Tim Walz wins the night with the most stunning and memorable moment

JD Vance was slick and smooth, and made himself appear nicer than the extremist we've come to know. But did he do what he needed to do for Trump?

The first read on last night's vice presidential debate—a little less than halfway into it—was that Senator JD Vance was polished and personable, comfortable in front of the camera, and covering up the extreme MAGA agenda with a lot of niceties while landing blows on Governor Tim Walz. The Minnesota governor was a bit halting, perhaps nervous, less polished, and was saying “we agree” a lot, which, for many of us, was perhaps a bit too much.

All of that was true.

But the vice presidential debate has a different objective for the participants—the candidates—than those in a presidential debate. They are there not to promote or rehabilitate themselves and their ideas or even to destroy their opponent on the stage, but rather to lift up their running mates and their policy agendas while ripping down the opponent’s running mate and record.

On that score, Tim Walz did a terrific job that built as the debate went on, exposing Trump’s extremism and callousness on abortion, revealing Trump's true and devastating plan on healthcare, and showing Trump to be an authoritarian and despot, so much so that Vance, fearful of opposing Dear Leader, could not answer this simple question: “Did he lose the election?”

That is, in fact, the moment all of the media is talking about today, and it’s the clip that went viral. Everything Vance may have done early in the debate was wiped away.

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Vance’s slickness, deployed to paper over lots of other ugly stuff earlier on, was no match for the raw truth of January 6th, as Walz talked about what happened on that day, the sheer brutality, the beatings and deaths of police officers, and Trump’s role in fomenting violence.

Vance is very personally ambitious, as his political "conversion" to Trump devotee attests. He came to the debate with the objective to make himself look better, to counter his terrible favorability ratings, and to make himself seem friendlier and more normal, precisely because Walz’s “these guys are weird” attacks for months have been so effective. And Vance may have succeeded, however fleeting it will be, until he’s back to telling us about more women who should be punished for not having children or about more immigrants he claims are eating pets.

But making himself seem nice wasn’t his job. His role was to build up Trump while tearing down Harris. He did attack the vice president over and over, and, with little fact-checking by CBS moderators Norah O’Donnell and Margaret Brennan, a bit too many of the false claims went by Walz without a counterpunch. Walz also had so much to work with regarding Vance and his extreme positions—and his “weirdness”— but didn’t go for it.

But it became clear that Walz came in with a different objective of the campaign’s: to present Harris and himself and the Democratic ticket as one that was bringing people in, not tearing people down. It was a strategy that was about this moment—late in the campaign, with this debate likely being the last large forum for candidates in the race—to reach undecided voters or the wavering, reluctant Trump voters.

Walz and the Harris campaign clearly didn’t want to go for the slugfest, as satisfying as that might have been for people like us, who are already there (and looking at Walz’s prior debates, he’s certainly capable of that). The tradeoff is missing some opportunities to further expose Vance as an extremist who is totally out of touch with most Americans. It appeared it was a risk the campaign was willing to take, and they probably figured Vance’s weirdness and extremism are baked in, as the polls have been pretty clear.

Focusing his attacks almost entirely on Trump—the top of the ticket—Walz gave details and facts, unlike the broad and baseless attacks and sheer lies that Vance advanced on Harris and on Walz, and it was a strategy that paid off over time through the debate.

By the time the abortion discussion came, Walz hit his stride.There was just too much there for Vance to evade—including Trump bragging about overturning Roe and the women in Texas and Georgia who’ve experienced terrible healthcare outcomes, who Walz named in discussing the brutal realities, including the death of Amber Thurman in Georgia.

Walz also used this time to strategically focus in on Vance’s past extreme positions on abortion—worse than Trump’s—because he’ll be a heartbeat from the presidency.

That forced Vance into defensiveness, concessions, and gobbledygook—and more lies—as all the polish came off:

Well, Norah, first of all, I never supported a national ban. I did, when I was running for Senate in 2022, talk about setting some minimum national standard…

..But, Norah, you know, one of the things that changed is in the state of Ohio, we had a referendum in 2023, and the people of Ohio voted overwhelmingly, by the way, against my position. And I think that what I learned from that, Norah, is that we've got to do a better job at winning back people's trust…

…First of all, Governor, I agree with you. Amber Thurmond should still be alive. And there are a lot of people who should still be alive, and I certainly wish that she was.

This was more lies, because he has most certainly supported a national abortion ban. He then tried to change the subject by launching into another complete lie, claiming an abortion rights bill that Tim Walz signed into law in Minnesota allows for doctors to decide not to give life-saving care to any fetus that “survives” an abortion.

This is where the factchecking by moderators was necessary. The CBS moderators did in the end fact check a little bit during the debate, clearly responding to much outrage over their announcement last week that they would not, only to be admonished by Vance at one point, who said, “The rules were that you guys were not going to fact check,” which was very telling.

But they didn’t factcheck in this case. It was left to Walz to factcheck it, but he slyly also pointed out that it was factchecked by the better moderators during the ABC debate between Trump and Harris. “It's not the case. It's not true,” he said. “That's not what the law says. So they fact-checked it with President Trump.”

On health care, Walz again exposed the devious plans of Trump and Vance, who went further than Trump’s “concepts of plan” in an interview after the presidential debate and made it clear they were going for removing the Affordable Care Act’s crucial provision that bans insurance companies from turning away people based on pre-existing conditions—or repealing the law entirely.

Norah O’Donnell asked Vance about what he had said: “Can you explain how that would work? And can you guarantee that Americans with pre-existing conditions won't pay more?”

Vance spun into a word salad in which he actually tried to claim Trump made the ACA better, but he never answered the question, as he did on other issues, like immigration, when he was asked if he would separate mothers from their American citizen children during the mass deportations.

But buried in the word salad was a clear message of deregulation and allowing the states and the insurance companies to opt-out of major provisions.

Walz came back with:

Those of you listening, this is critical to you. Now, Donald Trump all of a sudden wants you… go back and remember this. He ran on, the first thing he was going to do on day one, was to repeal Obamacare. On day one, he tried to sign an executive order to repeal the ACA. He signed on to a lawsuit to repeal the ACA, but lost at the Supreme Court. And he would have repealed the ACA had it not been for the courage of John McCain to save that bill.

Now fast forward…. When Donald Trump said, "I've got a concept of a plan," it cracked me up as a fourth grade teacher because my kids would have never given me that. But what Senator Vance just explained might be worse than a concept, because what he explained is pre-Obamacare…What they're saying is if you're healthy, why should you be paying more? So what they're going to do is let insurance companies pick who they insure.

That was very effective.

And then came the discussion of January 6th and democracy. The moderators set it up with the truth, and Vance just spun into lies, smiling at the wrong time.

Again, this material was too much for his slickness. He tried to equate Trump’s challenging the election to Democrats pushing "censorship," saying that in 2016, Democrats supposedly said the election was “stolen by Vladimir Putin because the Russians bought, like, $500,000 worth of Facebook ads.”

Walz responded with vigor:

January 6th was not Facebook ads…This idea that there's censorship—to stop people threatening to kill someone, threatening to do something? That's not censorship. Censorship is book banning.

He then turned to Vance, and, at first, in keeping with the Midwest cordiality that punctuated the debate, he thanked him for the conversation tonight, which he said the American people “wanted to hear.” And then he let him have it:

TW: This was a threat to our democracy in a way that we had not seen. And it manifested itself because of Donald Trump's inability to say—he is still saying—he didn't lose the election. I would just ask that. Did he lose the 2020 election?

JDV: Tim, I'm focused on the future. Did Kamala Harris censor Americans from speaking their mind in the wake of the 2020 COVID situation?

TW: That is a damning. That is a damning non answer.

Vance feebly came back with, "It's a damning non answer for you to not talk about censorship.”

Vance’s response was laughable, and it became the defining moment of the debate, showing him to be a slick henchman for an authoritarian who would be dangerous to put in office again.

No other moment sticks out from the debate so vividly because, though Vance was smooth and personable—and very studied—he didn’t answer any questions and he lied throughout the debate, and those lies are being exposed in the media today. He didn’t make points that hung out there and made people think, “Wow.” On style he may have won, but on substance, which is what matters, he made no impression, while Walz did so on substance time and again.

That was clear in the snap polls, where viewers said it was draw. NBC had a focus group of undecided Pennsylvania voters, in which five out of the six in the group thought Walz won the debate. Tim Walz didn’t give the red meat to the base that we might have liked if the only objective was to make those already onboard feel good. And you will see a lot of centrists and certainly the corporate media saying Vance won the debate and Walz was “unsteady,” which is all in line with the horserace coverage of the race.

Just ignore that. The only story out of the debate—the only story making headlines—is how JD Vance couldn’t answer a simple question from Walz about the 2020 election, which led to an attack on our democracy and a violent coup attempt. A “damning non-answer,” as Walz said. That’s almost everything anyone needs to know about JD Vance and Donald Trump heading into the election.

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