Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz and U.S. Sen. JD Vance, R-Ohio, are prepping for the first and likely only vice president debate in the 2024 cycle, which is set for Tuesday night.
CBS News gets this one, and it’s probably fitting that the debate will take place in the studio once used by the children’s show “Captain Kangaroo,” given how the news network announced on Friday that it’s going Slim Goodbody on fact-checking.
The moderators, if you can call them that, “CBS Evening News” anchor Norah O’Donnell and “Face the Nation” host Margaret Brennan, aren’t going to live fact-check the candidates, leaving that to the two guys themselves.
Yeah, this isn’t going to be a total spectacle.
The move by CBS News is a clear response to the constant stream of invective from Donald Trump after he was fact-checked several times during the Sept. 10 ABC News debate with Kamala Harris, for good reason – among the fact-checks was one on Trump’s racist claim, based on prodding from Vance, that Haitian immigrants in Springfield, Ohio, are eating people’s pets.
Trump has alternatively claimed that he “won” the debate – he didn’t – and also that the ABC News moderators, David Muir and Linsey Davis, ganged up on him, because they corrected his wild assertions on the pet-eating thing, and his claims on abortion rights, who won the 2020 election and crime statistics.
Who will be watching?
Because this is the only scheduled vice president debate, and because Trump is resisting going at it with Harris for a second time after his embarrassing performance in the first, we can expect a good bit of interest in Tuesday’s event.
The 2020 VP debate featuring Harris and Mike Pence, Trump’s vice president, drew 57.9 million viewers, the second-most viewers for a vice president debate in history, only behind the 2008 Joe Biden-Sarah Palin debate, which was watched by more than 70 million people.
The extra attention to the debate doesn’t mean that it will change many voters’ minds, says Megan Duncan, an associate professor in the Virginia Tech School of Communication.
“People vote for the top of the ticket,” Duncan said. “Rather than making a decision about who to vote for, the draw for this debate might be more about wanting to see their team score some touchdowns and the other team fumble the ball.”
Toe to toe
Recent history suggests that Walz and Vance will be more adversarial in their debate, with increased sparring between one another, according to Cayce Myers, professor and director of graduate studies in the School of Communication at Virginia Tech.
“In this debate, I expect Vance to attack Harris in her changes in policy positions, especially on fracking,” Myers said. “Walz will continue Harris’s narrative around Trump’s temperament and legal problems.”
VP candidates typically do not play a large role in election outcomes, said Karen Hult, a professor of political science at Virginia Tech, but this election may be an exception because it’s so close.
“Any possible advantage or disadvantage linked to the vice presidential nominees could make a difference with particular constituencies or in parts of the U.S. or on certain issues,” Hult said. “The two vice presidential candidates’ effectiveness in reinforcing the strength and message of their running mates and in amplifying the importance of the choice voters face could have an effect.”
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Chris Graham
