ABC News’ Linsey Davis likened Democratic vice presidential nominee Tim Walz’s Tuesday night debate performance against JD Vance to Joe Biden’s disastrous debate against Donald Trump.
Biden’s halting, sometimes incoherent showing against Trump back in June ignited a Democratic crisis of confidence in his re-election campaign which ultimately led to him dropping out of the race altogether. Davis, who had been one of the moderators in the Trump-Biden debate, reacted to the vice presidential showdown by saying she didn’t think it would do much to move on-the-fence voters one way or the other.
“I think overall tonight, if you’re an undecided voter in America, I don’t know that you come away tonight with additional clarity,” Davis said after the debate.
“It kind of reminded me of the June 27th debate when Kamala Harris that night said of Joe Biden it was a ‘slow start,’ but a ‘strong finish,’” Davis continued. “And that’s how it felt that Tim Walz kind of did tonight. You know, to use Tim Walz’s own words, I mean, a lot about this debate tonight was weird. There were uncomfortable, cringey moments.”
One of the most uncomfortable moments of the debate for Walz came when asked why he’d claimed to have been in Hong Kong during the Tiananmen Square massacre in June, 1989, when he’d actually been in the U.S. The Minnesota governor said he’d “misspoke” and called himself “a knucklehead at times.”
There was plenty of cringe from Vance too, including when he dodged a direct question about whether Trump lost the 2020 election by claiming to be “focused on the future” and asking Walz about censorship after the COVID pandemic.
Nevertheless, Davis saw some positives for Vance.
“Overall, I think my takeaway was something that Reince Priebus said on the outset, which was that JD Vance needed to come away as that humble likable guy from Hillbilly Elegy,” she said, referring to the Ohio senator’s 2016 memoir. “It seemed like he did perhaps get some points in that area.”
