Will any of it really matter?

Last night was the only time Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz and Ohio Sen. JD Vance will face off directly and, barring a change in scheduling, the last time any members of the tickets are set to meet in person before Election Day. If that holds, 2024 would be the first election since the advent of televised presidential debates to end on a vice-presidential debate. On one level, that’s par for the course for an unprecedented election year. On another, it speaks to the unusually significant roles of this year’s vice-presidential nominees.

Both men are unusually important to the top of the ticket: Walz as a hinterland validator for a coastal liberal, Vance as a flag-plant successor for an aging candidate limited to just four years from the outset. Their different paths to the stage showed: Walz began the night clearly nervous, stumbling on several words and returning to some obvious rhetorical crutches (he used the word “fundamental” four times in his first answer). Vance, on the other hand, had no such jitters. He was smooth almost the entire night, the product of a decade as a fixture in the political talk show circuit.

That advantage didn’t completely hold; Democrats privately and publicly got more comfortable as the night went on. Republicans were still satisfied, but what felt more notable than either man’s individual performance was the return of a softer, more agreeable form of disagreement on stage.

In some respects, this isn’t entirely surprising when looking at the longer arc of presidential debates — particularly VP debates, where lower stakes lend themselves to more civility. Comparisons were quickly made to the 2000 vice-presidential debate between Al Gore and Joe Lieberman, a clash that produced as many laughs as barbs between the candidates. The tonal shift was in some ways exaggerated by the acrimony and chaos of other debates in recent years, a return to a previous baseline made to look remarkable. But it was also downstream from both men seeming to have the same incentive: Be nice.

Vance entered underwater: Polls have repeatedly found him the least popular of the four members of the major-party tickets. His approach was a clear signal that those public surveys track with the campaign’s private data. He frequently invoked his children, his mother’s experience with addiction, and his working-class upbringing. He made a point to emphasize how reasonable he found his opponents, at one point saying a Harris plan “even sounds pretty good.” On abortion, maybe the trickiest issue for him, he spoke of “pro-family policies” and Republicans’ need to “earn people’s trust back.”

It was the performance of a seasoned debater, and it seemed to succeed. CBS’s flash poll found Vance’s favorability rating among debate watchers jumping from 40% to 49%. CNN’s found his image improving from -22% to -3%. Whatever the outcome in November, Vance is considered a likely candidate for the 2028 Republican nomination; his performance Tuesday night probably aided that campaign.

Fascinatingly, Walz matched Vance’s energy. He seemed to go out of his way to signal common ground with the Ohio senator. On childcare: "I don't think Senator Vance and I are that far apart.” On school gun violence: “I 100% believe Senator Vance hates it.” Even on abortion: “I agree with a lot of what Senator Vance said about what's happening.”

It was a curious approach. Walz muscled his way on to the ticket largely by wrapping strong punches in Midwestern folksiness. Head-to-head with Vance, an unusually unpopular running mate who’s loathed by the Democratic base, many expected a repeat of the zingers Walz has shown on the trail. Instead, he opted for Minnesota nice, which created some missed opportunities for Democrats: whiffing on Vance’s prior support for a legitimately full federal abortion ban and Trump’s long history of targeting the Affordable Care Act, among others.

The gap between their performance on the trail and on the stage was perhaps downstream from the candidates’ divergent press access the past few months. According to an Axios analysis, Vance has done by far the most non-partisan interviews of the four principals. Walz, on the other hand, is in last place — a stark change from his time campaigning for the veep spot, when he was ubiquitous in national media. While not every Vance interview was an unambiguous success for the Trump campaign, it’s possible they gave him a level of training that the more-insulated Walz lacked.

Flash polls mostly gave Vance a narrow victory: CNN’s found him winning by 2, CBS’s gave it to him by 1, Politico’s was dead-even. Will it matter? You’d be hard pressed to find even a hardcore politics-head who can remember a moment from the past few vice-presidential debates beyond Kamala Harris’s “I’m speaking” in 2020 and Joe Biden’s “malarkey” line in 2012.

But what their performances seemed to signal most was where both parties see the campaign a month from Election Day: Democrats seeking to emphasize Donald Trump’s temperamental and moral differences from the rest of his party, even if it means allowing Vance’s image rehabilitation. Republicans hammering a return to the halcyon days of Trump’s economic and immigration management, even if it means abandoning hallmark Trumpian rhetoric.

In other words, the race today is where it was yesterday morning. 

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