Ahead of tonight’s vice presidential debate, the last person to stare down JD Vance on stage—former Ohio congressman Tim Ryan—offered cautionary advice to Tim Walz as he readies to take on the Yale Law grad.
Ryan, a Democrat who lost a Senate race against Vance by 6 points in 2022, favorably contrasted Vance’s debate style with that of his running mate, former President Donald Trump, on Slate’s “What Next” podcast today.
One key difference—which Walz needs to watch out for—is Vance’s ability to smoothly “pivot” from an unfavorable issue to one he can more easily talk about, Ryan said.
For instance, he recalled a moment during his face-off against Vance in which the two were discussing abortion. Ryan mentioned the story of a 10-year-old Ohio girl had to travel to Indiana to receive an abortion after she was raped.
Vance, however, shifted the focus to immigration, rather than abortion, by pointing out that the perpetrator of the rape was a Guatemalan man who entered the U.S. illegally.
“That little girl was raped by an illegal immigrant,” Vance said during the debate. “And both the media and Tim Ryan need to be honest about the fact that she would never have been raped in the first place if Tim Ryan had done his job on border security.”
The lesson to take away, Ryan said, is, “You have to stay on point.”
“That is frustrating to watch somebody do that,” he added. “And in some level, it’s very skillful for him to get back on ground that he’s comfortable on. And that may be a better issue for them, but you have to bring it back, and that takes a level of concentration and focus. And again, knowing where you want the argument to be, I think he’s much more skillful than Trump in that regard.”
Like Trump, though, Ryan said that Vance can overheat if you hit a nerve.
For Ryan, that nerve was the disjunction between Vance’s apparent endorsement of the racist idea that immigrants threaten to replace white Americans and the fact that his wife, Usha Vance, comes from an Indian immigrant family.
After Ryan made that point, “It was like a hit dog hollering,” podcast host Mary Harris recalled.
Although Ryan emphasized the need to prepare for Vance—he advised practicing against an opponent who can “needle the s–t” out of you—his account of the vice-presidential nominee’s psychology was less than glowing.
“To me, he’s just a scared little boy behind a beard, and he wants everyone else to be as scared as he is,” Ryan said.
