Live updates: VP debate tonight to pit Walz and Vance in their first head-to-head clash of the 2024 presidential election

Now, if you are looking for a VP debate that might have had some impact, you could turn to 1976, the time we ever had a televised VP debate. My old mentor, Doug Bailey, a consultant to the Ford-Dole campaign in ’76, used to contend that the Bob Dole-Walter Mondale VP debate — at which Dole referred to “Democrat wars” with this line: “If we added up the killed and wounded in Democrat wars in this century, it would be … enough to fill the city of Detroit.” — was damaging enough to cost the Ford-Dole ticket the handful of votes it needed to win the 76 election.  

So with the caveats aside, the expectation for this debate’s impact is and should be quite minimal. 

But that doesn’t mean there isn’t plenty to learn about campaign strategy from watching tonight’s debate. 

What’s fascinating about VP debates is how hard they are for the two participants. They don’t just have to be prepared to defend their own records and words — they also have to become adroit at defending the ideas and words of the tops of their tickets. And Walz has a third challenge, getting cornered into defending an administration he does not work in or has been involved in whatsoever.  

What I suspect we will see is both Walz and Vance attempt is to make their opponent own his own words, especially those that each believes contradicts the other’s views of their presidential running mates. I suspect Walz has memorized every bad thing Vance has ever said about Trump, and I’ll be shocked if he doesn’t try and regurgitate most of it tonight. 

I also suspect Vance will work hard to use the words “Biden-Harris” or “Biden-Harris administration” as much as he possibly can (could be worth using on your various Bingo cards). As plenty of polling has indicated, Biden turned out to be a lot more unpopular with voters than perhaps even Democrats suspected. The ease with which Harris has been able to fix her own personal ratings tells me being “Biden’s vice president” was not good for her brand. But “Kamala Harris, the Democratic nominee for president,” is a lot more appetizing for many Democrats. 

If you’ve noticed, Trump has been accelerating his efforts to remind voters — sometimes in very ham-handed ways — that Harris is part of the “Biden-Harris” administration. It’s why he has tried to trash the storm response — an attempt to goad her into showing up in a formal role with storm response, perhaps even standing next to Biden for a photo-op. Trump has also tried to tie Harris to Biden’s foreign policy challenges, including the growing crisis in the Middle East. 

The point is: The Trump campaign appears to have concluded that if it wants Trump to be seen as the candidate of change, it has to re-connect Harris to Biden as much as it can.  It’s probably the correct strategy at this point, but it also is a reminder that the Harris campaign has beaten the Trump campaign — so far — in the race to define her for the country. 

So I’ll be watching what messages both candidates onstage try to pivot to when they deflect the actual questions they are asked. How often will Walz say “Project 2025,” and will it surpass or equal the Vance “Biden-Harris” retorts?  

I’ll also be curious to see how much these two onstage prioritize their own brands over the brands of their running mates. Biden was also seen as a good team player during his VP debates, meaning he was more than willing to sacrifice any personal brand of his to help the top of the ticket. Dick Cheney was seen as a VP who also seemed comfortable sacrificing his own brand in support of George W. Bush’s. But I’m old enough to remember Democratic grumbling about John Edwards’ efforts in the 2004 debate, where many an operative in support of John Kerry thought Edwards was more worried about his own presidential future than Kerry’s. 

Bottom line: The best way to assess how well either candidate does tonight is by how much cleanup the top of the ticket will end up doing later in the week. And if this is a debate that is more of a surrogate back-and-forth, then the other thing to learn will be what issues/ideas each campaign thinks are its best chance at wooing that small remaining slice of persuadable voters.