The NPR Politics Podcast - Visions of masculinity: Walz, Vance prepare for debate

Episode Date: September 30, 2024

NPR's live special coverage of the CBS News Presidential Debate Simulcast begins Tuesday night at 9:00 p.m. Eastern and is available on your local member station, on the NPR app and at www.npr.org.Two men from the Midwest face off in Tuesday night's vice presidential debate. Here's how Democrat Tim Walz and Republican JD Vance are preparing for the big night.This episode: political correspondent Susan Davis, White House correspondent Asma Khalid, and campaign reporter Stephen Fowler.The podcast is produced by Jeongyoon Han, Casey Morell and Kelli Wessinger. Our editor is Eric McDaniel. Our executive producer is Muthoni Muturi.Listen to every episode of the NPR Politics Podcast sponsor-free, unlock access to bonus episodes with more from the NPR Politics team, and support public media when you sign up for The NPR Politics Podcast+ at plus.npr.org/politics.Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

Hi, this is John in Philadelphia. Unlike your other listeners, I'm not biking across a city, climbing a mountain, or running a double marathon, which I didn't even know existed, but instead laying in bed after getting my COVID and flu shots. This was recorded at 1.08pm on Monday, September 30th. Things may have changed by the time you hear this, but I will probably be napping still, maybe getting some delivery, and cheering on all the athletes that listen to the show. All right, here's the show. Spoken like a true Philly fan. Hey there, it's the NPR Politics Podcast. I'm Susan Davis. I cover politics. I'm Stephen Fowler. I cover the campaign. And I'm Asma Khalid. I cover the White House. And tomorrow is the first and only vice presidential debate. And all of us in the podcast today are going to be taking part in NPR's live special coverage of the CBS News vice presidential debate simulcast, including live video streaming, which you can find on your local member stations website or on the NPR app.

And, of course, we'll cover it here on the podcast after the debate wraps. But today on the show, the preparation and the stakes. Asma, for both J.D. Vance and Tim Walz, this is still a sort of introduction to the American public. That's right. And I would say there's two sort of main goals I think they both have in the debate tomorrow night. One is to present a picture of who they are themselves, but the other is to present a contrast with their opponent. And I think, you know, when I talk about Wals, because I cover the Democrats more and I spend more time looking at what he has been doing, he's been trying to present that contrast, I will say, on the stump quite a bit. You hear him talk about the fact that, you know, he, unlike,

you talk about him saying that, you know, he didn't go to Yale and not a lot of folks that he grew up with went to Yale. They're a clear knock at J.D. Vance. And so I think what's interesting to me, I am from the Midwest. I did a piece last week about how these are two vice presidential picks from the Midwest. They are both trying to appeal to that part of the country. And I would argue it's not just because, you know, Midwest is a wonderful part of this country, but also because they are trying to win over voters. You know, key swing states there of Michigan and Wisconsin. Stephen, what is it you've been following J.D. Vance more closely? It seems to me that there's a lot at stake for him in this debate because he is still pretty unknown. And I always like

to remind people, you know, this is someone who hasn't even served in elected office for two years, and yet he is now being vaunted onto a national stage. It's a lot. Yeah, I mean, J.D. Vance, despite being a U.S. senator, is still somebody not known even to a lot of Republicans. I mean, I remember going to J.D. Vance's first hometown rally in Middletown shortly after he was named the vice presidential pick, talked to a guy from Springfield. And I was like, how does it feel to have your hometown senator be the vice presidential pick? And he said, oh, he's the senator? So even for the constituencies and even for Republicans and even for people who vote,

there's still a lot at stake. And especially because Vance in the 11 weeks that he has been the vice presidential nominee has had headline after headline after headline be very negative. And so there's either things that he said from the past that have been brought up that have distracted from his message or things that he said in the moment at these rallies and interviews that have done it. So this is an opportunity to be different from a campaign stop or an unearthed audio clip to kind of take control of the narrative. I mean, I would say Vance, like Trump, obviously has focused on a lot of base messaging since he's become the nominee, doesn't seem all that

interested in reaching out to independent swing voters. But isn't that sort of what a national debate live program is? It's sort of an ability to reach out to people who might not already be fully convinced they're going to vote for you. Absolutely. And go back with me to the RNC when J.D. Vance was named Trump's pick. He was heralded as this sort of MAGA era parent and the future of the Republican Party post Trump. And this is at a time when Biden was down in the polls and Trump was feeling pretty good and the party was united around him. But things have changed. Most of Vance's reason for being selected and how he would have approached the campaigning has now been thrown out the window with Kamala Harris and Tim Walz. And that contrast

between Vance and Walz, I think, is going to be even more on display because Walz was picked in many ways as a reaction to Vance's selection. So that direct contrast about what is the future of the Republican Party versus potentially the future of the Democratic Party will be on display. I'm glad you brought that up because, Asma, I do think in one sense, age is going to be on display in this debate. And so much of this year was focused on older age, the age of Joe Biden, even the age of Donald Trump. J.D. Vance is really young. He just turned 40 over the summer. He'd be one of the youngest vice Donald Trump. J.D. Vance is really young. He just turned 40 over the summer. He'd be one of the youngest vice presidents ever. And part of the challenge tomorrow night is to give

that ready on day one energy. That's true. And, you know, I've been thinking about that debate that Joe Biden did when he was the vice presidential pick with Sarah Palin. Palin, you know, many Republican voters, many independent voters had questions about whether or not she was competent to do the job. Did she have the experience, especially in contrast to Joe Biden, who had spent many years in the United States Senate? And that debate really, you know, sort of solidified those concerns and questions that a lot of voters had. I think it showed that she did not have the same level of experience that Joe Biden had. I am very curious if we're going to see that same sort of dynamic at play.

The Minnesota governor, Tim Walz, he has been the governor of that state. He also served in Congress for a number of years, as you all were saying just a moment ago. I mean, Vance is a fairly new member of the United States Senate. And so they definitely have sort of huge differences in terms of their political experience. That all being said, I would not underestimate J.D. Vance as a debater. He's a smart guy. He went, as you all have heard, to Yale Law School. He is a shrewd politician in some ways as well.

I think that when he was first catapulted onto the national scene with the RNC, if you go back and listen to that speech, there were sort of subtle nods at unity. Him talking about the economic pain that the Midwest has felt. Those are appeals that resonate with some voters in the country. You know, the problem has been, I think, after his RNC introduction, he was not able to stay on message. And we heard a lot of other things. So I will be very curious to the degree that he is

able to stay on message and particularly kind of zero in on real big voter concerns that we've seen around the economy and let's say immigration. But if, again, you can kind of tailor that vision of immigration and keep it focused to a message that appeals to independent and some of the more moderate voters. You know, in some ways, J.D. Vance has been doing debate prep since he got the nomination because to his credit, he has been incredibly media accessible. He's put himself before tons of interviews. And that's a form of debate prep in its own, right, is you're getting used to being asked tough questions. But I'm curious to both of you what the campaigns have told you about how these two men are preparing for tomorrow night. Yeah. So Vance has done a ton of media interviews. He's done a ton of speeches in smaller intimate venues. And at the ones that I've been to,

he has taken questions afterwards, prioritizing local journalists and local reporters and local questions, and then getting to the national ones. So he has had kind of an advanced trial by fire of all sorts of questions ranging from what makes you smile and what makes you happy to are you still endorsing Mark Robinson, the Lieutenant Governor of North Carolina, who's embroiled in a scandal. So it is this sort of sharpened debate prep in many ways. But he's been prepping for several weeks. The campaign said that he's had his wife, Usha Vance, prepare with him and several other Trump advisors. And to play the part of Tim Walz in this debate is Minnesota Congressman, House Majority Whip Tom Emmer, who is obviously

from Minnesota. He's very similarly positioned and aged as Tim Walz and, you know, is doing similar mannerisms, but also knows a lot about how the man thinks and governs. So as good as they stand in as you can get for a governor that nobody necessarily heard of until a few weeks ago, Vance has some of the best weapons in his arsenal to really be able to understand how it's going to go. That's interesting. Emmer's a smart guy, and I think he's one of the low-key, most influential people on the Hill. So it's interesting that he's been picked. Asma, what about Walls? So Walls has been doing some of the traditional debate prep that you'd imagine. Pete Buttigieg,

we've been told that he is serving as J.D. Vance, acting. So I think that's really interesting because Buttigieg also served in debate prep with Harris in the role of Mike Pence four years ago. So, you know, he knows the role. All mid-bust energy here. Exactly. You know, I was going to go there. But, you know, he's been doing sort of traditional debate prep, as you would imagine. They've been doing this all in the swing state of Michigan. All right. Let's take a quick break and we'll be back in a minute. And we're back. And I think every four years we have this question, does the debate even matter?

Does it even move the needle? And I don't know, y'all. I feel like this is a year that proves that debates can still be pretty impactful in a presidential election. So Sue, I'm going to disagree a bit. I don't think that the VP debates, this election cycle in particular, will matter a whole lot unless something totally unexpected would happen, right? Yeah. And the reason I say that is I don't think this is a normal election cycle. And there is so much attention paid on the two people at the top of the ticket. Right. Like you look at folks who are voting for Trump. They are voting for him because they are loyal supporters of him and his movement or they are voting oftentimes against him. People have baked in opinions about Trump. They are still getting to know Kamala Harris as the top of the ticket. So I don't think that there's a whole lot of concern about the VP debate. I do think this would be a very fundamentally different calculation if Joe Biden and Donald Trump were still facing off against each other because of the advanced age of both of those men. I would disagree with Asma's disagreement, though, because

both Tim Walz and J.D. Vance have become effective extensions of the campaigns of Kamala Harris and Donald Trump, that anything they say or do that's bad or that is a flub or that can be used to attack the other presidential campaigns, stances and views on things, I think that will continue to drive the narrative that we have seen in these last few weeks. It's not necessarily like somebody showing up and being like, ah, after that debate where J.D. Vance did super, I think I'm going to vote for Trump and Vance now. about Haitian migrants in his state, or if Tim Walz manages to say something about abortion that Republicans will say is too extreme, then that further drives the conversations about those two principal candidates and can, as people are currently voting right now, be something that shapes the overall vibe of the election. Yeah, I mean, the challenge of these events is like, if you do well at it, nobody really remembers. But if you do terrible, no one forgets. And that's why they are sort of

high risk acts. I also think that each candidate is going to have to sort of determine how much they go on offense and how much they go on defense. And it seems pretty clear that Republicans are at least putting into the water that J.D. Vance intends to be on the offense against Tim Walz and already bringing up things like his military service ahead of the debate. Yeah, in a prep call ahead of this debate, there's a new line, Trader Tim, T-R-A-I-T-O-R. It appears to be referring to Walz's retirement from the Minnesota National Guard. And then after his retirement, his unit deployed. And this was a line of attack that was trotted out in the early days after Walls was selected as the vice presidential pick and didn't really seem to stick. J.D. Vance also has military service that he hasn't really emphasized in the same way. And so I think having the two of them

on stage together, going on the offense about the military record and kind of having a contest of sorts about this aspect of their backstories could end up backfiring. But this seems like what they are going to emphasize if given the opportunity. All right, guys, we're going to leave it there. But if you want more of this, me, Stephen, Asma, we're all going to be covering the debate all night tomorrow night. And we'll be back in your feeds late tomorrow night. I'm Susan Davis. I cover politics. I'm Stephen Fowler. I cover the campaign. And I'm Asma Khalid. I cover the White House.

And thanks for listening to the NPR Politics Podcast.