The two candidates for the vice-presidency of the United States, JD Vance and Tim Walz, face each other on Tuesday during a televised debate announced as tough, with the objective of convincing undecided voters one month before an extremely tight.
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The Republican senator from Ohio, Donald Trump’s running mate, and the Democratic governor of Minnesota, Kamala Harris’ running mate, were both chosen to appeal to the rather white and working-class electorate in the north and central United States, where they come from.
But JD Vance, 40, and Tim Walz, twenty years his senior, have radically opposed personalities and have already clashed through statements, in a campaign with particularly acrimonious rhetoric.
The first shares with his mentor a taste for provocation and a tendency to free himself from the truth, while the second, a former teacher and American football coach, displays the image of an affable neighbor.
“Great show”
A contrast that could produce a real television moment, even if such a debate between running mates rarely modifies the national political dynamic, notes Thomas Whalen, professor of political science at Boston University.
“A great show – I think that’s what the Americans are waiting for, and there could very well be one on Tuesday,” the academic told AFP. “Americans are fascinated by confrontation, and JD Vance and Tim Walz are so different — their personalities, their political orientation — that it might be worth taking a look.”
But “there has never really been a debate between vice-presidential candidates that caused a big difference,” he adds.
The face-to-face, organized in New York by the CBS channel, will be held Tuesday at 9:00 p.m. It could be the last of the campaign: Donald Trump refused to debate again against Kamala Harris after their September 10 debate on CNN, which was won by the Democrat according to observers.
Unlike CNN, CBS will not cut off one party’s microphones while the other is speaking, allowing opponents to cut each other off.
Trap?
The pressure could be greater on the shoulders of JD Vance, less popular than Tim Walz in the polls.
Voice of declassified America with his best-seller “Hillbilly Elegy” published in 2016, JD Vance has since experienced a meteoric political rise thanks to unfailing loyalty to Donald Trump, until ‘upon his appointment in mid-July.
His campaign has since been marked by several controversies.
The Ohio senator is thus one of the first Republican figures to have relayed the false theory according to which Haitian migrants eat cats and dogs in a town in Ohio, later taken up by Donald Trump during the debate facing to Kamala Harris.
He is also the one who made fun of “unhappy cat ladies”, in reference to people choosing to live without a partner or child.
So many points of attack for Tim Walz, who described JD Vance and Donald Trump as “weird”, a dig that has become a Democratic slogan.
The governor of Minnesota, unknown to the general public before being chosen by the Democratic candidate in early August, has since sought to make his good nature and outspokenness known – a success in the Democratic ranks.
But beyond this image of a man from the rural world, he passed numerous progressive measures in his state – a “Marxist” for the Republicans.
JD Vance could also repeat on Tuesday his accusation that Tim Walz left his National Guard unit just before it was sent to Iraq, calling into question his military courage.
