An Excellent Impersonation

If you missed it - staying in the cave is so enticing - there was a vice-presidential "debate" Tuesday night. What you missed: Walz did fine, Vance lied about everything - Trump saved Obamacare, we got no abortion ban plans here - working hard not to say anything weird or hateful about women, migrants, children, house pets or cat ladies. Still, he emerged creepy as hell, because "a smooth lie is still a lie." Maddow: Vance was "much slicker," and the other guy won.

Commentators at MSNBC offered a pretty cogent analysis of what was a performance, not an actual policy discussion, and as such marginally useful. Noted Lawrence O'Donnell, "There was one person on stage who's actually capable of dealing with reality, and one who will say anything, whatever is necessary, to thread the Trump needle." Again and again, Vance declined to answer questions, dodging and weaving in service to the historic revisionism his daddy-god-king relishes. Chris Hayes was blown away by Vance's "astounding gaslighting" on health care - Trump allegedly "worked in a bipartisan way" to "salvage" Obamacare," when in fact he did everything he could to kill it and was famously thwarted by John McCain - and on Trump "peacefully handing over power," that is after "the coup failed, the cops’ brains had been bashed in, and there were dead bodies and blood on the Capitol."

Nicole Wallace described Vance “building an intricate and beautiful fort out of toothpicks. And it was perfect. And at the end, he sneezed on it, and the whole thing fell apart." The sneeze was the vital moment Walz asked Vance point-blank if Trump lost the 2020 election, he tried to squirm away by intoning, "I'm focused on the future," and Walz pounded him with, "That is a damning non-answer" - now featured in killer Harris ads. "He lost the election. This is not a debate," Walz declared, and if anyone forgot about the gallows built by rioting yahoos on Jan. 6 he added, "That's why Mike Pence isn't on this stage." Right then, Walz was a Minnesota-nice-dad, straight-talking good guy; Vance was a power-grabbing weirdo who said he was "proud" to have the support of "great leaders" like Tulsi Gabbard and RFK Jr., a boast, one viewer noted, "so off-the-wall crazy I startled the cat with my laugh."

Still, many felt Vance's most brazen lies came as he tried to white-wash his longstanding opposition to abortion. Thus did the "100% pro-life" guy so obsessed with American birth rates he argues child-car-seats decrease fertility, who's supported a federal ban on abortion after 15 weeks, said he'd "certainly like" abortion to be banned nationally, and charged anyone who disagrees would be "making the United States the most barbaric pro-abortion regime anywhere in the entire world" - this guy dismissed the idea of a national abortion ban as "kind of a ridiculous hypothetical," much like hysterical Dems fear-mongering about the repeal of Roe v Wade, and never mind the women now bleeding out in parking lots. All he wants is a “minimum national standard." Oh, and just ignore the rabid policy declaration appearing on his website, until it was magically scrubbed in July, titled "END ABORTION."

Exacerbating his "smooth bland lies" was Vance's whining, self-righteous indignation on the (rare) occasions he was called out on them. When he persisted in peddling his racist, much-debunked fiction that Haitian "illegals" who'd invaded Springfield, Ohio were eating their neighbors' cats and dogs, CBS moderator Margaret Brennan stepped in to clarify the non-cat-and-dog-eating Haitians are legally there, with "temporary protected status.” At that, a petulant Vance bleated, "The rules were that you guys weren't going to fact-check"; when he tried to gripe and mansplain his point, moderators cut his mic with a curt, "Thank you for explaining the legal process.” Only then did he lose what Steven King called "that snotty little half-smile -the expression of a used-car salesman who just convinced a potential buyer the CHECK ENGINE light on the used Toyota he’s trying to get off the lot is a computer glitch."

Meanwhile, his Orange Highness gave a play-by-play of "the Brilliant J.D. Vance and the Highly Inarticulate ‘Tampon’ Tim Walz," which was mostly random, all-caps shrieking, perhaps with ketchup-throwing: "EVERYONE KNOWS I WOULD NOT SUPPORT A FEDERAL ABORTION BAN, UNDER ANY CIRCUMSTANCES, AND WOULD, IN FACT, VETO IT,” "FULLY DEBUNKED RUSSIA, RUSSIA, RUSSIA," "COMPLETE VICTORY FOR 'PRESIDENT DONALD J. TRUMP.'” The next day the rants got even louder - "PROSECUTORIAL MISCONDUCT!" "ELECTION INTERFERENCE!" - after "deranged" Jack Smith's bombshell, 165-page court filing was released with new details of Trump's "increasingly desperate" efforts to stay in office: "The defendant resorted to crimes." Trump also took time out to mock Jimmy Carter on his 100th birthday; Carter has said he's “only trying to make it to vote for (Harris)."

On Wednesday, Vance doubled down, refusing to concede Trump lost the 2020 election - "The media is obsessed with talking about the election of four years ago" - and vowing to uncover all the imaginary “election integrity” issues due to all the imaginary non-citizens, probably black, voting illegally. But alas, he was still weird. Not helping with the whole weird thing was a "perfected" image of Vance posted by totally normal Georgia GOP Rep. Mike Collins on Twitter. It shows the pudgy Vance "yassified" - made more feminine and glamorous - into a chiselled exemplar of a ripped, hot master race, which we don't think is what American pols are supposed to be doing with their time and our money. Responses: "I am weeping" and "Republicans are insane." But slick. Farah Stockman, a NYT editorial board writer, on a slippery debate: “Vance did an excellent job of impersonating a decent man."