Source: Semafor
by David Weigel
“In Philadelphia, Kamala Harris thrilled Democrats, looking right at Donald Trump and delivering the attack lines they’d dreamed of hearing. Walz didn’t do that. Trump miffed his best arguments by getting distracted by those attacks, and didn’t lay out his central theme, that Harris can’t credibly run on policies her administration never implemented, until the end. Vance did that right away. He didn’t deliver the debate performance of Republican dreams, but he gave them another one, more akin to the speech he gave at the national convention. It was more important to portray Trump as a success and a savior, which he did, than to follow conservative sites like Alpha News into the weeds on Walz’s biography. … Walz may have been the less confident debater, but Democrats also argued he had his best answers on the issues they wanted discussed the most the next day …” (10/02/24)