A Vance Victory

Last night, was the vice-presidential debate. The candidates had the opportunity to give their views to the American voters on important topics as we head toward Election Day. Below is a full analysis of the debate.

The Rundown

The obvious winner was JD Vance. The loser was Tim Walz, while the CBS moderators Norah O’Donnell and Margaret Brennan also managed to embarrass themselves.

Vance appeared relaxed and comfortable in the limelight. Obviously, he had engaged in extensive debate preparation and was crammed full of relevant facts. But he presented himself in a dignified way and was able to make his technical points clearly and without jargon. He was a champion of “common sense” instead of reliance on so-called experts. This surely registered with a large part of the audience.

Walz Was Like a Nervous Cat

Walz was also well-prepped and well-rehearsed. But he was too rehearsed. His demeanor came across as some combination of an angry professor and a nervous cat on a high wire. He practically ignored Vance at times and kept talking about Trump, Trump, Trump in a highly disparaging way. His attacks on Trump recycled tired canards. The viewers were likely asking, “Why are you attacking Trump instead of telling us what you would do if elected?”

Regular readers know that I focus on body language as much as what the candidates are saying. There’s a huge body of research that shows most viewers do the same even if their observations are subconscious. This X-factor was a big part of Vance’s victory in the debate.

Walz seemed weak and nervous at key points, especially as the dialogue on climate change wore on. He was animated but in a bad way. He was scowling and yelling at the camera instead of speaking in a calm and composed manner. His eyes were bugging out and the veins in his neck were bulging, both signs of stress.

His face had a mean look even when he was not speaking. His eyes were shifty. Overall, his performance recalled the Howard Dean speech that ended with a prolonged scream (known ever since as the Dean Scream) on January 19, 2004, which finished Dean’s political career. Walz’s political career may also be about to end after his debate performance.

Walz had earlier lied about the fact that he was in China at the time of the Tiananmen Square massacre in 1989. He wasn’t there. When asked to explain, he offered a convoluted answer that involved more lies about the original lie. He was nervous throughout that non-answer. You could see on his face that he was still lying.

Vance Showed His Debating Chops

In contrast, Vance was friendly and composed but also highly disciplined. He looked right at the camera except when he confronted the moderators on some dirty tricks or when he looked right at Walz to make a point. Both moves were highly effective. Vance countered Walz’s lines about Trump by draping Kamala Harris around his neck. Vance made the point that Harris has been vice president already for almost four years and could have fixed many of the policies that she now claims she wants to fix if elected.

The moderators were completely biased against Vance, but they embarrassed themselves in adopting that stance. The questions were clearly designed to hit Vance hard on climate change, abortion and the January 6, 2020, riots while giving Walz a softball to hit at the same time. This is where Vance showed his debating chops.

When confronted on climate change, Vance deftly pivoted to creating U.S. jobs and said that moving jobs from high-polluting countries like China back to the U.S. would reduce CO₂ emissions since U.S. manufacturing is much cleaner than Chinese manufacturing.

When Vance was confronted about mass deportations of illegal aliens, he said that he had been to the border many times and the border patrol “just want to do their jobs” in accordance with U.S. law. He came across as sincere, not dogmatic. He also drove a wedge between Harris and Walz by saying that reduced illegal immigration would leave more jobs available for legal American citizens.

The Moderators Were Flustered

The highlight of the evening was when moderators Margaret Brennan and Norah O’Donnell insisted on “fact-checking” Vance on climate change and other issues. Vance called out Margaret Brennan for doing this since CBS had agreed they would not engage in real time fact-checking and because they never fact-checked Walz on anything. He then buried her on substance. Total cojones.

Brennan then got so flustered she yelled, “Your mikes are cut!” as they shut down Vance’s microphones. Vance kept talking and she yelled “no one can hear you” but I watched it live and I could hear Vance clearly picked up by Brennan’s own mike. The CBS anchors looked like fools, and Vance came across as the hero. That moment alone will go down in TV debate history.

Vance was brilliant on substance. He said the solution to school shootings is to improve security at the schools rather than take away guns from law-abiding citizens. He said the Minnesota law allowing abortions in the ninth month and killing of children who survived an attempted abortion was “fundamentally barbaric.” Walz offered a lame defense of the Minnesota abortion law. Vance shot back, “I asked for an answer, and you gave me a slogan.”

Vance made it clear that a Trump administration would support fertility treatments, give pregnant women more options and let each state decide how to handle the issue. (The same evening of the debate Trump said he would veto a national abortion ban. That takes that issue off the table).

Vance explained that Trump’s tariffs would end imports from countries that use “slave labor.” At this point, Walz was nonplussed and looked like a deer in the headlights.

Vance was brilliant on the failings of so-called experts. He said they were wrong about offshoring jobs, wrong about cheap imports and wrong about Big Pharma and Big Tech. Again, Vance urged “common sense” solutions instead of relying on experts. Most Americans certainly agree.

Also, Vance managed to work in the word “weird” twice in referring to Walz’s policies. That was a nice turnaround from the early stage of the campaign when Walz tried to call Republicans weird.

Walz wasted his chance in the closing statement by using platitudes like “joy” and not saying much beyond “vote for Kamala Harris.” Vance made brilliant use of his time by discussing core issues like inflation, housing shortages, fentanyl imports and more and laying them all at the feet of Harris and Walz. That was much more in touch with everyday Americans.

One interesting sidelight is that both Vance and Walz were energetic and fully engaged. This has the unintended side effect of showing just how vapid Kamala Harris is since she could not have survived on that debate stage and still refuses to take reporters’ questions except with teleprompters in tightly controlled circumstances. Walz’s level of engagement did Kamala no favors in comparison.

Bottom line: a convincing win for JD Vance. This should start to show up in polling results in the days ahead.