--:-- [Theme music fades out]
--:-- Ryan Knutson: Welcome to Red, White, and Who. I'm Ryan Knutson.
--:-- Molly Ball: And I'm Molly Ball.
--:-- Ryan Knutson: Our show about the road to the White House. It's Friday, October 4th.
--:-- Molly Ball: Coming up on the show, So, veep veep, vans and walls. And why aren't the campaigns talking more about climate change? Stay with us.
--:-- Ryan Knutson: Alright, let's get started. I want to start off by talking about the VP debate on Tuesday. It seemed like J.D. Vance was polished and prepared and like he had a strategy, and that Tim Walls seemed a bit shakier on the debate stage. What was your take on how things went for each candidate?
--:-- Molly Ball: I really thought J.D. Vance won this debate. As a matter of just sort of skill as a debater, right, just his ability to make his points, make arguments that were concise and clear and understandable and defend his positions or Donald Trump's positions.
--:-- Ryan Knutson: When people say that Donald Trump's economic plan doesn't make sense, I say, look at the record. He delivered rising take-home pay for American workers.
--:-- Molly Ball: Now, again, you can disagree with some of his depictions of the last Donald Trump presidency. You can disagree with the policies that he says would lead to better outcomes. But it was very clear what he was saying and what case he was making, whereas Walls looked nervous and wasn't very clear or concise in his answers.
--:-- Ryan Knutson: And he also didn't make a clear argument. I don't think if you never heard anything about this campaign you would have come away from this debate with a clear sense of what Tim Walz was arguing a Kamala Harris administration would do, or why her role in the current administration has been a good thing.
--:-- Molly Ball: Now, I do want to point out a couple of big areas that complicate this narrative. There was a long segment on abortion where Vance basically agreed that Republicans' position on this issue is unpopular and voters don't like it.
--:-- Ryan Knutson: My party, we've got to do so much better of a job at earning the American people's trust back on this issue.
--:-- Molly Ball: And that was remarkable to me because that was him basically admitting that his side has a losing position on this issue.
--:-- Ryan Knutson: And then very late in the debate, I thought Walls had his best moment when he very sort of sincerely and with a sense of sort of personal alarm talked about Trump's violent refusal to accept the results of the 2020 election.
--:-- Molly Ball: Did he lose the 2020 election? Tim, I'm focused on the future.
--:-- Ryan Knutson: Did Kamala Harris censor Americans from speaking their mind in the wake of the 2020 COVID situation?
--:-- Molly Ball: That is a damning non-answer.
--:-- Ryan Knutson: And in some of the post-debate focus groups, a lot of voters said that that stuck out in their mind as an important moment that sort of clarified the stakes for them.
--:-- Molly Ball: It's so interesting watching these two debate because I feel like for so much of this campaign, Vance has seemed like the one who's been a little bit shaky and outside his comfort zone, and Walls has been almost thriving.
--:-- Ryan Knutson: And on the debate stage, it's like very much the inverse of that, where Vance seemed to be the much more comfortable one in his element, and Walls seemed outside of his comfort zone.
--:-- Molly Ball: Vance was very comfortable. He was also a different persona than we've seen on the campaign trail.
--:-- Ryan Knutson: On the campaign trail, he is always on the attack, and I think this is part of what has made him, by some measures, the most unpopular vice presidential nominee in history.
--:-- Molly Ball: He has a very negative rating overall, and it's in part because he is willing to go out there and absolutely slash and burn and say the nastiest things about the other side.
--:-- Ryan Knutson: That wasn't the version of J.D. Vance that came out there. He came out and explicitly said, I'm introducing myself to you. I'm introducing myself as a sympathetic figure, as someone who, you know, grew up in difficult circumstances and knows what it's like to struggle.
--:-- Molly Ball: That may have been part of what threw Tim Walls off balance. If you were expecting the sort of harsh, partisan attack dog J.D. Vance from the campaign trail, that was not the J.D. Vance who showed up at the debate.
--:-- Ryan Knutson: Instead, it was this much more collegial, much more sort of humanizing, even empathetic figure.
--:-- Molly Ball: I mean, both men were very kind and cordial and polite and saying how much they agreed with each other half the time.
--:-- Ryan Knutson: And I actually think I agree with you. I think you want to solve this problem. I agree with a lot of what Senator Vance said about what's happening.
--:-- Molly Ball: Now, Tim just mentioned a bunch of ideas. Now, some of those ideas I actually think are halfway decent.
--:-- Ryan Knutson: I 100 percent believe that Senator Vance hates it when these kids it's abhorrent and it breaks your heart.
--:-- Molly Ball: I agree with that. Yeah, it really did not feel like a debate in 2024 for that reason.
--:-- Ryan Knutson: Right. We've become so accustomed to this nasty politics full of personal attacks and insults.
--:-- Molly Ball: And there was none of that.
--:-- Ryan Knutson: Do you think that this was a knockout win for Vance, though? Because I've seen a lot of outlets calling it a tie in some of the polling that night, saying that it was maybe still for Vance, but much closer.
--:-- Molly Ball: It is interesting. And some of the snap polls, and I don't think these are completely reliable, but they do these, you know, immediate snap polls of, like, swing voters or voters overall.
--:-- Ryan Knutson: With voters overall, it did seem to be basically a tie.
--:-- Molly Ball: I think that has to do with the fact that it's just a polarized country and a sharply divided race.
--:-- Ryan Knutson: People are going to see that the candidate they like better won the debate.
--:-- Molly Ball: So only one of these men will become vice president.
--:-- Ryan Knutson: But do you see either of them having a long-lasting impact on their political parties?
--:-- Molly Ball: It's a really good question.
--:-- Ryan Knutson: If Trump wins the election and Vance is vice president, he will be very well positioned to continue to be the avatar of this new right wing philosophy.
--:-- Molly Ball: He has become sort of the chief spokesman for this intellectual movement that has taken Trumpism over the past several years and turned it into a coherent ideology, sometimes called national conservatism, sometimes called the new right.
--:-- Ryan Knutson: A lot of the reason he was picked for the ticket is because of his skill in articulating these types of arguments.
--:-- Molly Ball: You know, part of a coalition of figures, including folks like Tucker Carlson, who reshaped the Republican Party in Trump's image.
--:-- Ryan Knutson: And people see him as the sort of heir to the MAGA movement.
--:-- Molly Ball: What about for Walls? Does he sort of represent anything in the future than a Democratic Party? Or is it all maybe Kamala Harris?
--:-- Ryan Knutson: You rarely hear Walls discussed in those terms.
--:-- Molly Ball: And one of the things that he is said to have said to Harris and her people at the time that he was under consideration was that he didn't have further ambitions.
--:-- Ryan Knutson: He wasn't someone who saw himself as a future presidential prospect.
--:-- Molly Ball: A lot of people look at him and think of him as older. He's actually the same age as Kamala Harris.
--:-- Ryan Knutson: He's, I think, less than a year older than she is. But he looks older.
--:-- Molly Ball: And so people see him as sort of the father figure in a way on the ticket.
--:-- Ryan Knutson: Alright, we're going to take a quick break.
--:-- Molly Ball: And when we come back, we are going to take a listener question about climate change.
--:-- Ryan Knutson: Let's do it.
--:-- Ryan Knutson: Alright, so as you know we love to take listener questions, and we have been getting so many thank you all so much this week.
--:-- Molly Ball: We got a question from a 14-year-old listener, and our senior producer Rachel Humphries decided to call her.
--:-- Rachel Humphries: [phone call]
--:-- Ryan Knutson: Rachel, do you want to tell us about your conversation?
--:-- Rachel Humphries: Yeah, Brian. I mean, you don't often hear that much from teenagers when it comes to elections, but this listener was very keen to know more about the race this year.
--:-- Ryan Knutson: And her name is Sonia Bouguin.
--:-- Rachel Humphries: B-O-U-G-O-U-I-N. I like to explain it to people as if you're scaring someone named Gwen. Boo, Gwen. Boo. Isn't that great?
--:-- Molly Ball: It is spooky season. It's October.
--:-- Rachel Humphries: But away from Halloween, I asked Sonia what she finds interesting about this election.
--:-- Ryan Knutson: I was pretty bored at first when it was Biden versus Trump.
--:-- Molly Ball: But when Biden dropped out of the race and Kamala took his place, I got my attention again.
--:-- Ryan Knutson: And I was like, OK, so I know all these things about Trump, but you don't know as much about Kamala because she doesn't know, like she doesn't share many of her policies.
--:-- Molly Ball: So it got me intrigued and I started to do more research.
--:-- Ryan Knutson: And I guess that's how I've been so far, just trying to find out more about her.
--:-- Molly Ball: Just before we get to Sonia's question, Molly, were you thinking about politics much when you were 14?
--:-- Rachel Humphries: Not at all. I don't know if I even knew elections were happening when I was 14.
--:-- Ryan Knutson: Sonia is very impressive.
--:-- Molly Ball: She definitely is.
--:-- Rachel Humphries: And one of the things she and I spoke about is an issue that's on her mind this election, which is climate change.
--:-- Ryan Knutson: And she talked to me about how the climate is changing where she lives in the Berkshires in Massachusetts.
--:-- Molly Ball: It just seems so strange to me to think that all these things that I know and I've thought of, like these seasons, they're not going to be the same for like if I were to have kids.
--:-- Ryan Knutson: And I just see it like in the birchers, we're known for our foliage and everything and our harsh winters and these like dramatic changes in weather.
--:-- Molly Ball: And it's just been so much different. I've been having these super hot days in the middle of winter.
--:-- Ryan Knutson: And it just it really strikes me as this thing that's like, why is this happening? Why is it not stopping?
--:-- Molly Ball: It should be really concerning.
--:-- Rachel Humphries: So Sonia, what's your question for Molly?
--:-- Sonia Bouguin: My question for Molly is, first of all, how important would you say climate change is to voters?
--:-- Molly Ball: Well, thank you, Sonia. It's a great question, and I love that you're so interested in politics.
--:-- Ryan Knutson: Climate has not been a big topic of discussion in this election, and it is not something that most people say is important to their vote.
--:-- Molly Ball: Earlier this year, in a Wall Street Journal poll of swing states, 2% of voters said climate was their most important issue.
--:-- Ryan Knutson: 2%? Sorry, that's like nothing.
--:-- Molly Ball: What's lower than that? Not very much.
--:-- Ryan Knutson: I think it might have been the lowest of the issues in the poll.
--:-- Ryan Knutson: Now, you know, it may be important to people, but not their top issue.
--:-- Molly Ball: Even young voters, we hear a lot about youth climate activism and the sort of Greta Thunbergs of the world.
--:-- Ryan Knutson: But even among young people, I think it was only 3%.
--:-- Molly Ball: Is that unique to this election because of who the candidates are and their dynamics?
--:-- Ryan Knutson: Or just that people are not... It's basically always the case.
--:-- Molly Ball: People are just more concerned with things that affect them directly.
--:-- Ryan Knutson: And although you can say that climate has an impact on people in the case of things like the increasing incidence of extreme weather, it isn't something that people see as sort of a pocketbook issue.
--:-- Molly Ball: I think one reason that you don't hear climate change discussed a lot in the context of the campaign is that the partisan lines on this issue are pretty clear.
--:-- Ryan Knutson: You know, people who are the most concerned about the environment, most concerned about doing something about climate change, are probably already Democrats.
--:-- Molly Ball: Democrats have put much more emphasis on this issue.
--:-- Ryan Knutson: In terms of Kamala Harris policies on climate change, she does have a record of supporting environmental legislation.
--:-- Molly Ball: When she was in the Senate, she supported the Green New Deal.
--:-- Ryan Knutson: She cast the deciding vote on the Inflation Reduction Act, which was the trillion Biden administration climate plan.
--:-- Molly Ball: And so we think that she would basically continue Biden's policies in this area.
--:-- Ryan Knutson: But she has tried to move to the center a little bit, for example, on the issue of fracking.
--:-- Molly Ball: This is not something that environmentalists love because it involves the production of fossil fuels.
--:-- Ryan Knutson: But in a state like Pennsylvania, which is the number two natural gas producer in America, it's something that a lot of those swing voters and independent voters that she needs to appeal to strongly favor.
--:-- Molly Ball: So she has reversed her stance from 2020, where she said that she supported a ban on fracking.
--:-- Ryan Knutson: Now she says she absolutely would not move to ban fracking.
--:-- Molly Ball: And I think this issue sort of shows you why maybe she doesn't talk about the climate that much is because it's an issue that can be somewhat divisive even among Democrats.
--:-- Ryan Knutson: So Sonia asked about Kamala Harris's views on climate change. What about Donald Trump's?
--:-- Molly Ball: So Trump's position is that climate change is a hoax, but also that he would clean up pollution, make the air and water clean.
--:-- Ryan Knutson: Right, clean air and clean water.
--:-- Molly Ball: People remember that he pulled out of the Paris Climate Accords, one of the first things he did during his presidential term, and Biden reversed that decision.
--:-- Ryan Knutson: But in practice, he's in favor of rolling back environmental regulations.
--:-- Molly Ball: That was a lot of what he did in his first term.
--:-- Ryan Knutson: He has said that the energy industry needs to be unleashed to produce as much oil and gas as possible.
--:-- Molly Ball: He does not seem very concerned about greenhouse gas emissions at all.
--:-- Ryan Knutson: So I wanted to get your take quickly before we go about all the stuff that's going on outside of the campaigns right now.
--:-- Molly Ball: And your sense of how Trump and Harris have been responding to it.
--:-- Ryan Knutson: So there's Hurricane Helene and the devastation that's been taking place in the South.
--:-- Molly Ball: There's escalating war in the Middle East right now.
--:-- Ryan Knutson: Are you seeing these things come up in the campaigns right now?
--:-- Molly Ball: How are the candidates responding to it?
--:-- Ryan Knutson: And does it even really matter all that much for the outcome of the election?
--:-- Molly Ball: Basically anything could decide this election because it is so close.
--:-- Ryan Knutson: You know, the famous idea that, you know, a butterfly can flap its wings on one side of the world and cause a hurricane.
--:-- Molly Ball: On the other side of the world, the Republican strategist Karl Rove wrote a column this week saying a butterfly could decide the election just because it is so close that basically anything could do it.
--:-- Ryan Knutson: It feels about right this year.
--:-- Molly Ball: I think that the sort of conventional wisdom is that any bad news is good for Trump because anything bad that happens is something he can pin on the current administration.
--:-- Ryan Knutson: So when we talk about sort of October surprises, I think there's a feeling that most of the potential October surprises sort of tend to cut in the direction of the challenger, the party out of power.
--:-- Molly Ball: Alright, Molly, what are you going to be watching for over the next week?
--:-- Ryan Knutson: It's going to be an interesting week next week.
--:-- Molly Ball: Both Donald Trump and Kamala Harris are supposed to do town halls with Univision, the Spanish language network.
--:-- Ryan Knutson: So I think we'll be hearing a lot about issues relevant to Latino voters, potentially the immigration issue.
--:-- Molly Ball: And aside from that, going to be another important week in the campaign.
--:-- Ryan Knutson: Thanks so much, Molly. It's always a pleasure.
--:-- Molly Ball: It's been fun, Ryan. See you next week.
--:-- Ryan Knutson: Before we go, do you have a question for Molly about the issue of immigration and how it's affecting this election?
--:-- Molly Ball: Send us an email or voice message to thejournal at wsj.com.
--:-- Ryan Knutson: That's thejournal at wsj.com.
--:-- Molly Ball: Red, White, and Who is part of The Journal, which is a co-production of Spotify and The Wall Street Journal.
--:-- Ryan Knutson: Our senior producer is Rachel Humphries.
--:-- Molly Ball: Our producer is Pierce Singhe.
--:-- Ryan Knutson: Our editor is Catherine Whelan.
--:-- Molly Ball: I'm Ryan Knutson.
--:-- Ryan Knutson: This episode was engineered by Peter Leonard.
--:-- Molly Ball: Our theme music is by So Wiley and remixed by Peter Leonard.
--:-- Ryan Knutson: Additional music this week from Peter Leonard.
--:-- Molly Ball: Fact-checking by Amelia Schoenbeck.
--:-- Ryan Knutson: Artwork by James Walton.
--:-- Molly Ball: Special thanks to Kate Linebaugh, Sarah Platt, Ben Pershing, and the whole Journal team.
--:-- Ryan Knutson: Thanks for listening.
--:-- Molly Ball: We'll be back with another episode of Red, White & Who next Friday morning.
--:-- Ryan Knutson: See you then.
--:-- Rachel Humphries: So I have to admit something to you which is I was actually pretty into politics when I was in high school.
--:-- Ryan Knutson: Yeah, uh my running mate was Ryan Tinseldom and our slogan was Two Ryans, One Dream.
--:-- Rachel Humphries: Wow. And also Two Ryans Make a Right.
--:-- Ryan Knutson: Wow. But it was all about turnout.
--:-- Rachel Humphries: I would vote for you.
--:-- Ryan Knutson: Yeah, I know. Yeah, exactly.
--:-- Rachel Humphries: We were going to... I don't even know what our campaign... We didn't even have a policy, but it was... What was your policy platform, Ryan?
--:-- Ryan Knutson: There was no policy platform.
--:-- Rachel Humphries: Our policy platform was just inundate the school with flyers and at lunchtime when it was time to vote, just to go up to every single table and just get out the vote.
--:-- Ryan Knutson: Get out the vote and why not vote for... Ryan and Ryan.
--:-- Rachel Humphries: So it was literally a popularity contest.
--:-- Ryan Knutson: I mean, I guess, I guess so.
--:-- Rachel Humphries: Yeah. Mm-hmm.
--:-- Ryan Knutson: We won the popular vote.
