Last night’s vice-presidential debate cannot have been much fun for the Harris-Walz campaign team. For those of us who cannot wait to see the last of Donald Trump, the exchanges between JD Vance and Tim Walz were frequently crazy-making, so much so that I had to resort to my tried-and-true distraction method of doing an on-line crossword puzzle while mostly paying attention to what was on the television screen.

Vance seemed more in control, more polished, even though much of what he had to say was untrue. Walz seemed, at least at times, nervous and stumbling. Most important, he was frequently unable to take advantage of opportunities to effectively challenge the lies Vance told, or push back on the reframing of Vance’s image. In the process, he helped Vance present a more acceptable version of himself than we have seen over the course of his political career.

Does it matter? We are constantly told that vice-presidential debates don’t matter and that might in most cases be true, but not all cases are the same. Trump is nearing 80 and clearly failing and it was important to the GOP to have Vance on stage looking like he could take over if the need does arise. Maybe he did that, maybe that will matter. As well, it is clear that Vance’s goal was to take some of the rough edges off of what he had previously said on a number of issues and to help with Trump’s image in the same way.

For his part, Walz failed to challenge this new image Vance was presenting; he mostly failed to explain why the new and improved JD Vance was a mirage. Vance had a goal, and he largely achieved it. Walz should have at the very least made it less easy for Vance to look so normal, and he failed.

Democrats will rightly make a great deal out of the final moments of the debate during which Vance refused to say that Trump lost in 2020. The Harris-Walz team is already out with an ad on the topic and it’s a good one. It was a good moment for Walz because it brought things back to how crazy and radical Trump and Vance are and helped to challenge the normalizing exercise that Vance so effectively executed in the first 90 minutes.

But I think Democrats need to be honest with themselves. Vance did himself and Trump some good by making the night seem like a fairly polite exchange of ideas without very much rancour. For Harris-Walz to win, voters need to see the Trump ticket as dangerous and radical. Vance might have helped with some of that, and with some key voting groups like women voters. That’s the takeaway.

In the coming weeks, though, there is another consideration. Trump can’t help himself. After the first assassination attempt, it was frequently said that it would make him a more sympathetic character. It was suggested that he would moderate his tone, present himself as less Trumpy. He couldn’t do it.

Whatever marginal gains Vance may have secured in the debate, Trump will squander them. He will squander them in no small part because it was someone else leading the charge. Trump can’t stand that. He is incapable of riffing off of someone else’s help. He will need to make it his own. As he does that, he will lead everything back to the land of the crazy and we will all forget what happened on October 1st.