We all know vice presidential debates rarely move the public opinion needle.
In 2020 Donald Trump was thrown out of office by a record 81 million voters because he was Donald Trump, not because a fly took up residence on Mike Pence’s head. In 1988 the senior George Bush won 53.4 percent of the popular vote – we haven’t seen a percentage that high in all the years since – despite the fact that his understudy, Dan Quayle, was roundly mocked in the veep debate as a callow lightweight.
So it’s highly unlikely this week’s VP debate between Tim Walz and JD Vance will reshape the 2024 campaign. Vance’s goal was to sheath his claws, hide his MAGA zealotry, and ooze calculated compassion – whereas Walz’s goal was to soft-pedal his progressivism and stress bipartisanship. Vance never brought up his summertime lie that National Guardsman Walz chickened out of Iraq. And Walz never mentioned Vance’s “childless cat lady” weirdness.
Walz, in “Minnesota Nice” mode, never mentioned Vance’s “childless cat lady” weirdness and didn’t assail him for being a slick serial-lying extremist. That is until the debate clock was set to expire, when we got a moment that’s already become a viral sensation.
Four years ago, Vance refused to accept Joe Biden’s election victory. That made him fair game for a question from the moderators whether he would again seek to challenge this year’s election results, even if every governor certifies the results.
Vance’s instinct was to slip-slide away: “I think we’re focused on the future.” He never answered that crucial question. Instead, he claimed Trump called on supporters to “protest peacefully” on January 6th at the U.S.Capitol and “peacefully gave over power on January the 20th, as we have done for 250 years in this country.”
Trump “peacefully gave over power”? Need we bother to annotate Vance’s lies and diversionary drivel? Like the fact 62 judges, including Trump appointees, said there were not “problems” with the balloting. Like the fact Trump’s own cybersecurity chief and his own attorney general said the balloting was secure. Like the fact Trump goaded his thugs to attack the Capitol and then watched it on TV for hours while people died and more than 100 cops were beaten.
Joe Biden became president on Jan. 20th only because Trump’s violent putsch failed.
Over to you, Tim Walz: “January 6 (was) the first time in American history that a president or anyone tried to overturn a fair election and the peaceful transfer of power. And here we are four years later in the same boat…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.”
He then posed a simple question to Vance: “Did he lose the 2020 election?”
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Copyright 2024 Dick Polman, distributed exclusively by Cagle Cartoons newspaper syndicate.