About Tonight's VP Debate
The commentariat often say Vance is not a completely popular VP nominee because of past polling in Ohio, but I think he’s better qualified. I think part of it is distrust because he’s new, so he doesn’t have a lot of national name recognition beyond his book/film and people who closely watch politics. I think another part is that he sounds a little too populist at times (populism is a messaging style, not a belief set) which raises eyebrows with the conservatives who lived through Bush 2.0 Republicanism and “government is sometimes the compassionate answer” approach. A smaller number of folks have observed that he seems smug though I think it’s just a reservedness in demeanor.
Oddly, I think that reservedness worked well in the side-by-side camera for tonight’s format. Walz moved around and couldn’t control his expressions at all so he alternated between looking mad, panicked, and like a tweaked-out makeup-less clown.
I’ll deep-dive into this on tomorrow’s broadcast. A few notes for now while I ruminate on it:
Walz seemed way less assured than Vance. He fell on his face trying to explain how he didn’t flat-out lie, but simply “misspoke” about his visits to China.
Vance gave a disappointing answer on gun control. He’s not a gun guy and I don’t demand that as a prerequisite for support, but Republicans shouldn’t use the language of the anti-gun advocates — language like “gun violence epidemic” and “illegal guns” and expect to win a debate when you already validated your opponent’s points by incorporating their rhetoric as your argument. This is rhetoric 101. For instance, there are no “illegal guns.” There is criminal possession. There isn’t a “gun violence epidemic.” There is an epidemic of lawlessness brought on by the sort of restorative justice supported by Walz and his wife, who said she loved the smell of destruction caused by rioters.
(Going deeper: Don’t ascribe moral aesthetics to inanimate objects as this only validates anti-gun language, which dictates that inanimate objects possess the ability to influence the carrier towards criminal behavior. A gun itself is not “illegal,” it cannot be so; the legality or illegality is determined by the willful way in which a person chooses to use or acquire it, per law.)