JD Vance’s most telling debate answer was the one he wouldn’t give

Donald Trump’s running mate delivered a smooth debate performance—thanks to his uncanny ease with scapegoating immigrants and lying.

The first 90 minutes of the vice presidential debate on Tuesday were much more subdued than last month’s presidential one, largely because neither participant spent their allotted time yelling demented conspiracy theories about Haitian people eating pets in Ohio. More than once, both men—Democratic nominee Tim Walz and Republican nominee JD Vance—professed to believe that they shared a desire to address a given problem, and simply had a difference of opinion about the best method for solving it. In light of Vance’s ongoing struggles to present as a normal person—on the campaign trail, his attempts at casual conversation sometimes evoke the farmer who gets possessed by aliens in the first few minutes of Men In Black—his team has to consider the debate at least a partial success, insofar as he did not introduce himself to a national TV audience with his trademark deeply creepy insinuations that only people with biological children deserve to participate fully in democracy.