The Journal. - Red, White and Who? Veep! Veep! All Eyes On Vance and Walz

Episode Date: October 4, 2024

The vice-presidential candidates took center stage at a debate this week. Ryan Knutson talks with Molly Ball about the important takeaways, and Rachel Humphreys speaks to a listener about why she’s thinking about climate change this election.  Further Listening: - Red, White and Who? Playlist  - Red, White and Who? It's Always the Economy!  - Red, White and Who? Why Ohio Could Decide the Senate  Further Reading: - JD Vance’s Version of Trump Is Better Than the Real Thing  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

As a political reporter, is your favorite show Veep? Absolutely. I love that show. It is so perfect. I mean, it captures, and we say this in DC all the time, that like people outside the Beltway think that politics is House of Cards, but really it's Veep. It's not West Wing, it's not noble and high-minded, it's not House of Cards, it's not some sinister conspiracy, it's just a bunch of flawed people doing ridiculous things for ridiculous reasons. One of the things that I like about VEEP is that the vice president is the main character, somebody who's normally just, you know, off to the side

and more forgettable. Amy, look, look at this. This is classic clean job stuff. I mean, if I can get cornstarch utensils in most federal buildings by the fall, well then, the VEEP has landed. Well, it so perfectly captures the plight of the vice president, right?

Who is titularly extremely important, but basically has nothing to do, and just spends all their time sort of being anxious about their ambitions and their place in the universe and their future. And it is, it's this sort of weird position that's simultaneously second on the org chart and kind of invisible.

Except this week, the vice presidential hopefuls got to be the main characters. That's right, we had a vice presidential debate, and maybe it is the last time either of these men will ever be heard from again. Who knows? So, with all due respect to former VP candidates, I feel like this year's vice presidential matchup might be a lot more interesting than in prior years. I think that's true, actually.

I mean, first of all, I don't like this conventional wisdom that says, oh, it doesn't matter, because I think everything matters to some extent in campaigns. But also in a race that's extremely close and in a race where undecided voters are looking for information about candidates who are in some ways mysterious or unknown. It's a really important piece of information about, first of all, the decision-making of the nominees,

Donald Trump and Kamala Harris, and sheds a lot of light on potentially how they would govern and then, as we know, could end up being a president or presidential candidate in the not-too-distant future. ["The Last Supper"] could end up being a president or presidential candidate in the not too distant future. All right, Molly, should we do this? Let's do the show, Ryan.

From the Journal, this is Red, White and Who. Our show about the road to the White House. I'm Ryan Knudsen. And I'm Molly Ball. It's Friday, October 4th. Coming up on the show... Veep Veep, Vance and Walls. And why aren't the campaigns talking more about climate change? Stay with us.

How do airplanes fly? What's in this box? What does this thing do? Kids are curious about everything, including guns. Learn how to store your guns securely and make your home safer at Nfamilyfire.org. Brought to you by Nfamily Fire, Brady, and the Ad Council. All right, I want to start off by talking about the VP debate on Tuesday. It seemed like JD Vance was polished and prepared and like he had a strategy, and that Tim Walz seemed a bit shakier on the debate stage. What was your take about how things went for each candidate? I really thought JD Vance won this debate. As a matter of just sort of skill as a debater, right, just his ability to make his points,

make arguments that were concise and clear and understandable, and defend his positions or Donald Trump's positions. So when people say that Donald Trump's economic plan doesn't make sense, I say, look at the record. He delivered rising take-home pay for American workers. Now again, you can disagree with some of his depictions of the last Donald Trump presidency. You can disagree with the policies that he says would lead to better outcomes, but it was very clear what he was saying and what case he was making. Whereas Walls looked nervous and wasn't very clear or concise in his answers.

And he also didn't make a clear argument. I don't think if you'd never heard anything about this campaign, you would have come away from this debate with a clear sense of what Tim Walz was arguing a Kamala Harris administration would do or why her role in the current administration has been a good thing. Now, I do want to point out a couple of big areas that complicate this narrative. There was a long segment on abortion where Vance basically agreed that Republicans position on this issue is unpopular and voters don't like it.

Is that my party, we've got to do so much better of a job at earning the American people's trust back on this issue where they... And that was remarkable to me because that was him basically admitting that his side has a losing position on this issue. And then very late in the debate, I thought Walls had his best moment when he very sort of, sincerely and with a sense of sort of personal alarm talked about Trump's violent refusal to accept the results of the 2020 election. Did he lose the 2020 election? Tim, I'm focused on the future. Did Kamala Harris censor Americans from speaking their mind in the wake of the 2020 COVID situation?

That is a damning non-answer. And in some of the post-debate focus groups, a lot of voters said that that stuck out in their mind as an important moment that sort of clarified the stakes for them. It's so interesting watching these two debate, because I feel like for so much of this campaign, Vance has seemed like the one who's been a little bit shaky

and outside his comfort zone, and Walls has been almost thriving. And on the debate stage, it's very much the inverse of that, where Vance seemed to be the much more comfortable one in his element, and Walls seemed outside of his comfort zone. Vance was very comfortable. He was also a different persona than we've seen on the campaign trail. On the campaign trail, he is always on the attack.

And I think this is part of what has made him, by some measures, the most unpopular vice presidential nominee in history. He has a very negative rating overall. And it's in part because he is willing to go out there and absolutely slash and burn and say the nastiest things about the other side That wasn't the version of JD Vance that came out there. He came out and explicitly said I'm introducing myself to you I'm introducing myself as a sympathetic figure as someone who you know grew up in difficult

Circumstances and knows what it's like to struggle That may have been part of what threw Tim Walls off balance, is that if you were expecting the sort of harsh, partisan attack dog, JD Vance from the campaign trail, that was not the JD Vance who showed up at the debate. Instead, it was this much more collegial, much more sort of humanizing, even empathetic figure. I mean, both men were very kind and cordial and polite

and saying how much they agreed with each other half the time. And I actually think, I agree with you. I think you want to solve this problem. I agree with a lot of what Senator Vance said about what's happening. Now, Tim just mentioned a bunch of ideas. Now, some of those ideas I actually think

are halfway decent. I 100% believe that Senator Vance hates it when these kids, it's abhorrent and it breaks your heart. I agree with that. Yeah, it really did not feel like a debate in 2024 for that reason, right? We've become so accustomed to this nasty politics full of personal attacks and insults. And there was none of that. Do you think that this was a knockout win for Vance though? Because I've seen a lot of outlets calling it a tie and some of the polling that night

saying that it was maybe still for Vance, but much closer. It is interesting and some of the snap polls and I don't think these are completely reliable, but they do these, you know, immediate snap polls of like swing voters or voters overall. With voters overall it did seem to be basically a tie I think that has to do with the fact that it's just a you know polarized country in a sharply divided race people are gonna see that the candidate they like better won the debate. So only one of these men will become vice president. But do you see either of them having a long lasting impact

on their political parties? It's a really good question. If Trump wins the election and advances vice president, he will be very well positioned to continue to be the avatar of this new right-wing philosophy. He has become sort of the chief spokesman for this intellectual movement that has taken Trumpism over the past several years

and turned it into a coherent ideology, sometimes called national conservatism, sometimes called the new right. A lot of the reason he was picked for the ticket is because of his skill in articulating these types of arguments. You know, part of a coalition of figures, including folks like Tucker Carlson, who've reshaped the Republican Party in Trump's image,

and people see him as the sort of heir to the MAGA movement. What about for Walls? Does he sort of represent anything in the future that a Democratic Party or is it all maybe Kamala Harris? You rarely hear Walls discussed in those terms. And one of the things that he is said to have said to Harris and her people at the time that he was under consideration was that he didn't have further ambitions.

He wasn't someone who saw himself as a future presidential prospect. A lot of people look at him and think of him as older. He's actually the same age as Kamala Harris. He's, I think, less than a year older than she is. But he looks older. And so people see him as sort of the father figure in a way on the ticket. All right. We're going to take a quick break.

And when we come back, we are going to take a listener question about climate change. Let's do it. Alright, so as you know, we love to take listener questions and we have been getting so many. Thank you all so much. This week we got a question from a 14 year old listener and our senior producer Rachel Humphreys decided to call her. Hello? Hi, is that Sonia? Oh yeah, this is Rachel. producer Rachel Humphries decided to call her. Hello?

Hi, is that Sonja? Oh, yeah. This is Rachel calling. And talk about what got her so interested in this election. So Rachel, do you want to tell us about your conversation? Yeah, Brian, I mean, you don't often hear that much from teenagers when it comes to elections, but this listener was very keen to know more about the race this year. And her name is Sonia Bu-Gwen. B-O-U-G-O-U-I-N.

I like to explain it to people as if you're scaring someone named Gwen. Bu-Gwen. Boo. Isn't that great? It is spooky season. It's October. That's very true. But away from Halloween, I asked Sonia what she finds interesting about this election. I was pretty bored at first when it was Biden versus Trump.

But when Biden dropped out of the race and Kamala took his place, I got my attention again. And I was like, OK, so I know all these things about Trump, but you don't know as much about Kamala because she doesn't know, like she doesn't share money for policies. So it got me intrigued and I started to do more research and I guess that's how I've been so far, just trying to find out more about her. Just before we get to Sonia's question, Molly, were you thinking about politics much when you were 14? Not at all.

I don't know if I even knew elections were happening when I was 14. Sonia is very impressive. She definitely is. And one of the things she and I spoke about is an issue that's on her mind this election, which is climate change. And she talked to me about how the climate is changing

where she lives in the Berkshires in Massachusetts. It just seems so strange to me to think that all these things that I know and I've thought of like these seasons, they're not going to be the same for like if I were to have kids. And I just see it like in the Berkshires we're known for our foliage and everything and our harsh winters and these like dramatic changes in weather. And it's just been so much different. I've been having these super hot days in the middle of winter. And it just, it really strikes me as this thing that's like, why is this happening?

Why is it not stopping? It should be really concerning. So Sonja, what's your question for Molly? My question for Molly is, first of all, how important would you say climate change is to voters? And what are Kamala Harris's views on climate change and different climate change agendas? Well, thank you, Sonia.

It's a great question, and I love that you're so interested in politics. Climate has not been a big topic of discussion in this election, and it is not something that most people say is important to their vote. Earlier this year in a Wall Street Journal poll of swing states, 2% of voters said climate

was their most important issue. 2%? Sorry, that is almost nothing. What's lower than that? Not very much. I think it might have been the lowest of the issues in the poll. Wow.

Now, you know, it may be important to people, but not their top issue. And it is the case that most people do think that climate change is important. But it is not most people's top issue. Even young voters, we hear a lot about youth climate activism and the sort of Greta Thunbergs of the world. But even among young people, I think it was only 3%. Is that unique to this election because of who the candidates are and their dynamics or just that people are not...

It's basically always the case. People are just more concerned with things that affect them directly. And although you can say that climate has an impact on people in the case of things like the increasing incidence of extreme weather, it isn't something that people see as sort of a pocketbook issue. I think one reason that you don't hear climate change discussed a lot in the context of the campaign

is that the partisan lines on this issue are pretty clear. People who are the most concerned about the environment, most concerned about doing something about climate change are probably already Democrats. Democrats have put much more emphasis on this issue. In terms of Kamala Harris's policies on climate change, she does have a record of supporting environmental legislation.

When she was in the Senate, she supported the Green New Deal. She cast the deciding vote on the Inflation Reduction Act, which was the trillion dollar Biden administration climate plan. And so we think that she would basically continue Biden's policies in this area. But she has tried to move to the center a little bit, for example, on the issue of fracking. This is not something that environmentalists love because it involves the production of fossil fuels. But in a state like Pennsylvania, which is the number two natural gas producer in America, it's something that a lot of those swing voters and independent voters that she needs to appeal to strongly favor. So she has reversed her stance from 2020 where she said that she supported a ban on fracking.

Now she says she absolutely would not move to ban fracking. And I think this issue sort of shows you why maybe she doesn't talk about the climate that much is because it's an issue that can be somewhat divisive even among Democrats. So Sonya asked about Kamala Harris's views on climate change. What about Donald Trump's? Trump's position is that climate change is a hoax, but also that he would clean up pollution, make the air and water clean. Right, clean air and clean water.

People remember that he pulled out of the Paris Climate Accords, one of the first things he did during his presidential term, and Biden reversed that decision. But in practice, he's in favor of rolling back environmental regulations. That was a lot of what he did in his first term.

He has said that the energy industry needs to be unleashed to produce as much oil and gas as possible. He does not seem very concerned about greenhouse gas emissions at all. So I think it's fair to say that his agenda would not do much to reduce the impacts of climate change. I wanted to get your take quickly before we go about all the stuff that's going on outside of the campaigns right now and your sense of how Trump and Harris have been responding

to it. So there's Hurricane Helene and the devastation that's been taking place in the South. There's escalating war in the Middle East right now. Are you seeing these things come up in the campaigns right now? How are the candidates responding to it? And does it even really matter all that much for the outcome of the election? Basically anything could decide this election because it is so close. You know, the famous idea that, you know,

a butterfly can flap its wings on one side of the world and cause a hurricane. this election because it is so close. The famous idea that a butterfly can flap its wings on one side of the world and cause a hurricane. On the other side of the world, the Republican strategist Karl Rove wrote a column this week saying a butterfly could decide the election just because it is so close that basically anything could do it. It feels about right this year. I think that the sort of conventional wisdom is that any bad news is good for Trump. Because anything bad that happens is something he can pin on the current administration.

So when we talk about sort of October surprises, I think there's a feeling that most of the potential October surprises sort of tend to cut in the direction of the challenger, the party out of power. All right, Molly, what are you going to be watching for over the next week? It's going to be an interesting week next week. Both Donald Trump and Kamala Harris are supposed to do town halls with

Univision, the Spanish language network. So I think we'll be hearing a lot about issues relevant to Latino voters, potentially the immigration issue. And aside from that, going to be another important week in the campaign. Thanks so much, Molly. It's always a pleasure. It's been fun, Ryan. See you next week. Before we go, do you have a question for Molly about the issue of immigration and how it's

affecting this election? Send us an email or voice message to thejournal at wsj.com. That's thejournal at wsj.com. Red White and Who is part of The Journal, which is a co-production of Spotify and The Wall Street Journal. Our senior producer is Rachel Humphries. Our producer is Piers Singie. Our editor is Catherine Whalen.

I'm Ryan Knudsen. This episode was engineered by Peter Leonard. Our theme music is by So Wiley and remixed by Peter Leonard. Additional music this week from Peter Leonard. Fact-checking by Amelia Schoenbeck. Artwork by James Walton. Special thanks to Kate Linebaugh, Sarah Platt, Ben Pershing, and the whole journal team. Thanks for listening.

We'll be back with another episode of Red, White, and Who next Friday morning. See you then. So I have to admit something to you, which is I was actually pretty into politics when I was in high school. And I learned a lot about politics because I ran a successful campaign to become co-president of my high school. Wow. Look at you. Yeah.

My running mate was Ryan Tenzeldom. And our slogan was Two Ryan's One Dream. Wow. Look at you. Yeah. My running mate was Ryan Tinseldom, and our slogan was, Two Ryan's, One Dream. Wow. And also, Two Ryan's, Make a Right. Wow. But it was all about turnout. I would vote for you. Yeah, I know. Yeah, exactly. We were going to...

I don't even know what our camp... We didn't even have a policy, but it was... What was your policy platform, Ryan? There was no policy platform. Our policy platform was just inundate the school with flyers and at lunchtime when it was time to vote, just to go up to every single table and just get out the vote. Get out the vote and why not vote for Ryan and Ryan? So it was literally a popularity contest. I mean, I guess so. Yeah.

Mm-hmm. We won the popular vote.