Vance, Walz Debate Could Be a 'Slugfest'

Barring a late addition to the schedule, Tuesday night's vice presidential debate between JD Vance and Tim Walz could be the last debate of the 2024 campaign between the Republican and Democratic tickets. Both Vance, a GOP senator from Ohio, and Walz, the Democratic governor of Minnesota, have embraced the traditional role of attack dog for the person at the top of the ticket. That could be on full display during the vice presidential debate in New York hosted by CBS News, the AP reports. The 90-minute debate is scheduled to start at 9pm Eastern.

• Although conventional wisdom says the matchup between the candidates with second billing on the ticket seldom have much impact, polls are so tight that it could sway voters on the margins, the AP reports. It also could be the last head-to-head matchup between the tickets because Kamala Harris and Donald Trump haven't agreed to a second meeting.

• Although Vance has said he didn't "have to prepare that much" for the debate because he had "well-developed views on public policy," he had been doing debate prep sessions with his wife, Usha Vance, senior aides, and GOP Rep. Tom Emmer, a Minnesotan who has played Walz, insiders say. "My team and myself spent about a month going through every debate Tim Walz has ever done in the last 20 years," Emmer tells CBS News. "My job was to get not only his phraseology, his slogans down, but his mannerisms."
• Walz's debate prep included sessions hunkered down in a Minneapolis hotel, with Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg standing in for Vance, insiders say. Buttigieg and Vance "are Ivy Leaguers from the Midwest and roughly the same age," the Guardian notes.

• Politico predicts that the debate will be a "slugfest," noting that Vance, like Trump has gone on the offense in previous debates, "blurring the line between personal and political attacks," while Walz "can get fiery when he attacks his opponents, but he tends to lean into his folksy demeanor to defuse tough questions about his record."
• Philip Elliott at Time is also expecting a "messy" debate, with plenty of talk about weirdness and wokeness. "Both campaigns see an opportunity to turn the other side into a parody of itself, a down-the-rabbit-hole example of a toxic culture war that neither side can truly win," he writes. Elliott predicts that there will be "nasty digs referencing 'childless cat ladies,' tampons in boys' bathrooms, and pet-hunting Haitians flying across the stage from the start."

(More on the candidates' debate goals here.)