Midwest and masculinity: The Vance-Walz debate

From Schwartz Media. I'm Daniel James. This is seven Am. As much as they would hate to admit that both Donald Trump and Kamala Harris fit the definition of coastal elite, a wealthy New York businessman and reality TV star and a San Francisco Liberal with a career in public office. That is why each of them are hoping their vice presidential candidates will speak to a specific group of voters,

We have a consequential night ahead, and our focus is the issues that matter to you, the voter. Let's introduce the.

Candidates, Cherline, Dan, thanks for joining us on seven AM.

It's a great pleasure. Daniel.

So you've just finished watching the vice presidential debate. What did you think?

I thought that it was enjoyable. I thought it was a view of the United States that we haven't seen for a while, Like it was genuinely an interesting interplay between ideas policies. You sort of sat back and thought, oh my god, the place is in actually slightly better shape than I thought. And look, ultimately, I thought both men actually performed extremely well the question.

First of all, thanks Governor, thanks to CBS for hosting debate, and thanks most importantly the American people who are watching this evening and caring enough about this country to pay attention to this vice presidential debate.

And Vance, who's very poised and polished and sort of slick, I just didn't think he made great progress. But I thought over time, Waltz's sheer experience, combined with his passion was born out.

But what's fundamental here is that steady leadership is going to matter.

It's clear and the world.

And Waltz did look tentatives at the start, and it was sort of startling in a way.

Around about halfway.

Through, I thought, my god, this man is really getting into his stride.

And I asked you out there, teachers, nurses, truck drivers or whatever. How is it fair that you're paying your taxes every year and Donald Trump hasn't paid any federal tax in the last fifteen years and the last year as president.

That's what's wrong with the system's.

Interestingly, this the bit started on the topic of the Middle East.

Earlier Today launched its largest attack yet on Israel, but that attack failed thanks to join US and Israeli defensive action.

What do we learn from the candidates on that front?

Not a great deal in my opinion. I mean, that was the only foreign policy discussion. I thought we might get a little more that. I didn't really expect it, but they couldn't avoid it.

His chief of staff, John Kelly said that he was the most flawed human being you'd ever met, and both of his secretaries of Defense and his national security advisors said he should be nowhere near the White House.

But effective, smart diplomacy and peace through strength is how you bring stability back to a very broken world. Donald Trump has already done it once before.

Ask yourself, peace through strength is what brings peace to a troubled world. That was a good line from Vance That might work with quite a lot of the Americans who are listening to him. I just felt that you've got the sense that this was not going to determine the American election. And the.

Climate crisis came up as well in the context of the hurricanes that's hitting the southeastern states in the US. What did they have to say about climate change?

Well, that was very interesting because they both had to quite clearly own that and emote to the people what they were going through.

So, first of all, let's start with the hurricane, because it's an unbelievable, unspeakable human tragedy.

I just saw today.

Actually a photograph of two grandparents on a roof with a six year old child, and it was the last photograph ever taken to them because the roof collapsed and those innocent people lost their lives.

And I'm sure Vance you know, very much talked about the importance of reassuring manufacturing putting American citizens first.

The answer is that you'd want to reshore as much American manufacturing as possible, and you'd want to produce as much energy as possible in the United States of America because we're the cleanest economy in the entire world. What hath Kamala Harris's policies actually led to more energy production in China, more manufacturing overseas, more doing business, and some of the dirtiest parts of the entire world.

I want to say that.

Whereas Waltz very much talked about the huge Inflation Reduction Act, I mean his detailed list of all the production induced by the Act and then two hundred fifty thousand jobs.

The Inflation Reduction Act has created jobs all across the country, two thousand in Jeffersonville, Ohio, taking the ev technology that we invented and making it here.

Two hundred thousand jobs across the country. The largest solar.

Manufacturing plant in North America sets in Minnesota.

And of course he also talked about Trump mentioning that climate change was a hoax.

Soda, but my farmer's no, climate change is real.

They've seen five hundred year droughts, five hundred your floods back to back.

But what they're doing I suppose.

I did think that that emphasis on Middle America being offshore was possibly quite a good point by Vance, and Walt's all that talk about the farmers. Again, he could make it very personal when he chose to Walts, which Vance the only thing personal that the events talked about was his daughters, his three daughters, and his sort of his mother, and I felt that he overdid that, But maybe that works very much with the base in America.

On the issue of border security, Tim Waltz keys Trump and Vans of wanting to politicize border security, so it remained an election issue. This came up during the presidential debate as well.

How did J. D.

Evans respond to that accusation?

This and the discussion about democracy were the high points of the debate.

It got quite heated, didn't it very Laura?

Thank you, senator.

We having so much to get to.

I think it's important toomy things.

The rules were that Advance just kept going on about a really dark version I suppose of the border problem, that law enforcement needed to be able to do their job, that the aliens coming in the numbers who were criminals.

We have three one hundred and twenty thousand children that the Department of Homeland Security has effectively lost. Some of them have been sex trafficked, some of them hopefully are at homes with their families. Some of them have been used as drug trafficking mules. The real family separation policy in this country is unfortunately Kamala Harris's wide open southern border.

And whilst appealed saying basically, the minute you start to talk about this in any sort of decent way, incomes Trump and demonizes it all. And of course the Springfield became an example of it.

I believe Senator Vance wants to solve this, but by standing with Donald Trump and not working together to find a solution, it becomes a talking point. And when it becomes a talking point like this, we dehumanize and villainize other human beings.

I thought, if you lived round the border in any shape or form, I thought that Vance probably did do not a bad job there.

Reproductive rights inevitably came up. This has been a strong area fourteen one, in which he spoken about his own personal struggle having children with his wife. At the presidential debate, Donald Trump struggled to articulate his position on abortion and whether he supports a national abortion ban.

Did J. D.

Vance face a similar problem during this debate?

Yes, I thought he absolutely did. I thought he completely dodged that well.

Nora.

First of all, I never supported a national ban.

I did during what I was running for Senate in twenty twenty two, talk about setting some men in a national standard.

For example, I thought.

That Walt's most definitely won that.

I'm going to respond on the pro abortion piece of that. No, we're not.

We're pro women, We're pro freedom to make your own choice. We know what the implications are to not be that women having miscarriages, women not getting the care, physicians feeling like they may be prosecuted for providing that care.

And as far as I thought, Vance was not at all persuasive that he had changed his mind, throwing it back to the individual state. Maybe he really does believe what he believes. He can usually cast aside quite a few things, but he didn't on that score.

And towards the end of the debate, the moderator is asked about the state of democracy itself in America.

Legal, would you again seek to challenge this year's election results, even if every governor certifies the results. I'll give you two minutes.

How did Jdvans answer the question about whether Hey and Trump would accept the result of the upcoming election.

Well, he dodged it.

Yeah, Well, Nora, First of all, I think that we're focused on the future. We need to figure out how to solve the inflation crisis caused by Kamala Harris's policies. Make housing affordable, make groceries affordable, and that's what we're focused on.

But I want to and he did say that we want issues debated peacefully in the public square. But I believe we do have a threat. And then it went into that whole thing about the censorship.

I believe that we actually do have a threat to democracy in this country. But unfortunately it's not the threat to democracy that Kamala Harris and Tim Wallas want to talk about.

It is the threat of censorship.

It's Americans casting aside lifelong friendships because of disagreements over politics.

It's big.

By this stage, Welsh was really gearing up and that this type of debate is tearing our country apart. And when this is over, we've got to be able to shake hands and move on and get away from this type of debate.

I worked with kids long enough to know, and I said, as a football coach, sometimes you really want to win, but the democracy is bigger than winning an election. You shake hands and then you try and do everything you can to help the other side win.

But I did think that idea that they would have to shake hands if it was all over and move on. I think a lot of Americans probably do want to move on. Yeah, but it just depends how dark they feel things are.

I suppose Jade ad answers question about his previous criticisms of Trump as well, and essentially whether changing his opinion on Trump shows that he won't be someone to stand up to the president if need be. Do you think that there's a perception problem for Vance on not only his previous comments about Donald Trump, but on his current relationship with Donald Trump moving forward.

I think it's pretty obvious he flip flops around him his opportunistic he moves around. I don't like people like that, you know, I don't trust them. But I'm not sure that that's actually how Americans over there necessarily see him. Because he was very poised. My goodness, he's a good debater. What struck me was the degree to which he felt

Children after the break. How much of a role did jd. Vance tim Maltz actually have in swaying the election. Jerline, we've been speaking about the debate between JD. Vance and Tim Moltz. Both Vance and Walt spend a lot of time talking about their backgrounds growing up in rural Midwest of America. They focused on seeing a lot of manufacturing jobs leaving America. For instance. Who do you think they're speaking to when they make that a focus of their pitches to voters.

That's a good question. I mean, they clearly have been focusing on the people who are allegedly two hundred thousand could swing the election, who are unsure, and in fact they're pitching at the undersideds. But my view is that they also reinforce a whole lot of other people who actually want the place to get back to normal.

Now.

I think that's a bigger drive than we've come to believe because all our focus has been on Trump, and I think there probably is a much bigger drive you know, for among them a lot of people to just oh, can we please get back to normal? And as we have been focusing here in Australia on abortion issues, you know, how many of the women will they get in? And

It seems to me Geraldine, that both candidates, Waltz and Vance are in an existential battle as much as anything over the definition and role modeling of what is a good version of masculinity and manhood.

Well, there are very good pulses who believe it's playing quite a considerable role in this. I mean, I did think that Waltz did display a sort of positive view. Is it that dad energy that people have been talking about, or you know, the sort of wooly labrador of politics you know of America. I thought it was very believable.

I think it's telling that if you look online that Vance has been spending a lot of time speaking to what you could loosely describe as the broke media podcasts. It's host to buy young men, I guess podcasting two young men. So who is he trying to appeal to when he goes on these shows.

Well, I mean, this is the argument that you're dealing with people who are not sure of them or what they really believe. They're certainly not established voters. You know, a lot of these young men who will be looking on they're they're not well formed. They've seen their communities just crack up around them. They're given constant material saying reach for the stars, go for broke. You know, don't be a loser. That's what Trump says, don't be a loser. It's certainly not what Waltz says.

Outside of the bro vote and outside of the Midwest area often called the heartland of America, these are the states that we've been hearing a lot about in terms of being critical to the outcome of the next election. Since Kamalia Harris has come on board as the presidential nominee for the Democrats, have there been any other states that have come into play for this election?

Look, as I understand it, North Carolina and Arizona, and as I understand it, there's furious of effort going into Pennsylvania. Quietly, Nevada seems to be really occupying people's thoughts quite a lot as well. I do think that it's neck and neck because it is so even and it is all happening so late. We're seeing a different layer of coverage to anything I've seen in any US election before. That's why I actually think this debate will turn out to be more important than we thought.

Well, that's an interesting point to finish on, Geraldine, Particularly vice presidential debates are seen there's no more than political theater, and historically they've highly moved the needle. Do you think that this debate will be more consequential than previous vice presididential debates and in particular in relation to what we will see happening in November with the outcome of this election.

Yes, I do think it'll be more consequential you know, if Biden had stepped down in June or something and she'd come in, would it have been Maybe not. This is like concertinaed for the Americans, and I think that it will have quite a decent rating. I honestly felt you looked at a competent America there. That must surely be good for American morale that is pretty battered at

Geraldine, thank you so much for your.

Time, my pleasure. Daniel, thank you.

Also in the news today, conflict in the Middle East has escalated to new levels after Iran launched around two hundred missiles at Israel on Tuesday night local time. The attack was in response to the killings of senior leaders of Hamas Hezbalah and Iran's Revolutionary Guard. In a statement following the attacks, Israel's Prime Minister benjaminet Yahu said Iran had made a big mistake tonight and will pay for