Morning after thoughts:

• Walz is not actually a bad debater. He’s not polished and practiced, but his command of policy and numbers means he still comes across as fairly confident. He knows what he knows, and that can stand in for polish.
• Vance didn’t do badly, but I genuinely can’t remember any of his answers, and that’s kind of weird. I think it’s because he answered like he’d been raised by a generative AI instead of human parents. Seriously, can anyone actually remember anything he said, without looking it up?
• Walz had more flubs. But he also got in a lot more hits. It remains to be seen which will stick in the minds of voters more, if either.
• The lack of Trump on the stage made this one a lot more mature. It’s amazing what a difference it makes when one of the debaters isn’t a demented man-baby.

The way I see it, Walz’s clearly superior command of policy details, and the way that fact-checkers are counting nearly everything Vance said as a lie, gives Walz the technical win, while Vance gets the nod for being more polished. In the end, I don’t think this debate will matter much to the election.

Those with an interest in history might remember that back during the 1988 election, Lloyd Bentsen absolutely demolished Dan Quayle, George H.W. Bush’s pick for VP, in a debate. But it was forgotten in a matter of days - if not hours - and Bush went on to win handily.

I think this debate will likely be forgotten soon, too.

It was okay. Walz was the nice dad. Vance was the slimy, mudslinging worm he is, a true politician in every negative sense of the word.

Walz was too nice and charitable towards Vance and gave him credit on certain issues, and Vance didn’t return it in kind.

Vance lied through his teeth and wouldn’t answer a single goddamn question. Spent most of his time saying how terrible Kamala was and almost none about how Trump would be good for people.

I left thinking it was an okay performance from both, but I suspect people will remember Vance being a greasy little weasel and Walz being a nice dad. Overall, a net positive for Harris/Walz, but only a little.

I guess I shouldn’t be surprised. Walz gave good answers about 90% of the time but definite dodged a few. Vance, otoh, made shit up constantly and harped on fear topics. Always about the border, blaming Harris for policy she wasn’t responsible for, and offering up an economy that the republicans have zero plans to create.

Walz was way too soft on Vance and let him control most of the debate. I’m tired of Dems positioning themselves as diet Republicans, then acting like they are nothing like while saying how much they agree with a guy like Vance on things lol. Vance also loudly saying you weren’t supposed to fact-check me was embarrassing. Walz laid out actual plans and policy but that is not going to reach that crowd they are targeting.

GOP was setting the bar low for Vance before the debate, and he easily cleared it, so with low expectations, the consensus will be that he was fantastic. Walz was no surprise, he was fine, so I think folks are going to call it a slight Vance win. It won’t matter, neither got hit hard enough, it won’t move anything.

Honestly, that was a solid debate from both candidates. They both did a good job dancing around direct answers. They both could throw and take jabs. The humbleness and reliability of both candidates were a breath of fresh air. I think they both did a good job trying to sway anyone on the fence, and overall, I think this benefits the Republican Party most. Vance is just a much more personable person than Trump. Democrats are really going to need to turn up if they want to win this election. I really think productive right-specific voters are going to show up from both sides and determine it.

Here’s to hoping personal autonomy wins out. Govement rules over ones personal body is a slippery slope. Allowing one to choose, that’s freedom.

It’s really annoying that JD had a valid point about economic experts being wrong about pushing neoliberalism. That really weakened Walz’es otherwise great point that we should be listening to the experts about climate change and allowed the couchfucker to push the “follow common sense” bullshit.

I feel like there’s a history of these VP debates being pretentiously “more civil” than the main event, because the stakes are lower, etc. So there was that, here, in vance and walz being so nice and agreeing with each other.

But this shit was boring crazy. Vance just lied and was unable to hold Walz to account.

Conclusion: Tim Walz is just too nice a guy to say what needs to be said.

To Vance’s credit, he’s doing a monumental amount of damage control and sanewashing for Donald Trump and is doing a decent job at it. Yes Vance is lying through his teeth with each answer but he is markedly better at keeping his cool compared to the former Narcissist-in-Chief against VP Harris. It’s a position Walz wouldn’t envy. So overall I think this is within the best range of events Vance could expect.

They both did well at acknowledging each other and keeping this like a somewhat normal debate, can you imagine. That said, if any viewer can hold a thought without focusing solely on whatever deflection each candidate is doing, Walz is giving better answers, and Vance is putting way more false equivalencies in.

Walz is doing very well with his answers, he’s not as calculated and rehearsed as Harris, and you know having a heart makes you mess up more than the recently changed telephone options menu, but he is doing a fantastically better job at connecting with voters than Vance did. Walz’s jabs are quick and easily missed (“Wharton”) but even with apolitical people, if they understand Walz’s language then they’ll get when he is jabbing at Vance.

Obviously I was hoping Vance would fold up into a chair and was disappointed for that to not happen. More than that though is that I’m crossing my fingers the news cycle doesn’t begin pretending it’s a normal election cycle just because the VP candidates could actually look each other in the eye for a night. Idk, give it 48hours and Trump will be starved enough of attention to break the spell and make people glare at him again in disgust.

Minor Vance win overall since he had lower expectations going in and Walz got that one unfortunate extremely clippable misspeak. Vance refusing to admit Trump lost in 2020 and his Springfield…thing though cost him any chance of a rout, which is basically required for a VP debate to have significant upballot effects. Still the Republicans probably appreciate getting Vance above Sarah Parin and Aaron Burr and getting the media distracted for another day or two.

Listening to these idiotic “uncommitted voters” in the focus group are the absolute worse. It’s a collection of people that love the attention of being an indecisive moron.

Every article I read speculating on the debate brought up Walz’ response to the Minnesota protests but it didn’t even come up unless I missed it? I was half expecting JD’s closing statement to try and attack Tim on it, also half expecting it to turn into a pitch to sign up for Truth and Rumble

CNN pundits saying “Vance was obviously the better debater” and “Walz really dropped the ball and let Vance get away with too much”

PBS pundits are complaining that they were too nice to each other and agreed with each other too much. Sigh.