A DEBATE AMID CHAOS. New York — On the afternoon of the first and only vice presidential debate, Fox News contributor Katie Pavlich posted:
Just today we have:
- A dock strike not seen in 40+ years that could cripple the economy
- Katrina-level devastation in a number of southern U.S. states
- War raging and a stalemate between Russia/Ukraine
- Hundreds of missile launches from Iran [to Israel]
The short version is, things look pretty unsettled right now. And that is on top of cost-of-living increases that have made life more difficult for most people and a disastrous influx of millions of illegal crossers at the U.S.-Mexico border.
It’s the kind of thing, a sense of decline and disorder, that can make it hard for an incumbent president, or vice president, to win reelection. So underlying the debate between former President Donald Trump’s running mate, Sen. J.D. Vance (R-OH), and Vice President Kamala Harris’s running mate, Gov. Tim Walz (D-MN), will be a feeling that things are spinning out of control. When that happens, voters usually blame the party in power.
That has scared Democrats. Not long after Pavlich sent the message above, Alexander Vindman, the former Trump National Security Council staffer who set in motion the whistleblower action against Trump that led to the first impeachment, posted, with more than a little scent of desperation:
Trump is chaos! Trump did not/will not deliver security, geopolitical stability, or economic prosperity!!
The problem with Vindman’s argument, such as it is, is that Biden and Harris have been in the White House the last four years. The wars going on in Ukraine and the Middle East did not exist when Trump was president. The level of inflation that has lowered so many people’s standard of living did not exist. The massive illegal border incursion that has burdened municipalities around the country did not exist.
In light of that, Trump and Vance have the simplest campaign pitch in the world: 1) Things were good when Trump was president. 2) Everything went to hell when Biden and Harris entered the White House. 3) Elect Trump and he’ll make things good again.
At the most basic level, that is the case Vance will make in New York tonight. It will be up to Walz to argue that things aren’t really that bad — or that if they are, it is Trump’s fault, not Biden’s or Harris’s.
Vance can make the argument because of the historic nature of the contest. Not since the 1890s has a president, out of office, run for the presidency again and won. Usually, voters choose a candidate based on what they think the candidate will do, if elected, or they choose to reelect the candidate already in office. No one in living memory has ever had a chance to return a president to office after he has been out. The case that Vance will make tonight will be grounded in the sense that many people feel that decline and disorder have taken hold since Biden and Harris took office.