Democratic contender Tim Walz and his Republican counterpart, JD Vance, are preparing to go head-to-head in the solitary US vice-presidential debate due for Tuesday night. This event represents a prime opportunity for each of them to reinforce and extend the messages of their running mates to voters, with the all-important November 5th election looming large.
Details for the engagement are as follows:
Regarding the circumstances of the debate, it is programmed to last 90 minutes under the auspices of CBS News. The event will occur on Tuesday, October 1st at 9pm (2am Wednesday morning in Ireland) within New York City; a mainstay of Democratic support and the place where Donald Trump, former resident and the Republican candidate for president, once lived. The presidential election sees Trump opposing the Democratic vice-president, Kamala Harris.
Regarding the debate’s moderation, the venue will be the CBS Broadcast Center, with CBS Evening News anchor, Norah O’Donnell, and Margaret Brennan, moderator for Face the Nation, set to keep proceedings orderly.
The debate bares the potential to be particularly intense, with Vance supposedly nervous and Walz described as ‘peculiar’, and neither harboring affection for the other.
The audience will have several options to watch the event, with broadcasting on the CBS network as well as on BBC1 and BBC News, and live streaming available on all platforms where CBS News 24/7 and Paramount+ can be found.
With regards to the accepted etiquette, no audience will be present. The candidates will remain behind their lecterns throughout the debate with neither props nor pre-prepared notes permitted on stage. CBS News has asserted their right to silence the candidates’ microphones if necessary.
Expectations of Walz are that he may lean into his ‘average Joe’ persona in an attempt to appeal to voters, particularly those independents who perceive Harris, formerly a Californian senator, as overly liberal. Walz, a 60-year-old ex-congressman, managed to win in a district typically favouring Republicans before assuming his current role as Governor of Minnesota.
As governor, he has been a proponent of progressive policies like gratis school lunches, tax deductions for the middle-income bracket and wider access to paid leave for workers in Minnesota. It is expected that Walz may employ tactics similar to those used successfully by Harris in her debate against Trump, potentially making Vance uncomfortable. Walz has previously cast doubt on Vance’s authenticity as a Midwestern American and criticised his 2016 autobiography, ‘Hillbilly Elegy’, for presenting a negative image of pastoral America.
“At the end of the day we’re all ordinary people. I was raised in the country’s heartland. JD, on the other hand, completed his education at Yale, had his career bankrolled by Silicon Valley tycoons, and then slammed that community in his bestselling book,” Walz declared in his debut rally as vice-presidential candidate for Harris. “This isn’t an accurate representation of the American Midwest.”
A former high school educator and football coach, Walz has publicly scorned Trump and Vance, likening them to “bizarre and indeed, odd” individuals – a critique that rapidly gained traction among Democrat supporters. The Democratic vice-presidential nominee has associated Vance with a series of right-leaning policies termed ‘Project 2025’, from which Trump has sought to dissociate himself.
Turning to Vance, the Ohio senator will need to avoid landing on the back foot in the course of the debate if Walz adopts a similar approach to Harris. Vance, 40, is likely to face scrutiny over his contentious statements and may respond in his characteristic confrontational manner. He has faced negative backlash for labelling Harris and other 2021 Democrats as “a cluster of childless cat women”, and recently, for spreading unverified information that Haitian immigrants in Springfield, Ohio, had resorted to eating pets.
Moreover, Vance has baselessly insinuated that the perpetrator in the most recent assassination attempt against Trump was incited by incendiary Democrat language. “What sets conservatives apart from liberals… is that no one has made an attempt on Kamala Harris’s life in recent months while two attempts have been made on Donald Trump in the same duration,” Vance stated, prompting a reprimand from the White House.
In his campaign, Vance has painted Walz and Harris as extreme leftists. He has also cast doubt on Walz’s military service record and the depiction of his family’s struggles with fertility. Vance, a former Marine Corps serviceman and public affairs officer during his half-year tenure in Iraq, has accused Walz of leaving the Army National Guard to avoid deployment to Iraq and misrepresenting his involvement in combat.
Walz, a Congress candidate and a 24-year veteran of the guard, stepped down from his service duties to enter politics. Though he has stood by his service history, his campaign team recognised that he misrepresented himself in a 2018 video, claiming to have borne “weapons of war” into active combat; a circumstance that didn’t occur, as he never served within a combat zone. Reuters reports this information.