MSNBC’s panel of hosts following Tuesday’s vice presidential debate between Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz (D) and Sen. JD Vance (R-OH) were less than impressed by the common ground expressed by both candidates.
During the debate post-game, host Rachel Maddow turned to fellow host Symone Sanders Townsend for her take on the nature of the debate, and Sanders laced into Walz for not doing more to call out Vance on his — and former President Donald Trump’s — extreme agenda:
Let me just say this, that debates are about performance and they are about policy. And why this debate was very important is that there are many Americans out there, not just moderate Republicans, there are base Democratic voters that are saying they want to and need to hear more. Now, I think it is very fair for people to want to criticize those base Democratic voters who say, “Well, what more do you need?” You can do that. But that is their lived reality, and so if you are trying to win their votes, you have to meet them where they are. There were so many niceties on that debate stage tonight. I am just kind of like, “Well, if you agree so much with JD Vance, why should they vote for you?” I fully believe that Governor Walz went out there tonight and did what was practiced in debate prep, did what the strategy was that the team put together. That was not the Governor Walz that we, that I had seen out on the campaign trail. That’s not the Governor Walz that I had seen during the veepstakes. Right? That was not the JD Vance that I know to be true. I mean, goodness! JD Vance was on that stage, he was sorry about Amber Thurman, he was he was sorry about — he was sorry about a lot of stuff. “We get things wrong.” But do you agree with the policy?
And then I just, you know, that’s not the [Margaret Brennan] and [Norah O’Donnell] that I know! Margaret don’t do that on Sunday morning! So, I just think that, I know that there are so many people out there that want normal. They want normalcy. They just want, you know, just be able to just disagree with — “Oh, you said a lot of things I agree with.” This is not a normal election. JD Vance is actually not Paul Ryan. And Donald Trump sure as heck is not Mitt Romney, okay? And what happened on that debate stage tonight was not enough contrast, was not clear enough for people sitting at home or frankly, who will probably consume this through the clips in their local news or here on MSNBC, or on social media to distinguish to make a difference.
Host Nicolle Wallace was on the same page as Sanders Townsend and said, referring to the debate moment that brought up the case of Amber Thurman, a Georgia woman who died after she wasn’t able to access reproductive health care in her home state, just one of several cases of women dying for reasons related to abortion bans in their home states:
They died because of Donald Trump. One man had a litmus test for the people he put on the Supreme Court and he put not one, not two, but three on because they passed a litmus test that they would overturn Roe. And that’s why Amber died. That’s why that little boy doesn’t have a mom. And nobody made that reality come to life. Because I think if you — even if you didn’t get the contrast you were looking for, neither did you get any, you know, wake up and smell the smelling salts. You were sort of lulled into normalcy.
Watch the video above via MSNBC.
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