Vice presidential hopefuls Tim Walz and JD Vance focused their criticism on the top of the ticket on Tuesday as they engaged in a policy-heavy discussion that may be the last debate of the 2024 presidential campaign. It was the first encounter between Minnesota’s Democratic governor and Ohio’s Republican senator, following last month’s debate between Vice President Kamala Harris and former President Donald Trump. Dr. Norma Mendoza-Denton, UCLA Professor of Anthropology joins FRANCE 24’s Genie Godula for a veritable, cinematic play-by-play of how the much-anticipated debate unfolded just five weeks out from what has been deemed one of the most consequential elections of a generation, if not a lifetime. The debate was exceptionally civil, compared to the presidential debate, displaying "two very different visions for the future of the country", as both candidates Walz-ed around certain positions and policy questions, yet committing an array of comical, even Monty Python-esque, jaw-dropping unforced errors. The Minnesota governor came off as "affable, folksy and veridic", albeit "incredibly nervous" and even "clumsy" at times, declaring his unabashed support for ‘shooters’, meaning victimes of shooters, earning him a self-imposed and self-effacing "knucklehead" reflection. In this high-stakes debate, Walz was facing a formidable opponent, the junior senator from Ohio, the "incredibly slick" yet "elegant" Vance who actually "performed more statesmanlike", giving it all he had to "appear normal… (demonstrating) he’s not weird as he had been labeled. So he really honed in on the message of ‘I’m here’, reasoning like a completely normal person, and ‘I’m not going to say anything too strange’." Whether or not this much-anticipated event will have any bearing on voters’ intentions, come November, is certainly up for debate. Now, one completely unexpected, yet refreshing, dynamic that voters came away with, was "the civility of the debate. At least they seemed to agree on some critical things. They appeared to respect each other and tried to work together." And then came the bombshell: Throughout the entire debate, "Vance built a carefully constructed edifice of civility, and seeming normality, only to have it crash down at the last minute because he wouldn’t agree that Donald Trump lost the election. And that led to Walz’s take-home moment of "are you kidding me?’ And that left a lasting impression on those polled afterwards."
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