Although a debate of vice presidential candidates does not determine the result of the general election, the meeting between Democrat Tim Walz and Republican JD Vance marked the contrasts in visions between Democrats and Republicans, and allowed us to see who these individuals are who are at a distance. passing of the presidency if the president could not complete his or her term.
We witness two opposing visions where Vance echoes the extreme proposals and lies of Donald Trump, but unlike the former president, he does so without losing his composure, which makes him even more dangerous. Despite the cordiality of the debate in general, what Vance did was try to reinvent Trump and the Republican ticket as promoters of bipartisan consensus who have been “misunderstood” all along, even when Trump instigated the violent assault on the Capitol on September 6. January 2021 to prevent the certification of Joe Biden’s victory in 2020. For Vance, what we all witnessed was a “peaceful” demonstration.
On immigration, Vance repeated the same Trump lies: that the borders are open, that Kamala Harris, Democratic presidential nominee, was “border czar” and failed in her performance, which is false; that border crossings are uncontrolled, which is also false because they have been decreasing; or that undocumented immigrants traffic fentanyl into the United States, although more than 80% of those convicted are US citizens, and 90% of the confiscations occur at legal ports of entry or vehicle inspection centers inside the country and not on crossing routes. of undocumented people. He also blamed undocumented immigrants for the high cost of housing, gun violence and depressing citizens’ wages.
After all, Vance, a U.S. senator from Ohio, promoted the lie that Haitian immigrants eat the pets of residents of Springfield, Ohio, even when his team corroborated the information to be false.
And together with Trump he advocates for the mass deportations contained in Project 2025 from which he has wanted to distance himself. He even wants to widen the net so that these mass deportations include immigrants currently protected by programs such as TPS or humanitarian parole. But he avoided answering whether he will deport undocumented parents if they have American citizen children, nor did he explain how they will implement the plan that will cause legal, humanitarian and economic chaos.
Likewise, Vance, like Trump, promotes the other big lie that undocumented people vote in federal elections.
Vance is the one who also criticizes women who do not have children, by choice or because they cannot, calling them “ladies without children and with cats.”
Now he defends Trump although in 2020 he said that the former president’s economic agenda had failed and that he would surely lose the elections. But he has been a faithful spokesperson for the big lie that the election was “stolen” from Trump because there was “fraud,” and he also went so far as to say that if he had been vice president in 2020 he would not have certified the results as former Vice President Mike Pence did. In the debate, he avoided answering whether Trump lost the election because he wants to “focus on the future.”
Walz, for his part, appeals more to the working class with his background as a teacher, coach, congressman, governor and now a vice presidential candidate.
The governor of Minnesota presents himself as someone capable of having empathy with various sectors and that includes immigrants. On this front, America’s Voice has listed five points of Walz’s immigration history in Minnesota: his support for Dreamers and immigration reform; He granted driver’s licenses to undocumented immigrants in his state for the logical reasons of security for everyone; his support for refugees, he opposed Trump’s family separation policy, and he also opposed the border wall.
As the elections approach, the Harris-Walz team has hardened its positions on the border and asylum. But they also promote immigration reform with a path to legalization.
It is not about justifying positions or advocating for the “least bad” candidate in immigration matters. But it is about recognizing that these are the alternatives before us, and that apathy or not voting cannot be options when one of the parties in this race has made racism its calling card to lead a racially and ideologically diverse nation.
At least this “childless lady with cats (and dogs)” who writes, did not buy the wolf in sheep’s clothing story that Vance tried to project into the debate.
