Demagogue and devious to send shivers down your spine, JD Vance did on Tuesday evening what Donald Trump did not want to do during his debate against Kamala Harris on September 10: give an air of rationality and moderation to Trumpism in the hope of grabbing a few votes among the undecided. With repeated appeals to “common sense”, the leitmotif of the populist right, the Republican vice-presidential candidate engaged in a disingenuous attempt to whitewash the MAGA movement, without in the slightest denying its xenophobic principles, facing a Tim Walz, a less skilled debater, who struggled to find his bearings.
The invented story of dogs and cats eaten by Haitians in Springfield? Vance dodged the subject without saying anything. He brazenly lied that Mr. Trump, during his presidential term, had sought to improve, in the spirit of “bipartisan collaboration,” the health reform known as Obamacare, when he did not stopped trying to demolish it. He flat-out lied again when he claimed not to support a federal ban on abortion, wrapping his remarks in “pro-family” considerations. When it comes to women’s rights, Trump and Vance are a pair, calling Kamala Harris “mentally retarded” and denouncing “childless cat ladies.” They are two primary misogynists that the voters who applaud them support through ultraconservative myopia.
Instead of an explicit clash of ideas, we were treated to a debate of the running mates that was oddly courteous given the ideological and political gap that separates the two camps. Nervous and kind, the temperate progressive that is Tim Walz, governor of Minnesota, got stuck in replies which, although relevant, were singularly lacking in indignation. He only really took to the barricades in the very last minutes of the debate, when Vance simultaneously refused to acknowledge that Trump had lost the 2020 presidential election and claimed that the ex-president had “peacefully” handed over power to Biden. “That’s a damning non-answer,” Walz told him.
Will the debate have nevertheless moved the needles – in a context where the undecided can be counted on the fingers of one hand? Has Vance succeeded in covering his tracks? Improbable, analysts said directly, as the Democratic and Republican electorates live in parallel worlds.
This Walz-Vance debate was considered more important than debates between running mates generally are, to the extent that it will apparently have been the final opportunity for a direct confrontation between the two clans at prime time, due to the lack of a second Harris-Trump presidential debate. Why again? Because, simply in terms of the electoral process, advance voting has just started in around twenty states.
And because, five weeks before the presidential election on November 5, highly “politicizable” events are appearing in the news for partisan purposes. Internationally: Israel’s land offensive in Lebanon followed by the Iranian response, highlighting more than ever the diplomatic indolence of the United States in the face of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Inside: the hurricane Heleneas devastating as it was Katrina in 2005, which is an opportunity for Trump to claim that Joe Biden is abandoning the little people to their fate in Georgia and North Carolina, which are coincidentally two key states. A hurricane which is combined with a strike which comes at a bad time for Mme Harris, that of the East Coast longshoremen, which could revive inflation in a context where the unpopularity of the Biden-Harris government is largely due to its supposedly inadequate management of the economy.
The fact is that in the electoral campaign, voting is partly based on perceptions that are often poorly informed. Especially since in the United States, the phenomenon is exacerbated by the Republicans’ uninhibited use of disinformation. Vance continued on Tuesday evening to link in small doses the “migrant crisis” to different issues, such as the housing crisis and purchasing power – and to blame the Biden-Harris duo. A little perspective and less partisanship show, however, that the migration issue presents complex challenges that date back to the 1990s. It is out of exasperation in the face of the permanent irresolution of the political class that a growing number of Americans, largely happiness of ultranationalists, today adhere to the idea of mass expulsions. Mr. Walz’s calls Tuesday evening for more nuanced positions fell into disarray.
This debate will have highlighted the fact that Mr. Vance, a young senator from Ohio, is not Mr. Trump’s poodle. “The Trump problem […] is that he can no longer campaign as if he were alone,” analyzes columnist Ezra Klein in the New York Times. As a movement, MAGA (Make America Great Again) will end up swallowing it. By choosing him as his running mate, Trump knowingly made him his heir. Policed when necessary, but still Machiavellian, Vance assumed the role on Tuesday.