difference, since the race is so close five weeks before Election Day.

This week, Walz was asked about a story that said he wasn’t in China during the 1988 crackdown in Tiananmen Square, even though he had said before that he was.

He gave an answer that was all over the place: “I’m a knucklehead sometimes.” “I messed up on this when I got there that summer.” I learned a lot about what it means to be in charge while I was in Hong Kong and China during the reform protests.

On the other hand, Vance defended his running mate even though he had said bad things about Trump before the 2016 race.

His words, “I was wrong about Donald Trump,” were confirmed. I was wrong in the first place because I believed some news stories about his record that turned out to be lies. But most importantly, Trump did what the American people wanted.

Walz also said that Trump was wrong for picking three U.S. Supreme Court justices who agreed with the court’s decision to end a national right to abortion that had been in place for almost 50 years. This issue has hurt Republicans.

Vance is known for having a very conservative view on abortion, but on Tuesday he took a more moderate approach and said he did not support a national ban, even though he had supported Republican Senator Lindsey Graham’s plan to limit abortions to 15 weeks in 2022. He said that Trump thinks it should be up to each state to decide if it wants to limit abortion.

Trump said on social media that he would veto a national ban. This came weeks after he wouldn’t say during the presidential debate if he would or not.

According to a Reuters/Ipsos study, 51% of registered voters say they don’t like Vance, while only 39% say they do. This is despite the fact that Vance wrote the popular memoir “Hillbilly Elegy” in 2016. Fourteen percent of registered voters liked Walz, while thirteen percent did not. This was found in a study conducted from September 20th to 23rd.

There was a lot more chaos at Harris’s only debate with Trump on September 10 in Philadelphia, but most people thought she won.

That fight didn’t make a big difference in the outcome of an already very close race. Even though Harris has a slight lead in national polls, most polls in the seven states that will decide the election in November show that voters are still pretty split.