Trumpism, post-Trump: VP debate offers flashes of potential U.S. future

American politics, beyond Donald Trump. For nearly 90 minutes, viewers were granted a potential glimpse of it in Tuesday’s vice-presidential debate.

And it’s not just the gracious banter and arm-slapping post-debate bonhommie between Republican J.D. Vance and Democrat Tim Walz, whose genteel exchanges were like a throwback to a bygone era.

Nor in the calibre of the lies: the candidates certainly delivered nose-stretchers, albeit more modest in quantity and quality than in recent American politics. 

Americans were given a taste of Trumpism, minus Trump. His younger running mate, Vance, espoused the same anti-trade, anti-migration, pro-reshoring policies ascendent in the party, even floating the type of family-support payments that might mortify past-generation Republicans.

But he did so without Trump’s pot-pourri of non-sequiturs and putdowns; Vance argued with the fluidity one might expect from a past editor of the Yale Law Review who quoted religious philosophers in his 6,700-word essay on converting to Catholicism. 

In a recurring pattern Tuesday, one candidate would half-compliment something the other said, then take issue with the other half.

To pick one example toward the end, Walz said, “I’ve enjoyed tonight’s debate and think there was a lot of commonality here.” To which Vance replied: “Me too, man.”

The early consensus of pundits commenting online was that Vance had the better night. Walz stumbled a bit early on, recovered, but still suffered more hiccups than his rival, including the wince-inducing: “I’ve become friends with school shooters.”

Vance evades basic question: Who won the 2020 election?

Yet the reality remains: American politics has not moved on from Donald Trump. He is still firmly entrenched at its epicentre.

A reminder of this came near the end of the debate, when the attempted theft of the 2020 election came up, and Vance got an unflattering reminder of why he was there.

Trump’s last vice president wouldn’t let him cancel the election, refusing Trump’s pressure, and defying the demands of an angry crowd that called for his hanging on Jan. 6, 2021.

“That’s why Mike Pence isn’t on this stage,” Walz said.

And then Kamala Harris’s running mate alluded to Vance’s statement that he would not have certified the 2020 election and asked a question Trump hates.

“Did he lose the 2020 election?” Walz asked. “Tim, I’m focused on the future,” Vance replied. To which Walz said: “That is a damning non-answer.”

Vance tried casting Trump’s election denials as just the process working itself out, pointing out that, in the end, on Jan. 20, 2021, Joe Biden became president anyway.

Vance hinted at a different reaction this time; he promised to shake hands, after the debate, and again after the election, and to root for his opponents’ success if they won.

It briefly sounded normal.

Walz’s biographical embellishment

The candidates danced around the politically problematic parts of their record. On health care, Vance tried crediting Trump with preserving the Obamacare system – a system Trump famously, and aggressively, tried abolishing, falling one Senate vote short.

On abortion, he repeated Trump’s latest stance: it’s up to the states, and any state bans should include exceptions for rape, incest, and health crises. Vance mentioned a friend in an abusive relationship who’d had an abortion and said of her, “I love you.”

Left unstated? Vance’s onetime position that abortion should be illegal nationwide. How would a Republican administration address detailed questions – like interstate shipment of abortion pills? It didn’t come up.

Vance accused Democrats of outsourcing U.S. jobs – yet investment in domestic manufacturing facilities is exploding; if there’s one point of commonality between the parties, lately, it’s that some trade protectionism is good.

Migration produced another heated exchange. Walz accused his rival of endangering Haitian migrants in Springfield, Ohio, by telling lies about them, stoking death threats. 

The state’s Republican governor who lives in the area even criticized the rhetoric. Vance replied that the migration surge needs attention, as it’s straining American communities, from social services to housing; border-crossings have dropped significantly in recent months.

Walz’s own paper-trail of falsehoods was flung back at him.

In his case, it went beyond the usual sparring over policy; it involved revisions to bits of his own personal story.

Walz has inflated details of his experience in China: He has claimed, falsely, more than once, to have been in Hong Kong during China’s 1989 student uprising. 

Walz has also inflated the military rank he retired with, and, amid a political furore about IVF access, he wrongly claimed his family had used that treatment.

When pressed by moderators about the 1989 inconsistency, Walz changed the subject to discuss his humble upbringing, and his horizon-expanding travels to Asia.

“I will talk a lot. I will get caught up in the rhetoric,” he said. The moderators pressed him again and he fessed up: “I got there that summer and misspoke.”

VP debates rarely change elections

In a different time, these sorts of biographical embellishments might have been the election story of the year. Not this year.

The good news for Democrats, on this night, is that a vice-presidential debate doesn’t tend to change an election. 

The good news for Republicans – especially those who like Trump’s policies, but not him: they got to live briefly in a parallel universe. 

While the candidates disagreed on gun control, Vance reacted to a story Walz told, about his son witnessing a shooting while playing volleyball. 

“I didn’t know,” Vance said. “I’m sorry about that. Christ have mercy. That is awful.”

It’s unclear whether Trumpism will outlast Trump, or if it will pack the same electoral punch with voters; but we’ve seen what it might look like.