Having watched the debate but not the spin here is what I think.
JD. Vance clearly won the debate, his style and his answers and his constantly pushing on the “Harris had 3 1/2 years to do it” theme was big. I think his move at the end concerning censorship was a real haymaker that would have been a knockout if delivered earlier.
Despite this in the end I think the Harris campaign might have been helped more by this debate, because while Vance clearly dispelled the false image the media has tried to paint of him as some kind of radical nut which is bad for the left Walz was able to completely protect his image of a rural everyman which is the false image that the media has done all it can to preserve. His answer on misspeaking hurt him but in my opinion not enough to destroy that image.
I think protecting the false image of Walz is more important than losing the false image of Vance because nobody is voting for Donald Trump because they think JD Vance is a calming factor but I suspect more than a few people will justify a vote for Harris because they think Walz is sane.
If you judge on that basis Walz is the winner.
Update: Of course the fact that he skipped the spin room and Vance didn’t shows how much Vance dominated the debate. Walz might remain an everyman but it never looks good being a coward.
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