VP Debate Could Prove Crucial as Nominees Seek to ‘Get the Word Out’ on Policy: Analyst

Running us live for analysis of tomorrow night's vice presidential debate is Mike Leon host of the news commentary podcast. Can we please talk? Good to see you, Mike. The presidential race is pretty close right now. How important is this debate for the outcome of that race? Well, good to see you, Chris. First and foremost, you know, I just want to start at the top for the people affected by Hurricane Helene. You know, my thoughts and prayers to everybody up the southeast as you drive up by ninety five. But in terms of this debate right now, you know, like this is one of the things I was thinking about before I joined, Chris, was politicals like you and I, you know, are going to overanalyze this and we're going to feel the impact potentially of what a VP debate will bring nationally. Right. I mentioned before about how many people watched the twenty twenty debate and obviously the historical debate between Biden and Sarah Palin that got record numbers. But how will this actually impact voters right now? I don't truly know the true impact of what a VP debate will bring, because, you know, I mean, I'm excited for it. Right. I'm excited to hear these candidates. I don't know much about Governor Tim Walz on the national stage. I don't think we know much about him other than a couple of different policy positions in Minnesota. J.D. Vance has only been a senator for a couple of years and in Ohio, obviously, you know, so we don't know much about these folks and we'd love to learn more about them. And I know the campaign has deployed J.D. Vance specifically on the Trump side a lot more in interviews and press conferences. So he's been able to get his face out there. But this is going to be the first time the two of them are going to have a large audience that they'll be able to speak to about what a future administration would look like and what they would do as vice president of those. So I'm interested to see if this vice president debate will actually impact or move the needle at all. Yeah, it'll definitely be interesting to follow. So one thing that's about this debate is that the anchors will not be fact checking the two candidates. What do you think is behind that decision? You know, this is something that's very interesting. I've gotten into arguments with people on Twitter about this, Chris. You know, a moderator is to moderate a conversation, right? You're not supposed to interject yourself into the conversation. And I think the biggest thing that people want and you see this all the time after the CNN debates, after any debate, really, even Fox News debates, they'll get at Brett and Martha on the comments section saying you should have fact checked this and you should have fact checked. And the problem is, when you fact check, Chris, as you know, as we all know working in television, in a 90 minute segment, you just mentioned there, they have two minutes for rebuttals, right? There's no opening statements. There's probably about six or seven topics that they want to cover. It is incredibly challenging for the moderator, again, the word moderator, to moderate a conversation between two people that are debating issues. If you interject yourself and become this fact checker, that is not part of what the job description is, in my opinion, and also in the dictionary's opinion, right? So I think that's the biggest thing. Like a moderator is supposed to moderate a conversation and a dialogue between two people. I ask a question, one person answers, the other person gets to respond to what that person's answer was or what is different from that person's answer. And I don't think it's a moderator's job to fact check somebody in real time. I think the Trump campaign, look, he did say some things that were factually incorrect, as well as Kamala Harris. Trump said a lot more. It's not ABC News's job to fact check Donald Trump all the time. And so I think for the people that were upset that ABC News didn't fact check the former president enough, and for the people that were upset that they fact checked them too much, I think there's a balance there. You're not supposed to do it, in my opinion. And so I think for CBS News to stipulate it right at the onset, kudos to them, because that's the true job of a moderator. You're not supposed to interject yourself into this conversation. You're supposed to ask the question and keep the conversation free-flowing and moving, because we only have 90 minutes and so many topics. Yeah, ABC definitely got some pushback for the comments that they made. Now, a recent Associated Press NORC poll shows that voters view Walls more favorably than Vance, 42 to 27 percent, respectively. Does that tell us anything about who's going to win this debate? Well, I don't know if it'll tell us about anyone who's going to win this debate. I think what I look at when you just mentioned that number, Chris, is will that swing over the swing state voters, and specifically in the Midwest, right? Because this is why I think Governor Tim Walz was selected, and I think this is why Donald Trump selected J.D. Vance. Not so much that they can carry the respective states that they're in, because Ohio's a red state and Minnesota's a blue state, but it's more about the relatability of being able to go out on the campaign trail and talk to voters in the Midwest. And I think Tim Walz being a former congressman representing a red district prior as a Democrat, I think J.D. Vance representing, you know, growing up in Ohio and the Midwest, I think both of them were selected for this particular instance of being able to go to rural Pennsylvanias and go to the Michigans and Wisconsins of the world and resonate with voters, because Midwestern voters, and specifically in those type of states where agriculture is a major impact, and obviously the cost of living has started to rise a lot more, and they're trying to figure these things out. And there's nobody better to talk to about those issues than somebody who has lived those same pain points that you have lived. So when I look at that in terms of favorability, you know, obviously I know, you know, Saturday Night Live just did something on Governor Tim Walz and portraying him as Jim Gaffigan, right, another Midwestern guy. So you get this affable, lovable type of guy, or at least it's perceived just based on that polling data. The question is now, lovable, affable, does that translate to policy, right? And I think for J.D. Vance, it's why the Trump campaign has been deploying him a lot more on some of these stops, because they want to get the word out more about him. You know, he's a younger conservative, 38 years old, so they want to push him out there and get him out there in front of cameras, microphones, interviews, whatever it is. And so I think those numbers kind of speak to what has happened over the last two or three months as both of these folks were announced as VP candidates. I don't know if it'll indicate anything in terms of who will win the debate. Yeah. And as you mentioned, I mean, they are numbers representing the entire country. But where it really matters is these battleground states, and we'll have to see how that plays out. Now, the immigration crisis is making headlines again after Vice President Kamala Harris, her trip to the border, Trump kind of harping on that. I'm wondering, what do you think these two candidates will argue surrounding that topic? Yeah, I mean, that's a good question. I think Tim Walz, I can already hear him reciting, you know, Kamala Harris's, you know, California type speech where she has mentioned about going after the cartels in her state and some of the things she's done as attorney general. I think for J.D. Vance, it's very clear, right, the border increases were down during the Trump administration. Now, of course, some of that was because of a global pandemic and Title 42 being implemented. You know, I just had a border reporter recently on my show talking about the actual crisis at the border. And the word crisis, right, Chris, because crisis means that something is afoot, right, or we've passed the point of something being afoot. And crisis right now, for me, what I'm looking for from this VP debate is the way crisis is outlined, right? If Tim Walz or J.D. Vance can actually speak to the fact that there is a large administrative issue that we're having here at the U.S. southern border, that there are people that want to get in, and we don't have enough people processing them, and processing them not only at the point of entry, Chris, but processing them through the immigration courts, through the rest of the way that they stay in the American system, ultimately becoming a citizen. We have a crisis in that measure. That's not as sexy to talk about, but we need to talk about that, because if you go to the DMV and there's a thousand people waiting in line, there's only two people working, you're not going to get processed in time. You're probably going to leave, right? That's not what's happening. They're not leaving. They're staying, right? And so we need to talk about that. And I think Walz is going to champion some of the things that Kamala Harris has done from a legal perspective of tackling the bad folks that are coming in, but we're not talking about the good folks that are staying that want to be a part of this American process and live the American dream. And how do we actually help these folks in terms of getting enough support to the Border Patrol and to the immigration courts to handle the backlog of asylum cases? We are not talking about that. And I want these candidates to actually talk about the crisis, the way that the reporters are covering this crisis down at the border. All right. Mike Leon, policy and strategy director at the Free and Equal Elections Foundation. Thank you so much. Thanks, Chris.