Vance wasn’t weird in the VP debate – and that will infuriate Trump

With the selection of J.D. Vance to be his vice president, Donald Trump wanted to double down on his America First agenda to make sure that he – the living martyr – wins re-election. And, with Vance as his political heir, Trump wanted to ensure that he supplanted Ronald Reagan as the greatest Republican of the past 120 years.

Unfortunately for Trump, Vance parked his inner-mongrel and walked onto the stage for the vice-presidential debate to face his direct political enemy with civility. Trump will not be happy that Vance said Walz “even sounds pretty good” on the structure of the tax system.

Civil: the Republican VP nominee J. D. Vance with his Democratic rival, Tim Walz, after the vice-presidential debate hosted by CBS News.Credit: AP/Matt Rourke

Vance was strong on the economy under Trump, and inflation under Biden and Harris. But Coach Walz won the round on abortion rights. “Abortion rights are a human right,” he said. “Just mind your own business on this.” And on guns: “It’s the guns. We have the capacity to find solutions.” But Vance’s support for the Second Amendment right to bear arms was much less fervent than Trump’s.

Debating in the aftermath of Iran’s missile barrage against Israel, both men supported Israel and its right to defend itself against Iran and Hezbollah. Vance dodged Trump’s signature issue on whether the 2020 election was stolen, with Walz not yielding on the former president’s culpability for what happened on January 6. But Vance indicated he would accept the election result this year. Walz brought climate change home by tying it to what farmers are facing in both floods and droughts. He talked up Harris’ policies to support the middle class. Vance decried all the problems Harris did not solve as vice president.

This debate did not resolve a lingering issue with Vance: at age 39, with only two years’ experience in the Senate, is he really – really – ready to become the president if Trump, who would be the oldest person elected president, dies in office?

Harris cleared the bar on being “presidential” in the debate with Trump. Walz clearly showed he was fully capable of assuming the president’s office if required.

This debate will have no material effect on the outcome of the November election. In 2008, the Republican VP pick, Alaska’s Sarah (“I can see Russia from my house”) Palin was a drag on John McCain, but not responsible for his defeat by Barack Obama.

Vance, who is not popular, did not make the vicious personal attacks that Trump makes every day. As Trump’s final campaign progresses, he is becoming even more incandescent, extreme and reckless. “Kamala is mentally impaired … Joe Biden became mentally impaired. Kamala was born that way,” Trump told a rally last week. The crowd laughed at that one.

Vance followed Trump’s wake in pounding the bedrock of this campaign – immigration – but without Trump’s venom. Harris, Trump says, is “letting in people in who are going to walk into your house, break into your door, and they’ll do anything they want. These people are animals … These are stone-cold killers.”

This election now hinges on who gets their voters out: the Trump forces who have had enough of Biden and Harris, or the Harris forces who have had enough of Trump’s chaos? It is the Trump vote that is more certain. His crowds know but do not care about the rude excesses and filth that Trump dispenses daily. Very simply, they want him in to do the things he says he will do, and they trust he will absolutely do them. Starting with the mass deportation of immigrants.

As Peter Baker of The New York Times said last week, “His goal is to overwhelm you with voters”. Trump’s anger has evolved. Susan Glasser of The New Yorker added, “He is a much more negative and angry character than he was in 2020.”

But the growing intensity of Trump’s ever-darker rhetoric may, in fact, reflect internal concerns that Trump is faltering. Despite everything thrown at her, Harris has kept a consistent, steady lead nationally of between 3 and 5 percentage points. It is not a decisive lead beyond the margin of error. The seven swing states that will decide the Electoral College are all virtually tied, but Harris is in a stronger position in Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin – the trifecta that will get her elected if, unlike Hillary Clinton in 2016, she wins them all.

Harris has a much more aggressive get-out-the-vote ground game in more counties of more swing states than Trump. She is raking in much more money.

No Democratic presidential candidate has ever been able to assemble a chorus as large as Republicans For Harris this year. Former Republican members of Congress and the cabinet have been buttressed by more than 100 former national security officials who served Reagan, both Bushes, and Trump.

As Harris works to close the deal with the coalition of moderate to liberal voters who backed Biden in 2020, there are headwinds. There is a ground war in Lebanon and a broader conflict with Iran now appears inevitable. That could cost Harris Michigan. There is a labour strike at ports on the east and gulf coasts of the US just as confidence in Harris’ ability to manage the economy has improved. Hurricane damage needs to be repaired. More troubles for the White House – and the woman who serves as vice president – to manage.

This debate will be judged a draw. Neither Walz nor Vance showed the righteous anger needed to eviscerate his opponent. But at the end of this ride, only one of them gets sworn to be a heartbeat away from the presidency.

Bruce Wolpe is a senior fellow at the University of Sydney’s United States Studies Centre. He has served on the Democratic staff in the US Congress and as chief of staff to former prime minister Julia Gillard.