Tyler Foggatt: [00:00:00] What could be the final debate of the 2024 election season went down on Tuesday night between J. D. Vance and Tim Walls. 

Tim Walz: He is still saying he didn't lose the election. I would just ask that, did he lose the 2020 election? Tim, I'm focused on the future. Did Kamala Harris censor Americans from speaking their mind in the wake of the 2020 COVID situation?

That is a damning, that is a damning non answer. Has she, Look, I think what Tim said just doesn't pass the smell test. For three years, Kamala Harris went out bragging that she was going to undo Donald Trump's border policy. She did exactly that. We had a record number of illegal crossings. We had a record number of fentanyl coming into our country.

Just because you have a mental health issue doesn't mean you're violent. And I think what we end up doing is we start looking for a scapegoat. Sometimes it just is the guns. It's just the guns. 

Tyler Foggatt: Now I'm in studio with New Yorker staff writers Claire Malone and Vincent Cunningham after a marathon evening of live blogging to share our first impressions and [00:01:00] takeaways from the debate.

You're listening to The Political Scene. I'm Tyler Foggett and I'm a senior editor at The New Yorker.

Hey, Claire. Hey, Vincent. Hey. Hi, Tyler. Thanks so much for being here after our exciting live blog session. Of course. I'm amped. I'm excited to do the VP version of the podcast that we did recently about the presidential debate between Harris and Trump. So let's just start with big picture impressions.

What did you guys think of the debate? Who won? Or I guess to, um, to clarify, how much did J. D. Vance win by? 

Clare Malone: Well, Tyler, I do agree, probably, I guess, in the competence, I guess, you know, section of the scoring card. I think Vance was smooth and more agile and kind of flipping. You know, questions and [00:02:00] answers the way he wanted to go.

He sort of avoided, um, saying some of the, you know, more hard right stuff that he says on cable news. And Tim Walz was like, I think to me, a bit of like a, a sort of a non entity. I think there were a lot of spots where he could have turned Vance's previous words against him or he could have, Walz could have brought up his own record in Minnesota more.

And he just like, didn't really do that, which. I would guess is kind of like, you know, the panic at the disco, kind of like, oh, shit, I'm on, this is 90 minutes of like televised national debate, and I've never done that. So it was, it was, it was definitely like, at the end of it, I was kind of like, okay, well, You know, Walls didn't fall flat in his face, but he wasn't as much of a presence as I thought he could have been in spots.

Vinson Cunningham: Yeah, it seemed to me that they both performed competently in the context that they showed up for. Hmm. Right. On some level, if you [00:03:00] want to sort of give Walls a demerit, you would say that he showed up for the 2016. Vice presidential debate, he showed up for the Tim Cain, Mike Pence debate, a sort of sedate affair in the middle of another otherwise dramatic passage in history.

But here's some, you know, here are two representatives of the former age, the former political dispensation kind of warring over particulars that might be what, um, Cain versus Pence was. Walls was there for that and, uh, Vance was there for the new scene, the new political scene, you know, there's a weird way in which, like, the promise of Ron DeSantis was a more friendly Trumpism, but actually that is what Vance kind of delivered on tonight, is to put a smilier, smoother face [00:04:00] on on some actually vile things.

He didn't back away from his terrible rhetoric about immigrants. Or his, you know, desire for control over women's bodies. Or, again, again, again, whatever you want to say. But he delivered it in a way that, like, you could imagine, I think, tonight. For the first time, truly something that has been done.

Clare Malone: It reminds me of, to harken back to Mike Pence, Mike Pence's line when he was like a smiley conservative talk radio host was, I'm a conservative, but I'm not mad about it. I'm not angry about it. The idea was, you know, I speak softly, right? Like I am. I am. I, I take many of the most extreme right positions, but I'm, you know, like, I'm just a guy.

I mow my lawn just like you. And I think that that is what Vance was going for. And I have to say, I mean, I said this on the live blog, but I kind of, it, it felt like he, Vance was bear hugging walls, pulling walls close to him to kind of keep the debate on his [00:05:00] terms, which was honestly, like, an amazing thing.

technique, actually, like he would say a lot of times, like, I think Tim and I agree about this or like, I'm not sure Tim agrees with Harris about this, or he had put 

Tyler Foggatt: words in his mouth in an interesting 

Clare Malone: way, and, and walls, I think, for whatever reason, just because he wasn't maybe like, argumentatively equipped to return fire, or maybe he was scared of getting on Vance's very sharp side, which we know he has.

Vance turned it on the moderators at one point. But like, to me, that was so, like, psychologically fascinating and, like, really smart on Vance's part is to bear hug walls and be like, you know, Tim and I are just Midwestern guys and like there aren't that many differences between the two of us. He was sort of.

Co opting Walz's mainstreamness, and I thought that that was really, really interesting because a lot of people are, you know, and I don't blame people for this, a lot of people are tuned into the like, hey, this guy strike me [00:06:00] as like crazy. I mean, I think that's the plane that a lot of people are operating on now in our politics.

And I thought Vance kind of succeeded the He's a crazy test. Like he just kind of seemed like a, you know, old school classic Republican. And I think that that's kind of like watching people metamorphosize in Trump's party is sort of a fascinating, um, 

Tyler Foggatt: you talked a bit about the, the efforts that, Vance made to project a certain, you know, warmth and friendliness, which is funny given what his reputation has been up until now.

I mean, he's been, you know, referred to as one Trump campaign official as Trump's policy attack dog. He is notorious for picking fights with people on cable news, you know, in people on social media just going after people on Twitter and kind of fighting with them. And You know, from what the polls show, it seems like he is, um, the most unliked vice presidential candidate in modern history.

And so, even if he was able to shed some of that narrative during the debate, [00:07:00] I guess I'm wondering how much likability even matters in an election. I mean, so Vance doesn't seem like, Uh, you know, super angry creep, but is that going to move the polls in a certain way? 

Clare Malone: Well, I think for Vance, he probably had to do work to, you know, the idea that he was harming Trump by being, like, historically unfavorable.

I mean, Vance's favorabilities were, you know, In the tank in a way that was like unprecedented for a VP, so I'm sure he felt like he needed to kind of move stuff up just to kind of like do no harm, but I actually think that question is really interesting of how much does liking the person that you might vote for matter now, and I think the answer is a lot less than it used to like I was I think I was looking at these numbers from one of the the Transcribed by https: otter.

ai latest Siena College New York Times polls of swing state voters. I believe it was their, their Sunbelt swing state polls. And among these undecided voters, [00:08:00] far and away, Undecided voters thought Kamala Harris was a much more likable person, Trump's favorabilities were like in the tank, but on the kind of top issues of competency, like who do you think is better on these issues, Trump was winning them.

Tyler Foggatt: So it's like the more likable you are, the more of a lightweight you might be seen as. In 

Clare Malone: some ways, or it's just people are like, well, we kind of know who Trump is and like, you know, he's crazy and we don't like him. But he's our 

Tyler Foggatt: crazy guy. 

Clare Malone: Or, or it's just, or it's the thing that Vance kept on trying to do today, which was yeah, but the economy didn't stink.

And you know, you, you know, like it's just kind of going back to, well, wasn't it, wasn't it actually better four years ago? Like, wasn't the world not falling apart as much as it is now? And couldn't, you know, like Vance ended on the note of, Everyone should be able to turn up the heat in their house and take a nice dinner out with their family once in a while.

It was, he was kind of bringing it back to, don't you remember the Trump era? And like, he was trying to speak to people who are like, yeah, if you sort of forget about like, [00:09:00] COVID and all of that stuff 

Vinson Cunningham: and everything 

Clare Malone: that like, it wasn't that bad, was it? And it's, it's like such an interesting, um, like likability doesn't matter now in American politics in this kind of fascinating nihilistic way.

Tyler Foggatt: Vincent, what do you think? Does it matter if Vance is likable? Or if Trump is likable, 

Vinson Cunningham: I, I agree that it largely doesn't like, you know, given the trajectories of polarization in our politics today, that if there are if personal qualities matter, they matter much more along the lines of affinity than they do of like, Like, likeability, you know, you can say this person is one of us on a tribal level, even if you don't like them, you know, and the observation that these are distinct is perhaps one of at least two.

Trump's great political, um, sort of talents to be like, I'm not gonna be likable [00:10:00] to everybody, but I can sufficiently like, you know, as we say, otherize the other person to say, this person is, as Kendrick Lamar says, not like us. And therefore, like, sort of carve out a kind of constituency, a kind of coalition out of that sort of, those bonds of affinity rather than of likability.

But I do think Having said that, I do think that Vance took it as one of his goals tonight to be less unlikable than he has been up until now. He realizes that his former statements did him no good. Like, even on the issue of abortion, he said, I realize many people may not agree with the things that I've said before, like he was trying to make his, uh, he would hate this word, but he was making some sort of reparation for his, for his former, um, if not policy, certainly his former attitudes or his tone.

So there is still a level there. And I think the, one of the contexts of the Trump campaign has been all of our [00:11:00] suspicion that Trump has been like, why the, why did I let Tucker Carlson convince me to, to, to guy. Yeah, yeah. And so I think Vance was making up some deficit of likability in this debate. 

Clare Malone: The abortion answer that Vance gave was So smooth, like it was so, it's so interesting to watch him perform humbleness about it, right, like he brought up, he sort of said, you know, the, and I think this is also to the Trump campaign's kind of desire to faint to the middle and say, like, actually, we're not, we're not crazy on abortion, like, we, like, we want to understand where you're coming from, when obviously, like, you know, Trump appointed the judges that overturned Roe, Trump has been very, you know, um, agnostic about, Hey, well, uh, maybe I would vote to overturn a six week ban, maybe I wouldn't, I don't know, you know.

But the way that Vance said, you know, I think the Republican Party has, Um, not been as good or as understanding on this. [00:12:00] Essentially, like, we haven't met people where they are. He was mostly, I think, referring to fertility issues, Um, which is like, you know, it's incredibly unpopular across the board, across partisan divides to, like, try to take away IVF.

Um, but Vance was really trying to do this, Uh, he said like, you know, I learned something from, um, the, in, in Ohio, there was a ballot issue about abortion, Republicans lost that ballot issue, and Van said, I learned something from that, we're not communicating our message well, it was just like a really interesting thing from someone who is, um, you know, you know, Uh, gotten more conservative both over, over the past like five years, both to, I think, win a hard Right.

Ohio Senate primary. Mm-Hmm. . But also like, I think there's a genuine JD Vance converted, converted to Catholicism in 2019. Mm-Hmm. . I think there's like an interesting public performance and then also probably private turn to the right in a way that was very interesting. So I just thought that those couple of minutes on abortion [00:13:00] were kind of emblematic of what he was trying to do in the debate.

Tyler Foggatt: Yeah, I actually want to talk a lot more about, um, how policy sort of came up in the debate. It was a surprisingly policy oriented discussion, um, but first we're going to take a quick break. We'll have more from the political scene after this.

So I was personally surprised by how kind of, like, technocratic the debate was. And I think most Part of this is just given that the debate, you know, before this, you have Trump and Harris kind of fighting over Trump's crowd sizes, and then of course we got the, you know, Haitian migrants eating cats and dogs comment, and then the debate before that, which was not just low on policy, but kind of low on, you know, everything.

You know, you also had Trump and Biden fighting over like who's better at golf. And so maybe it's just like the expectations for debates at this [00:14:00] point are kind of low, but just like the detail of what they were getting into with, you know, talking about federal lands and, um, like really sort of like nitty gritty stuff about family policy.

Like what you were just alluding to, Claire, was, um, I was struck by it and I'm wondering if you guys were as well and sort of what you made of that, if that says something about Vance and Walls and, you know, Who they are and sort of what they're prepared to talk about or whether that's just the nature of a vice presidential debate.

Clare Malone: Maybe it's because Both of them feel more of a need to establish who they actually are. Like, I think one of my questions coming into the debate, the debate was, I don't really know that much about Tim Walz, like, beyond the weird thing and beyond the kind of, like, teddy bear football coach thing. So like, he genuinely did kind of need to introduce himself.

Can't tell when 

Vinson Cunningham: or where, when he's been to China, but yes, that too. 

Clare Malone: Yeah. But also, I mean, Vincent, you were saying some interesting stuff on the live blog about like The way questions were being framed, both good [00:15:00] and bad, like maybe there was more specificity to the questions than, than we had in the presidential debate.

I don't know. I mean, it kind of takes me to like the, the, the, the question of like the moderators and like how, you know, how the debate was sort of formed. But um, to me, like I think I would say mostly like they just needed to be more, prove themselves and, you know, Any debate with Trump is, frankly, like, pulled to lowest common denominator on some level, ultimately.

So I think also just, like, the X factor of, like, it's not Trump just means people are going to ultimately be more, um, conventional acting than they would be otherwise. 

Vinson Cunningham: And it's like, the kind of question that, like, That they were asking was often what I call the English on the ball question, where it's like, I'm going to take you one way, but then it's kind of, it's going to kind of, the ball's going to kind of zag in another.

I kind of put some spin on the ball with my racket. It's like, [00:16:00] um, uh, have you heard of gun violence? Yes. Here's, but here's an interesting question. Uh, Should the parents be prosecuted or the awful, awful tragedy unfolding in North Carolina in some way For those of us who were of age at the moment, you know a kind of really terrible sequel to Hurricane Katrina It's like and what does it make you think about the climate instead of asking the obvious question of 

Clare Malone: there's lots of people dying in North Carolina, what should the government 

Vinson Cunningham: do?

for disaster response, right? So these very, like, nuanced questions that sort of zagged their way into the main gist of the question, often leading both contestants to kind of just, like, take the part of the question that they wanted and sort of go in that direction. But I did think that it, on behalf of Margaret Brennan and Nora O'Donnell, um, it did bespeak a kind of ambition A calling of these candidates to [00:17:00] higher ground, uh, to borrow a phrase from Michelle Obama, I guess, and, and just sort of ask for more than we are usually asked for, especially in the main event, the presidential debates, where it's kind of more like if this is, if tennis is the metaphor for the English thing, usually we're just given sort of like alley oops, but

And they throw the ball up and then, you know, it's like, they're just like, here's an issue. And you know, but here's something, you know, different. 

Clare Malone: This is interesting, actually. I believe both of those women, Margaret Brennan and Norah Donnell, have at some point hosted the Sunday morning CBS. It's political magazine interview show and the other debates we've seen, it's more people who are maybe either more generalists in the, from like the David Muir ABC point of view or you know, cable, um, anchors who are like, you know, whatever.

Uh, no shade to Cable, but maybe shade to Cable, like Cable's Cable. But like if you, if you're [00:18:00] formulating questions and, you know, working with a team every Sunday morning to specifically deal with like politicians who come to your set to like obfuscate and kind of like slither around, like maybe the specificity, specificity of the questions distinctly come from the experience of Brennan and O'Donnell as like, Sure.

Vinson Cunningham: Sure. 

Clare Malone: Like this is like this is how you actually get them to like say something interesting, which is the hardest part about interviewing interviewing politicians is that they are such terrible interviews. They will not say anything. They won't say anything interesting, 

Vinson Cunningham: and neither will their friends 

Tyler Foggatt: on the record.

So one of the main critiques of Harris so far has been that her campaign is pretty light on policy. You now have a better sense of what the Harris policy agenda is now I was reading that like going into the debate that was one of the things that walls wanted to focus on was kind of making it clear what her plans are and then I'm also wondering if you have a better sense of what the [00:19:00] Trump agenda is, you know, because when we talk about it, we think of, you know, the wall, just tariffs, that kind of thing.

And of course, JD Vance talked about those things. But he also talked about, you know, the Child tax credit and and so I'm wondering if you have a better sense of like what a Harris administration would look like and a Trump administration. 

Clare Malone: The thing that stands out to me about, I guess, What didn't come up in the Trump Harris debate, for whatever reason, what's sticking out to me in this debate is the sort of small discussion of would you be in favor of a federal paid family leave policy, and that felt different to me and specific to me and sort of reminiscent of the, the Trump Harris 2019 Democratic primary when all the female candidates were bringing up like, Hey, the child care crisis is actually an economic crisis.

And I was like, Oh, that's like an interesting and specific thing that like, I think about a lot in my personal life, and many people do, but I haven't seen come up at a [00:20:00] debate lately. So that felt Specific. They did have a substantive for our current climate back and forth on health care on pre ACA post ACA.

They were kind of, I don't think the word death spirals weren't we always talking about the, um, the, The exchanges were going to death spiral. That was a moment in politics. Death 

Vinson Cunningham: spiral, death panels. Lots of death words. That 

Clare Malone: kind of felt like harkening back. But I think the thing from the Harris side that came up came to mind was Federal paid family leave, and I guess from the Trump point of view, the Trump, like, Vance mostly seemed, his tasks sort of seemed to be like, translating Trumpism, so like, he, I thought it was interesting that he, he went into concepts of a plan, and he said, what he meant by concepts of a plan was, you're not gonna like, you're not gonna present the American people with a plan, right?

You're gonna negotiate the plan, which obviously like, um, [00:21:00] most people do. The American people, the plan, and one of the things about Trump's presidency was that he could never answer the question of, well, what do you want if you don't want Obamacare because the truth of the matter was people had been running against Obamacare, but for nothing else for like a decade.

So why come up with a plan? Um, And I guess Vance sort of like refuted, like, we won't have a national registry that tracks your pregnancy. So it kind of felt more like refutations than affirmatively like, here's what it is. And that's because Trump and Vance are trying to run as non incumbents, right?

Which technically they aren't. So they're kind of trying to make everything like, Not her, not this, not the past four years, which is like, you know, 

Vinson Cunningham: yeah, 

Clare Malone: interesting, I guess. I don't know. Did you think that there was anything that was more defined about the Trump? 

Vinson Cunningham: Well, what J. D. Vance did, and this is kind of, um, Maybe where I was starting is, is that [00:22:00] what he did was provide the quote unquote, the long awaited Trump, Trumpism without Trump that people have been, uh, hoping people on the right, uh, intellectuals, like for instance, Ross Douthat, Raihan Salam, conservative intellectuals who have been waiting since the, you know, halcyon days of Paul Ryan.

I was just about to bring up Paul Ryan. Uh, for a conservative political agenda that would pivot toward the working class, a true working class Republican populism. All of these people have been sort of waiting for, if you remember at the very beginning of the Trump term before, even before the election, there was this, uh, at first anonymously published essay.

It was called, um, the flight 93 election, and it turned out to be authored by this guy Michael Anton who worked in the Trump administration. Um, The sort of promise of a, an intellectual Trumpism, like these are the responses, the sort of the tariffs that the new [00:23:00] 

Clare Malone: populist, populist republic, the newly 

Vinson Cunningham: isolationist stance toward the world, the sort of questioning toward NATO, uh, but also like this, this, this newly resurgent social conservatism would all amount to this brand new program.

And so I didn't learn more about Trumpism. Because of Vance, because that whole thing that I just described is not Trumpism. Everybody, these people have decided that Trump is the best vehicle for their desires. Trump doesn't give a shit about that. But guys like Vance do, these truly, these ideologues really do.

And so it's interesting more about like what could come after Trump than it is for like what Trump would actually do. 

Clare Malone: It's the maturation of the Tea Party revolution, right? It's like, it's what started. Two years into Obama's term. Mm-Hmm. , you know, a, a midterms that was defined by, uh, like racism, masquerading as.

[00:24:00] Economic policy for a lot of these races and that kind of filtered into the Republican Party found a vehicle in Trump and has since matured and it's like it has had like intellectuals in it, but they were on the fringes right like and now they are the party. It's like really. I mean, it's really amazing to watch like what's what's Paul Ryan doing?

I don't know. The last I heard, he's like sitting on boards, you know, like that's and he was, but 

Vinson Cunningham: he also like, you know, famously hates Trump. And the only difference is that the, you know, the tea party was like famously like, you know, they were still like, you know, supply cider. Economic right wingers. These guys are like, Oh, we care about family.

Like their whole rhetoric is so, so much slipperier around like, what does family mean? What does nation mean? What does it mean to be a people as opposed to the foreign invader? And like, Vance is so good at masking this. Actually, very, very, very virulent politics [00:25:00] as something to which like, you're like, you know, we can all kind of like relate in a way that is like, I think, generally new in American politics.

Tyler Foggatt: So I'd love to talk more about the implications of tonight's debate for the rest of the election and beyond. But first, we're going to take another quick break. More from the political scene after this.

So Claire, pretty early on in the night, you Mentioned something that would become a theme of the night, which was essentially that JD Vance and Tim Walls were going to spend the entire debate trying to convince voters that the other side was the incumbent. Mm-Hmm. and a bad incumbent. And so you saw this with walls talking about how Trump had his chance to build the wall and didn't, and also how he destroyed the Iran deal.

And so that's why, you know, Iran is such a nuclear threat now and then of course it [00:26:00] was Vance talking about, you know, all the things that you know. Harrison walls are talking about what they want to do and just sort of raising the question of why they haven't done it yet. And I'm curious if you think One person won this argument of they're the incumbent, blame them, or whether it was kind of a wash.

Clare Malone: Ugh, it's such a cop out answer on my part, but like, I do kind of think it was a wash because they're both right. I mean, technically, it's just It's actually true. It's actually true. They're both incumbents, yeah. Yeah, but I mean Harris is the more recent incumbent, but like, you know, another big thing that, that I think Walls could point to on policy is Trump totally screwing the immigration, the border bill because he knew it was bad politics for him for this presidential election.

So like, yeah, he wasn't in office, but the party is his and he's still like, the party is in thrall to him. And like, he makes the moves, even if Trump doesn't. People in the party know that influence know that. Yeah. So, [00:27:00] um, so that's what makes that there. You know, Trump and Vance's argument, slightly weak tea, because it's like, well, but you guys are like, you know, you're out of office, but you're, you're everywhere, you're, you know, you're just, it's a very different party than the Democrats, I mean, the, you know, Democrats in disarray, whatever, yada, yada, yada.

So I'm kind of, I mean, I think that that's one of the, that's one of the big questions that's like, just like, The essential question for these undecided voters. We had the lowest number of undecided voters that we've had in the 21st century. People just like are dug in on how they feel about these guys and like you're fighting for these margins of like people in seven states and like, you know, 30, 000 40, 000 person pockets of, you know, and like, I have no idea.

And I would not presume to know how those people, who those people think really wields the real power in America. Like, because that's really kind of what it is. Like, who wields the power? I don't, I [00:28:00] mean 

Vinson Cunningham: You know, it's interesting that you like, talk about power because for me this issue of incumbency is at least Tonight, as we speak, most sort of sharply symbolized by foreign policy, which was only mentioned really at the beginning of the debate.

But to me, this points to, you know, in the incumbency wars, this is a weakness for Democrats, because not long before the debate, you know, we saw strikes from Iran over Israel. So it's like America. And the Democrats especially have decided, like, because the Republicans have treated the sort of, um, the responsibility of foreign policy so shoddily, and treated it, and, and been so Uh, you know, of the Trump Republican Party has really been so disgusting about foreign policy that Democrats have decided we're going to be the entire foreign policy establishment, therefore, like really [00:29:00] owning the idea of foreign power in America, you know, and so this is a thing that that that Harris really can't Get out from under 

Clare Malone: and you agree with 

Vinson Cunningham: what what Biden has done in Israel in Gaza and now in the larger in the yeah, in the larger Middle East and um, that's that's something that I think that even in this last month, she still needs a better answer for 

Clare Malone: and I do just think like it feels particularly poignant that on the probably final debate, there are people in North Carolina A swing state who are experiencing a huge natural disaster.

There looks like a huge like, you know, potential outbreak of war in the Middle East and like, you know, you know, what's going to happen in Ukraine is kind of all like this perpetual question for the past two years, just like always hanging in the balance. And those are like really kind [00:30:00] of dire conditions to have an election under.

And like, you know, frankly, I think a lot of Americans are like worried about the post election period. So it is kind of like, just kind of. you know, power, who wields it, what's going to happen, like, these stakes are quite sobering, I've, I've, I've thought, like, you know, and it's kind of like, what's the October surprise?

The October surprise is like, World War III and like, natural disasters and like, like, it's kind of farcical how dark it's been since June. Like, it's just quite a, 

Tyler Foggatt: quite a quarter. I'm going to ask you guys the impossible question that has to be asked in a question about any debate. In an election this close, how much do you think that this debate could actually move the needle?

I 

Clare Malone: don't think it moves the 

Tyler Foggatt: needle. 

Vinson Cunningham: Yeah. 

Clare Malone: Yeah. Like, and then it kind of begs, beggars the question, [00:31:00] like, why do we have these things? 

Vinson Cunningham: That's my mom's thing all the time. I was talking to my mom the other day. Shout out to my mom. Yesterday was her birthday. I was at her house. Happy birthday, mom. She's like, what is, it's just, it's just, they're just talking and talking.

But it's right. Who doesn't know who they're going to vote for? I was like, well, you know. Um. I don't know. I don't think so either. I was skeptical, but I should say, and I should admit, I was skeptical that the presidential debate would change things. Totally. Totally. And it does seem that Kamala Harris did, like, gain some points, some momentum on the heels of that debate.

Here, though, I think that, if anything, this debate made it more possible that, like, J. D. Vance, who Really, Democrats had on the ropes as a figure. He now seems like he's plausible. He's a plausible figure for our For the American future like he's gonna be around he like sort of proved his [00:32:00] plausibility in a way that terrifies me and I think Makes me irritated with Tim Walz who's like should I think he should his goal tonight should have been Continued to define JD Vance because he could have defined him like Out of this race.

What a 

Clare Malone: clown get 

Vinson Cunningham: him gone. And he and in his like, sort of, I can't call it haste because it was there was no, no, no hasty energy behind it. But in his worry about just like making it to the end of the debate without hurting Harris, which I think he did. But I think he let this actually quite, for me, like, distressing figure, uh, off the hook.

Tyler Foggatt: So, I think we all agree that Vance won the debate, but after doing some mental gymnastics, I'm actually wondering if there's a world in which this debate might have been At least a small victory for the Harris campaign, at least in the short term, because the [00:33:00] entire nature of the night in which you have two candidates who seem pretty reasonable, even if Vance actually isn't reasonable, and he just did a good job of pretending to be, but talking seemingly reasonably about policy in a genuine way where they're friendly and they seem smart, if it was a useful reminder of what politics looks like without Trump in the picture.

Um, and I was struck by how, you know, when watching the debate, the one question that I thought Vance did terribly on, like I think for the most part, when he got hard questions, he was very good at being able to pivot. He even made, you know, the sort of like family policy stuff, which has always been a really weak point for him.

The Childless Cat Lady's remarks seemed pretty normal. But it was when he was asked about, you know, January 6th and accepting the results of the election, um, and whether he will admit that Trump lost the last election and he just couldn't do it because clearly he can't go up against his boss and say, yes, he clearly lost.

He had to just kind of take one for the team and, and not admit it [00:34:00] and concede that point to walls. And so I was thinking like, gosh, what would this guy look like without the baggage of Trump, but also what would everything look like without the baggage of Trump? 

Clare Malone: I'm glad you brought up the, that moment, because I do think that's the one that's going to get clipped and shared and happened in the back half of the debate where like a lot of people have gone to bed.

That was, I mean, what did he say, like, that's a very telling non answer on the part of J. D. Vance. Like, he got him. And Vance knew he got him. It's like, that's the one kind of like, that's the litmus test for Trump to be his VP. Like, I'm sure that came up in the vetting 

Vinson Cunningham: process. 

Clare Malone: Like, he won't certify the results, right?

Yeah, like, you know, and Vance tried to skirt around. And that was one place where, like, Walls just kind of, and he did it in his own way where it's like, you know, I can't forget how he said it, but he was like, there's one thing I very much disagree with in this debate and it's that. And it's like, yeah, all right, but, um, yeah, the, the, it was like a, that's an interesting one.

Like, is that a, [00:35:00] is there a quasi victory for like showing us the future with no Trump? I don't know. Like, then that spins into this whole thing of like. Is the Republican Party attractive to Republican voters in four or eight years when Trump presumably isn't on the ballot because the JD Vance and Ron DeSantis are actually like a little boring and conventional and like kind of trying to like mimic someone?

I don't know. 

Vinson Cunningham: I kind of think it won't change the mind of anybody who's planning to vote. Vote for Trump, or is leading Trump. But I do think, so like, maybe it doesn't have an incredibly important effect on 2024, but I do think that there is a voice now in the back of every Republican mind that says, we have unfinished work as a party to do.

That this strongman figure has hijacked the real arguments that we have yet to have like figured out in this party. It's like. Are we going in this [00:36:00] newly populist, isolationist, um, culture war direction of J. D. Vance, or are we the party of a sort of more recognizable, um, Neoconservative hawk like Nikki Haley or Marco Rubio.

Like, those questions have still not been adjudicated in the Republican Party. And because it's all been stalled by Trump. So I think that the Republicans have an accounting to do. And maybe tonight makes them a little impatient to have that fight. Instead of like, you know, sort of, at this point it seems like 

Tyler Foggatt: Campaign finance violation when this, like, Twitch streamer gave Trump a Like a Tesla, like That's right.

They don't want to talk about that shit 

Clare Malone: anymore. They look crazy, yeah. But Nikki, like, listen, Nikki Haley's out here calling people out. So she's, she's, she's ready for the accounting to happen. 

Vinson Cunningham: I guess, you know, she's, um, she's, she's been through every flavor of it, that, that Nikki. I don't know. 

Tyler Foggatt: So is, so is Vance.

Vinson Cunningham: Yeah, that's true. 

Tyler Foggatt: Thank you guys so much for [00:37:00] a late but enjoyable night. Thanks, Tyler. 

Vinson Cunningham: Thank you. 

Tyler Foggatt: Claire Malone and Vincent Cunningham are staff writers at The New Yorker. You can find their work at newyorker. com. This has been The Political Scene. I'm Tyler Foggett. This episode was produced by Sam Egan and edited by Gianna Palmer with mixing by Will Pertin.

Special thanks to Pran Bandy. Our executive producer is Stephen Valentino. Chris Nast's head of global audio. Our theme music is by Alison Leighton Brown. Enjoy your week, and we'll see you next Wednesday.