I remember a trial lawyer roundtable on Court TV in the early days of cable, F. Lee Bailey, Johnnie Cochran, and the flamboyant Gerry Spence. Spence told of his first trial, where he ripped the other side's witnesses up one side and down the other. Total annihilation.
The jury came back against him. Incredulous, Spence got a chance to chat up one of the jurors--I won 17 ways to next Sunday, how on earth could I lose??
Vance came in with huge poll negatives, well underwater, the result of months of trashing by the Democrat media slime machine. Job One was not to destroy the avuncular Tim Walz, but to sell himself. Indeed, instead of leaping for Walz's throat, he passed up a gimme and used his first statement to "introduce himself" to the American people.
Although he won conclusively on the issues, his real victory was having Walz eating out of his hand by the end instead of coming off like the monster the Dems had made him out to be. And managed to put the biased "moderators" in their place too, without leaving himself open to the charge of bullying women.
Regardless of who they said "won," the quickie polls had his favorable/unfavorable numbers in the black. The Trump/Vance ticket hardly needed more points for aggressiveness. Had he destroyed Uncle Tim Walz, any debate victory would have been Pyrrhic.
