Kamala Harris and Tim Walz have now wrapped up their CNN interview. On social media and cable television, the reaction has been mixed pretty much as expected. Democrats are calling it a home run. Republicans are sour and rude. The truth is, the interview was a solid and competent outing, and that’s all it should have been.

Harris, who is sometimes prone to circuitous ramblings, seemed confident and handled some tough questions reasonably well, such as why she changed her position on fracking. She had a strong answer when asked how she was thinking about her future when Joe Biden called her: Her first thought was about the president, not herself, which is exactly the right thing to say, regardless of what thoughts were going through her head at the time.

She was less convincing when asked whether she still believes illegal border crossings should be decriminalized (a position she took when she ran for president in 2019). On CNN, she said she would enforce U.S. laws at the border. Well, “enforcing the laws” is what presidents take an oath to do. “I recognize the problem,” she added, which is another way of saying that things she said in a Democratic primary four years ago won’t help in a 2024 general election.

Her weakest answer was also about Biden. When asked if she regretted assuring Americans that Biden would have four more years, she had only nice things to say about Biden and was proud of the administration’s record. A simpler answer hung there: Joe Biden believes I have a better chance of beating Donald Trump; it was his decision to make, and if he had decided to stay in the race, I would still support him. End.

Walz, meanwhile, said very little, undermining predictions from some on the right that he was there to tackle Harris as she pulled sticks from a precarious verbal Jenga stack. Instead, he quietly dodged questions about his military service and his family’s fertility problems; though Republicans won’t like his answers, he was smart not to launch into an analysis of whether he’d served in wartime or the differences between in vitro fertilization and intrauterine insemination. Instead, he said he would never disapprove of anyone’s military service and lamented the way the GOP wants to limit women’s options.

In effect, Harris did what presidential candidates are supposed to do: After running as a liberal in California and in the 2020 primaries, she’s now moving to the center. Such a simple, commonsense strategy may seem unusual in our weakened political environment, and some of the answers will irritate political observers because they lack substance. But avoiding these policy traps remains a wise choice: Harris and Walz are running against Donald Trump, who doesn’t care about policy and will change his position in a heartbeat if he thinks it’s to his advantage. (Note his recent comments on abortion, which his team is already trying to walk back, and his new position in the past 24 hours on public funding for IVF.)

At one point, when asked about Trump’s racist accusation that Harris somehow “just happened to turn black” a few years ago, Harris said, “Same old tired playbook. Next question.” This dismissal is likely to irritate Trump, who is counting on his opponents to take the bait and then go all out trying to emphasize how awful Trump is while still trying to sound reasonable. The Harris-Walz strategy seems to be aimed at brushing off Trump’s worst attacks and instead reassuring them that they are normal people with some ideas about how to run the country.

Trump is unlikely to sit for this kind of questioning until November, in no small part because he can’t hold a coherent thought for more than a few moments. So Harris had only to draw comparisons based on broad policy directions and clear character distinctions. Republicans hoping that Harris would get lost in her own rhetoric or make a stunning gaffe, or that Walz would interrupt or seemingly drown her out, will be disappointed. None of that happened, and so the GOP will naturally complain that there weren’t enough details to criticize.

For example, Scott Jennings, the new holder of CNN’s Jeffrey Lord Chair of Republican Sycophancy, seemed irritated that Harris would not express “contrition” for the policies Biden has implemented. It’s an odd objection: Sitting vice presidents seeking to succeed their bosses typically don’t express deep regret for their own administrations’ policies. Republicans may be more concerned that Harris and Walz were given this opportunity to respond to points they’re almost certain to get in the coming debates. The Democratic team got to test out some of the field’s most obvious lines of attack.

This meeting was not a turning point. Nothing much changed, nothing new was revealed, and no one made any major mistakes. If Trump’s team was hoping for something to happen here to change the momentum of the race, this wasn’t it. So now they must look ahead to the debates. But if the Democratic candidates’ calm assurance is a preview of how Harris and Walz will approach them, Republicans—and especially Trump, who has been in a public meltdown for weeks—should be worried.