Victor Davis Hanson
@VDHanson
Debate Postmortem
J.D. Vance, as anticipated, easily won the debate on demeanor, facts, and analysis. But in fairness to a sometimes herky-jerky and nervous Tim Walz, he had the harder task of defending the temporary make-over of Harris, her co-culpability for the last three-and-a-half-years of the Biden disaster, and her unwillingness to implement her supposedly “change” agenda in the last months of her vice-presidential tenure.
The moderators, Nora O’Donnell, and, especially, Margaret Brennan, also as expected, ganged up on Vance. The had learned nothing, and forgot nothing from the last disastrous, and biased debate moderators—now proving the wisdom of Donald Trump’s refusal to do any more network debates other than on Fox.
The two moderators shamelessly broke their own rules by fact-checking (wrongly and solely) Vance. They ignored questions of the administration’s reactions to Hurricane Helene, the Ukraine war, the recent Trump assassination attempts, or crime, while only briefly touching on Iran and a Middle East on the brink of total war.
Instead, they concentrated, as also expected, on climate change, abortion, health care, and childcare. All were issues they thought might more easily embarrass Vance. And, of course, as also expected, the two ended the debate pressing Vance on January 6.
And yet Vance again won decisively. In doing so, he dispelled the smear that he was somehow “mean”, when, in fact, he proved calm and magnanimous as he dissected Walz.
The nation perhaps learned that Trump selected him to articulate his MAGA positions, and perhaps in a manner superior to Trump’s own. In contrast, Harris picked Walz. assuming he would not upstage her and perhaps by his limitations would make her look more competent in comparison.
The debate will give some momentum to Trump-Vance in the last month of the campaign.
It follows the lethargic Biden-Harris reaction to Hurricane Helene, whose toll in human life and property had been initially and vastly ignored by the media.
It follows the growing specter of a theater-wide Middle East war, as Israel faces off against Iran and its appendages (all empowered after 2020 by Biden-Harris).
It follows the chaos of a longshoremen’s strike intended to shut down the country.
And it follows Harris’s continued inability to survive serial soft-ball interviews without her memorized and banal answers.
As a result, the slow hemorrhaging of Harris-Walz will likely still continue in the last month of the election.
9:01 AM · Oct 2, 2024
292K
Views
