The governor of Minnesota, Tim Walz, and the federal senator from Ohio, JD Vance, candidates for the vice presidency of the United States showed on Tuesday the marked differences on crucial issues such as immigration, the economy and reproductive rights, especially on the immigration issue. and women’s rights, the analysts noted.
Both issues involved them in posturing to the point of interrupting and having their microphones turned off to let the CBS network moderators, Margaret Brennan and Norah O’Donnell, clear the table to continue.
The immigration issue, comments Michael Shifter, adjunct professor at Georgetown University in Washington, “is undoubtedly the issue of Trump and Vance,” and there is no doubt that they will maintain it as the spearhead for the rest of the campaign. And that issue “continues to be a vulnerability for the Kamala Harris – Tim Walz formula,” explains the analyst, an expert in Latin American studies.
In the remaining 34 days of campaigning for the November 5 general election, “Trump and Vance are going to continue talking about the immigration issue,” Shifter said.
For his part, the director of Alianza América, Oscar Chacón, tells VOA that last night’s debate showed the Ohio senator “repeating the campaign of lies on this issue, which both Donald Trump and himself have promoted,” and that It is not surprising that he remained “very faithful to the head of the presidential ticket.”
Chacón observed that the governor of Minnesota adjusted well to what was said by the Democratic presidential candidate and pointed out the failure of a bipartisan project to resolve the immigration situation, with a bill “written by Republican legislators” and that “was frustrated by request of Donald Trump.”
However, the director of the Resource Center for Central Americans in Washington, Abel Núñez, pointed out that the anti-immigrant narrative in the Republican campaign has more distant echoes, by “trying to accuse immigrants of all the problems facing the country.”
What ends up being dangerous because “basically the vision that the Trump and Vance candidacy have is that immigrants are to blame for everything bad that this country has, saying that the cost of housing in the US is high because of immigrants, gun violence is because of immigrants and I think that is very dangerous,” he says.
Núñez reasons that narratives matter above all in a country that has prided itself in the past on having been developed by the contribution of immigrants.
During the debate, the Republican candidate said that the problem must be faced in the face of what he described as “open doors” on the southern border, and said that he will work if elected to “stop the problem” and promote mass deportation plans, since that immigrants even “take the wages of Americans.”
Both Núñez and Shifter agree that the Republican formula is betting on a beacon that led the Republican to victory in 2016, so the extreme positions on the issue are not surprising.
“And that is because at this moment the rhetoric that exists is that there is a lack of control on the southern border,” says Núñez, who sees as part of that discourse the fears that are promoted about the eventual demographic change by 2050 with Hispanics as the majority. .
Why do you see extreme positions as worrying?
When analyzing the impact on extreme positions on immigration, Oscar Chacón adds that “there is no doubt that Trump’s campaign promises are very worrying (…) this without talking about the pejorative language he has used about Mexican, Central American and Mexican immigrants. Haitians, which hurts us a lot.”
He points out that although there is an opposite vision on the Democratic side, both due to what was expressed by the vice presidential candidate and by candidate Harris, there are still many loose ends.
Because “reducing the Democratic Party’s immigration commitment to last year’s failed Republican reform proposal leaves much to be desired in terms of changes in perception and content on this issue in the Democratic Party,” he points out.
Núñez adds that although the Democratic campaign recognizes the contributions of immigrants, positions have been closing in favor of more control, and they see it as a problem to be solved.
“The Harris-Walz presidential formula sees immigrants as a part that must be controlled, although they do recognize that they bring well-being to this country, but both are worrying because they put the immigrant as a problem to be solved and not as a benefit to be strengthened” , he adds when encompassing Democratic and Republican positions.
Campaign houses draw conclusions about the evening
After the 90 minutes of debate, the Democratic and Republican campaign houses established positions from their headquarters on the achievements of their candidates on the day and raised their bets on their shortlist.
The chairwoman of the Democratic presidential campaign, Jen O’Malley Dillon, said that the governor of Minnesota more than demonstrated his abilities and the success of Vice President Kamala Harris in choosing him as her running mate.
“In the debate, Americans could see a true contrast: an outspoken man focused on sharing real solutions and a skilled politician who spent the entire night defending the division and failures of Donald Trump,” he said.
Democrats listed all the issues of national and international interest where vice presidential hopeful Tim Walz, a 60-year-old veteran politician, professor and former military officer, “spoke passionately” about finding solutions to problems, as a politician who would stick to the objectives of providing solutions to the middle and working classes.
“The choice facing the American people in November was made clear tonight: between charting a new path forward or going backwards,” the Democratic House noted.
The Democratic campaign reiterated the call for a second presidential debate and challenged another face-to-face between Kamala and Trump in Atlanta on October 23.
For their part, former President Donald Trump’s campaign house also highlighted the role played by Vance.
Republicans saw the Ohio senator, a 40-year-old lawyer, chosen in July by Trump to accompany him in his third bid for the US presidency as the “resounding winner” of the night.
The Republican campaign highlighted that the senator “perfectly articulated the Trump-Vance vision of making America safe again with his plan to launch the largest mass deportation operation in history, making America strong again with a foreign policy agenda of peace through strength, and making America rich again by cutting taxes and ending inflation.”
The abortion controversy
The vice presidential candidates showed divergence regarding abortion and women’s reproductive rights in one of the first questions of the night, with accusations of “lies” from both candidates.
Analyst Cynthia Arnson, from the Woodrow Wilson Center in Washington, told VOA that friction was to be expected with this controversial issue that divides equally in the United States, and that in this presidential campaign has taken center stage.
At the national level, according to opinion studies by the Pew Research Center, “six out of every 10 Americans, 63%, believe that abortion should be legal in all or most cases,” a proportion that in 2024 has increased four percentage points compared to with 2021, before the Supreme Court overturned Roe vs. Wade, the law that protected the right to abortion.
For Arnson, it was striking that the Republican candidate adopted a “more moderate tone regarding reproductive rights.”
Especially because in the past “he has expressed the opinion that he would like abortion to be illegal at the national level,” he says.
A contrast with Governor Walz who marked his position by indicating that he was “clearly in favor of leaving the decision to women and their doctors.”
Governor Walz said that as Democrats “we are not pro-abortion, we are pro-women,” after refuting the Republican candidate’s “false” claims about terminations of late-stage pregnancies.
Who took home the statuette of the night?
The analysts agreed that both candidates measured themselves equally and showed their credentials during the 90-minute meeting where courtesy and good manners prevailed.
For Cynthia Arnson, at this point in the campaign there are few undecided people and “the debates between vice presidential candidates normally do not have an important weight in the voters’ decision, but in an election as close as this one, a good result for both was important. And in that sense, they both won,” he noted.
For Michael Shifter, the debate was at a good level and both candidates showed their abilities to serve as second in command of the US executive.
“Vance is clearly more experienced than Walz in national debates. One lesson is that Walz should practice answering questions more,” he says, because he missed opportunities “that he didn’t take advantage of.”
At the end of the debate, Shifter noted, Vance deferred to his boss’s postulate regarding the attack on the Capitol in the face of the refusal to recognize the 2020 election results, at the closing point where Governor Walz showed greater strength, he reasoned.
“Vance’s response to what happened on January 6, 2021 may have been costly to his credibility with the public, but it was necessary to please Trump,” he said.
Left behind were issues such as the economy, the conflict in the Middle East, family costs, housing and inflation.
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