JD Vance helps bring normalcy back to American politics. But did he do enough to help Trump win?

A big takeaway from last night’s debate was that for as much as JD Vance has appeared to channel Donald Trump as a fire-breathing flame throwing culture-warrior, he and Tim Walz collectively brought normalcy back to American politics– at least for one evening.

Trump may not have liked it (go see his Truth Social feed from debate time), but for the rest of the country, wasn’t it nice to see respectful, friendly disagreement on the issues? (Your mileage may vary where respectful agreement on the issues is concerned– there are after all supposed to be contrasts between the parties).

Wasn’t it nice to see spouses capable of having a polite, normal conversation?

Wasn’t it nice to see some empathy in the exchange about Walz’s kid and gun violence? (Transcript courtesy of Axios)

Walz: I 100% believe Sen. Vance hates [gun violence]. It’s abhorrent and it breaks your heart.

Vance: Tim, first of all, I didn’t know that your 17-year-old witnessed a shooting. And I’m sorry about that and I hope he’s doing OK. Christ have mercy, it is awful.

Yes! It was! Viewers liked it! Per CBS News’ insta-poll:

• 88 percent said the tone of the debate was generally positive.
• A majority of the slightly more Democratic-leaning audience said each candidate mostly sounded “reasonable.”
• A majority also said each were prepared to be President.

But was the debate enough for Vance to help Trump win?

We’re not generally sold on the political analysis of Greg Sargent, who is routinely decried on the right (and some parts of the left) as a DNC stenographer. But he seems to have read CBS’ debate numbers correctly.

We would also note this from Joe Scarborough (insert eyeroll and groan here, but note that this is an admission against interest for Joe):

So when people see more of Vance, they like him. But he’s still not quite liked.

This does sort of suggest that while Vance was more polished that Walz and did a good job, it may not have been quite enough of a good job– granted again that the audience was a little more Democratic than the electorate will be (and that debate-watchers are extremely politically tuned-in individuals, unlike those crazy people out there who still remain undecided… who are these people by the way?).

This is, of course, what Trump will point to, to justify his approach, as opposed to Vance’s. But pretty clearly, and the numbers don’t like, Vance is more effective than Trump.

He’s also about 40 years younger and his brain has not half turned to soup, but we digress…

One final note: Yeah, we too remain disappointed that Vance just cannot say that the 2020 election wasn’t stolen. And Walz did nail him on that in the closing moments. Though we suspect that if Mike Pence had done what Trump wanted with regard to election certification, he probably still wouldn’t have been Trump’s running mate. Pence manifestly wasn’t the man for the 2024 moment… he still sounds like he’s stuck in about 2003, and Trump no longer needs evangelicals the way he did in 2016.