The great veep debate
After an hour I get bored of it and drop out. When I return I catch the bottom line right at the very end which negates just about anything of the previous so two hours — and it is up to Tim Walz to poke it toward JD Vance as he fished for an equivalency that, well may work for Matt Taibbi and there is no other means of getting by in the reasonable sounding broad political middle from the right he had managed to work his way to for the duration of his time here.
Performances were about what I expect. Walz had said he was not that good at this, a word of warning to Harris when she picked him. And as much as Democrats want to fix Vance as the man who stumbles his way through a doughnut shop and roll through his podcast interviews, there is a reason he was elected Senator — he was not going to blast his way through the rhetoric of “cat ladies” for the edification of the audience of Bronze Age Pervert and listeners — or, if we want to slide to a wider audience Tucker Carlson. What I pick up here is his one moment to get himself to the role Pence served for Trump in 2016 — if you can’t stomach Trump you can convince yourself you are voting for the undercard. The final exchange of the debate –and years from now the only thing history will remember of it — served to show how Vance would not serve as another Pence — and, as Walz says off of everyone who prepped him for the one moment in a long series of blah — why he is there in the first place.
Someone should have figured the reason for the opening statement. Hey the “I’m a hick out of Appalachia, son of an Opoid Addict” / “Coach and teacher from Minnesota” out of the way, so a Question about Iran and Israel is not filibustered with all that. After that, Grand take away of anything I see any mention of in the discourse. I don’t exactly know what the Tiananmen Square story is, but I am fascinated by the idea of the Bulwark crew barking about what a bad answer he gave and how he should have answered it — and giving the suggestion of the answer he effectively gave. Vance barks out “you are not supposed to fact check” as the hosts clarify that the Haitian migrants are legally so. Walz clearly avoided dogs and cats, and I guess people don’t like his lowest common denominator approach in calling out demagoguery here. Vance got cute by half and laughable in framing Trump as “saving” Obama’s ACA healthcare. And Walz made a funny boo boo in saying he has been friends with school shooters, which to be sure as a teacher these days and at the point in time he had been you are probably tasked with guiding kids away from such.
I do have the sense the man opened the door back up for his 2028 run, the door that had seemingly closed with cat ladies and doughnuts. Sure, we have good reports of MAGA faithful not much liking him — but remember, Kamala Harris “is a cop”. And if we see Vance not much bothering to distance from the Trump election denying here, recall Ronald Reagan was a vociferous supporter of Nixon throughout Watergate. Things turn, Vance can push it aside and complete his formation into Vance version number four that this debate served to start him out as —