Analysis: Former defensive coordinator Tim Walz didn't call many blitzes against JD Vance

Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, a former football defensive coordinator, did not call many blitzes Tuesday night.

The Democratic vice presidential nominee famously ran a 4-4 defensive scheme while an assistant high school coach. From a political standpoint, he mostly dropped his four rhetorical linebackers into pass coverage during his lone planned debate with Ohio Sen. JD Vance, the Republican nominee.

Walz’s game plan allowed Vance to methodically move the proverbial ball down the field, even when he was embellishing the record of his running mate, former President Donald Trump, and distorting those of Walz, President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris, the Democratic presidential nominee.

Rather than being an aggressive debater, Walz mostly laid back, opting against pushing back on Vance’s debate claims or using the face-to-face clash to press him on some of his more extreme — and false — statements. To be sure, the prime-time event’s vibe produced the most civil presidential or vibe presidential debate in some time.

Walz or Vance on Tuesday night said around a dozen times they agreed with what their rival had just said, according to a transcript released by CBS News, which hosted and moderated the verbal sparring session. At times, Walz’s debate approach conjured memories of then-Rep. Tim Walz delivering remarks on the House floor, careful to abide by long-standing chamber rules that forbid besmirching a colleague or breaking with general norms of civility.

Vance presented a kinder, gentler version of Trump’s “America first” philosophy and its roots in mercantilism, an economic philosophy that had been pushed out of American politics in the post-great wars era — until the former New York businessman’s term as president, that is.

“But look, so many of the drugs, the pharmaceuticals, that we put in the bodies of our children are manufactured by nations that hate us. This has to stop. And we’re not going to stop it by listening to experts,” the Ivy League-educated Vance said. “We’re going to stop it by listening to common-sense wisdom, which is what Donald Trump governed on.”

Vance moments before had served up a populist platter of Trump-nomics and pitching that people were financially better off under the 45th president. “We’re bringing American manufacturing back. We’re unleashing American energy,” he said. “We’re going to make more of our own stuff.”

Rather than citing the list of skeptical economists — even some right-leaning ones — who have warned Trump’s proposed blanket tariffs on imports from friends and foes alike who refuse to adhere to his every trade demand would cause more inflation, Walz focused on where he agreed.

“So the rhetoric is good. Much of what the senator said right there, I’m in agreement with him on this,” Walz said when it was his turn, even launching into a first-hand anecdote to, surprisingly, bolster his agreement with Vance and Trump, a duo he has slammed on the campaign trail over their economic policy ideas.

“I watched it happen, too. I watched it in my communities and we talked about that,” he said. “We had companies that were willing to ship it over, and we saw people profit.”

But that’s not to say Walz did not blitz — including during this exchange.

“But we had people undercutting the right to collectively bargain. We had right-to-work states make it more difficult,” he said, before taking an apparent jab at Vance for his time in the financial sector. “Folks that, folks that are venture capital, in some cases, putting money into companies that were overseas, we’re in agreement that we bring those home.”

It was a moment in which Walz could have recorded a political sack, but he let Vance verbally break the tackle and pick up positive yards with a retort that concluded with a clean vow that he and Trump would go “back to common-sense economic principles.”

“I was raised by a woman who would sometimes go into medical debt so that she could put food on the table in our household,” he said of his grandmother. “I know what it’s like to not be able to afford the things that you need to afford. We can do so much better.”

And while instant polls from CNN and others showed Walz’s “Minnesota nice” demeanor was popular with viewers, it also did little to debunk claims from his opponent.

Among them: The Trump-Vance ticket’s apparent indifference to whether it is in U.S. and Western interests for Ukraine to prevail in its war with Russia. Also on that list was Vance’s false claim — rejected even by allies like former GOP presidential candidate and Trump ally Vivek Ramaswamy and Ohio’s GOP governor, former Rep. Mike DeWine — that Haitian migrants have been killing and eating the pets of U.S. citizens in Springfield, Ohio. Walz did accuse Vance and Trump of having purposefully “vilified a large number of people who were here legally in the community of Springfield.”

‘Damning non-answer’

But Walz never directly demanded Vance retract the claim, instead at one point saying this about the hot-button issue of illegal immigration: “I believe Sen. Vance wants to solve this.”

That’s why Jen Psaki, Biden’s former White House press secretary, on Wednesday morning observed on MSNBC that it seemed Walz, for much of the debate, was “trying to remember what was on page 17 of his notes.”

Walz’s performance might not cost his ticket very much. After all, a CNN poll showed viewers largely saw the contest as a draw, with 51 percent telling the network and SSRS that Vance won and 49 percent saying Walz did.

Among the Minnesota governor’s strongest moments — and one that became a Harris-Walz ad overnight — that likely helped him in that snap survey came when he asked Vance directly about Trump: “Did he lose the 2020 election?”

“Tim, I’m focused on the future,” the Republican VP nominee replied, clearly in no mood to talk much about 2020.

“That is a damning non-answer,” Walz fired back.

The former defensive coordinator finally, in football parlance, sent the house — though he waited until the debate’s fourth quarter. The blitz worked, amounting to a political sack of Vance.

“After tonight, Donald Trump needs to speak less and let JD Vance speak more,” GOP pollster Frank Luntz wrote on X. “Vance’s weakest moments tonight have been in trying to defend Trump.”

But in an unfortunate reality for Harris and Walz, the telling exchange came late in the debate — prompted by the CBS moderators well into the 10 o’clock hour on the East Coast. The former “DC” could have brought up the so-called “big lie” on his own earlier in the contest, but he opted to wait for the referees to do so — and possibly after undecided voters had taken a knee.