Vance Outperformed Walz in a Debate Unlikely to Shift the Race

This article is part of The D.C. Brief, TIME’s politics newsletter. Sign up here to get stories like this sent to your inbox.

A polished J.D. Vance plowed through his lone debate as the Republican Party’s vice presidential nominee and skirted legitimate questions about the record of his running mate, Donald Trump. To his left, Tim Walz struggled to elevate facts over showmanship and consistently came up short on the task to boost Kamala Harris’ late entry as the top of the ticket.

Vance, a first-term Senator from Ohio, proved his capacity to serve up a robust defense of a running mate who not that long ago was the subject of his scorn. While Walz earnestly worked to point out shortcomings of Trump’s first term and inconsistencies in Vance’s brief record in elected office, the Minnesota Governor couldn’t hide his fluster against a rival who never broke a sweat as he barrelled through a 90-minute session unlikely to change any voters’ notions before Election Day.

At times, they appeared in violent agreement on issues like gun violence, the need for jobs at home, and the squeeze of inflation, even if they were far apart on the causes and solutions. Two mostly unknown Midwesterners tapped for a gig typically assigned the attack-dog role, each at times seeming like reluctant messengers for their potential bosses.

“I don’t think Sen. Vance and I are that far apart,” Walz said when they discussed different approaches for paid family leave. At another point later in the night, Walz added: “Well, I’ve enjoyed tonight’s debate. I think there’s a lot of commonality here.”

“We’re going to shake hands after this debate and after this election,” Vance said. And when the session ended, they and their spouses did just that on stage.

For his part, Vance went into the evening with a slightly less favorable view in voters’ minds. Through a high-gloss performance, he nimbly laid blame for Americans’ housing woes at the doorsteps of immigrants who increase demand on the market, slammed expert analysis as an insufficient replacement for common sense, and put the best shine on Trump’s time in politics. Vance clearly had done his homework and arrived in Manhattan ready to needle Walz over his time as Minnesota Governor and the policies supported by Harris as Vice President. In fact, Vance repeatedly seemed to push aside incumbent President Joe Biden and promoted “the Harris Administration.”

Meanwhile, Walz took furious notes and had pointed rejoinders ready. But while he brought a reserve of experience—he joked that he is old enough to remember when they passed Obamacare—Walz’s hometown demeanor may have come off as less professional to audiences watching on television. That aw-shucks posture is part of his draw and his ability to talk about policy without seeming coached have helped him find new national fans. And when Vance clearly skirted the truth and worked in gray areas of accuracy, Walz didn’t really raise objections. When confronted with inaccurate retelling about his travels to Tiananmen Square, he stumbled to respond and didn’t really have an answer other than he sometimes is a “knucklehead.”

Vance, in the unenviable dual position of both trying to inherit the Trump MAGA Movement while setting himself up for whatever comes after November, leveled his harshest critique of the Harris-Walz ticket on issues central to the culture wars: reproductive rights, immigration, imported goods. He doubled down on false claims about Haitian immigrants eating pets in Springfield, Ohio, despite his and Trump’s parroting of those noxious rumors having already set off a panic in that community. And he stuck with the contention that the immigrants there in Vance’s home state under temporary legal status were there via “asylum fraud” thanks to Harris’ oversight of immigration and caused impossibly high home prices.

Walz would hear none of it: “Those laws have been on the books since 1990.”

That part of the evening ended with CBS News, the host network, muting their microphones and moving on. Things mostly returned to Midwest Nice default.

Vice presidential debates seldom change the course of history, let alone a specific race. While both candidates did their solid best to remind voters of the promises of their respective tickets and the peril of the other team, nothing will change in this tight race. Unlike the lone Harris-Trump meeting on Sept. 10, where the acrimony was never far from the surface, this pair largely stayed in their lanes almost until the end, when long-simmering frustrations over the validity of 2020’s election results came to the fore.

“Kamala Harris is engaged in censorship at an industrial scale,” Vance said, invoking the White House’s efforts to curb disinformation about Covid-19. When confronted further about the Big Lie that also finds a fertile home on social media platforms, Vance declined to respond to questions about the validity of Trump’s loss, instead saying Democrats were hypocrites in claiming Russian ads corrupted the results of 2016.

“Jan. 6 was not Facebook ads,” Walz said. “I don’t understand how we got to this point.”

The deep chasm between the two men’s professed beliefs on the failed insurrection almost four years ago might be the perfect microcosm of the differences between the two major parties, but it is unlikely to resolve to the tonic before Election Day. These politicians instead will continue in dissonance, encouraging their supporters to hum louder than the other choir. The voters might consider an investment of earplugs.

Watch TIME's Latest Documentary: Election Officials in Battleground States Open Up About 2024 | THE OFFICIALS

Make sense of what matters in Washington. Sign up for the D.C. Brief newsletter.