Walz and Vance politely clash during the politics-heavy vice presidential debate

Democrat Tim Walz and Republican JD Vance clashed Tuesday in a vice presidential debate that was surprisingly civil in the final stretch of an ugly campaign marked by inflammatory rhetoric and two assassination attempts.

The two rivals, who have fiercely attacked each other during the campaign, mostly struck a cordial tone, instead saving their fire for the candidates who were at the top of their list: Democratic Vice President Kamala Harris and Republican former President Donald Trump.

The most tense exchange came toward the end of the debate, when Vance — who said he would not have voted to certify the results of the 2020 election — dodged a question about whether he would challenge this year’s vote if Trump loses.

Walz responded by blaming Trump’s false claims of election fraud for inciting the January 6, 2021 mob that attacked the U.S. Capitol to prevent the certification of Joe Biden’s 2020 election.

“He still says he didn’t lose the election,” Walz said before turning to Vance. “Did he lose the 2020 election?”

Vance again dodged the question and instead accused Harris of engaging in online censorship of opposing viewpoints.

“That’s a damn non-answer,” Walz said.

Walz, 60, the liberal Minnesota governor and former high school teacher, and Vance, 40, a best-selling author and conservative firebrand U.S. senator from Ohio, have portrayed themselves as two sons of the U.S. Midwest with deeply opposing views to those pressing The country has themes.

The rivals each sought to deliver a lasting blow in the last remaining debate before the Nov. 5 presidential election, arguing over the Middle East crisis, immigration, taxes, abortion, climate change and the economy.

But overall, the two men seemed intent on demonstrating “Midwestern nice,” thanking each other as they went after their respective running mates in the traditional attack dog role for vice presidential candidates.

Vance questioned why Harris hadn’t done more to address inflation, immigration and the economy during his time in Biden’s administration, taking a consistent line of attack that Trump often failed to implement during the Harris debate last month.

“If Kamala Harris has big plans to address the problems of the middle class, she should implement them now — not when she asks for a promotion, but in the job the American people gave her three and a half years ago.” said Vance said.

Walz described Trump as an unstable leader who prioritized billionaires and upended Vance’s criticism on immigration, attacking Trump for pressuring congressional Republicans to abandon a bipartisan border security bill earlier this year.

“Most of us want to solve this problem,” Walz said of immigration. “Donald Trump has had four years to do this, and he promised you Americans how easy it would be.”

The tone of the evening was a far cry from the division that characterized the election campaign. Trump has repeatedly denigrated Harris, including with racist and sexist attacks, and has twice escaped an attempt on his life. Walz has previously called his Republican opponents “weird,” and Vance has come under fire for previous comments in which he denigrated some Democrats as “childless cat ladies.”

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The debate at the CBS Broadcast Center in New York began with the escalating crisis in the Middle East after Israel continued its attack on southern Lebanon on Tuesday and Iran launched retaliatory missile strikes against Israel.

Walz said Trump was too “fickle” and too sympathetic to strongmen to be trusted to manage the growing conflict, while Vance claimed that Trump had made the world safer during his time in office.

When asked whether he would support a preemptive strike by Israel against Iran, Vance suggested that he would rely on Israel’s judgment, while Walz did not answer the question directly.

Trump, watching on television, posted angry posts on his website Truth Social during the debate, sometimes twice a minute, attacking the CBS anchors and calling Walz “pathetic” and a “low IQ.”

On a knife edge

Political analysts say vice presidential debates generally do not change the outcome of an election. However, even a slight shift in public opinion could be crucial as the race hangs on a knife’s edge five weeks before Election Day.

Walz was questioned this week about a report that he was not in China during the violent Tiananmen Square crackdown in 1989, as he had previously claimed.

“I’m a dick sometimes,” he said during a meandering answer. “I arrived there in the summer and made a mistake. So I was in Hong Kong and China during the democracy protests and learned a lot about what it means to be in government.”

Vance, meanwhile, defended his vice president despite criticizing Trump before the 2016 election.

“I was wrong about Donald Trump,” he said. “I was wrong, firstly, because I believe that some of the media reports that emerged were dishonest falsifications of his career. But most importantly, Donald Trump delivered for the American people.”

Walz also criticized Trump for his role in appointing three U.S. Supreme Court justices who joined the court’s decision to eliminate a nearly half-century-old nationwide right to abortion, an issue that proved damaging to Republicans has.

Vance, known for his deeply conservative stance on abortion, struck a more moderate tone Tuesday, saying he does not support a nationwide ban, although he expressed support for the 15-week-a-year limit proposed by Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham expressed in 2022. He said Trump believes that individual states should decide whether to restrict abortions.

In a social media post, Trump said he would veto a national ban, after weeks earlier refusing to say during the presidential debate whether he would do so.

Although Vance wrote “Hillbilly Elegy,” a popular 2016 memoir, U.S. voters have a negative view of him, Reuters/Ipsos polls show. 51% of registered voters say they view him negatively, compared to 39% who view him positively. Meanwhile, Walz was viewed favorably by 44% of registered voters, with 43% expressing an unfavorable opinion in the Sept. 20-23 poll.

Harris was widely seen as the winner of her only debate with Trump on Sept. 10 in Philadelphia, which was far more chaotic than Tuesday’s affair.

This conflict did little to change the course of an extremely close election campaign. While Harris is ahead in national polls, most polls show voters remain fairly evenly divided in the seven states that will decide November’s election.