Tim Walz has said he’s an inexperienced debater, and he didn’t refute that Tuesday night during the first and only vice presidential debate of 2024.

Kamala Harris’ running mate came off nervous, a bit like a deer in the headlights, and far less shiny than his rival, Ohio Senator J.D. Vance.

“(Democrats) are fortunate that presidential debates are much more important than VP debates,” Dave Wasserman, editor-in-chief of the nonpartisan Cook Political Report, aptly noted.

Walz, the governor of Minnesota, had a particularly bad moment when he was asked to explain his repeated untruths about his presence in China during the student-led Tiananmen Square protests of 1989. (Walz spent a lot of time in China, but started there a few months later.)

The Minnesota governor’s attempt at an answer was clumsy and unsatisfactory. Finally, he blurted out, “I haven’t been perfect. And sometimes I’m an idiot.” He should have responded to that, probably by saying that he made a mistake about something that happened 35 years ago and that he regrets the mistake.

The confident and smooth Vance, on the other hand, may have won the debate on points, although his constant addressing of the female moderators, Norah O’Donnell and Margaret Brennan, by their first names, got on the nerves of more than a few women. (“I want JD Vance to stop saying ‘Margaret’ in that creepy way,” wrote writer Sophie Vershbow on X.)

He seemed eager to come across as a nice guy, chatting quickly about his humble Appalachian roots while showing off his Ivy League polish. By delving deeply into the character of Hillbilly Elegy—and steering clear of his silly talk about the misery of childless cat ladies and the need to monitor menstrual cycles—he’s probably improved his own chances of one day becoming president .

But none of that would matter in the presidential election just five weeks away. It is far from the heart of the matter: that Trump has proven himself to be a danger to America and to the world, and completely unfit to be elected president again.

Asked to explain how he could have criticized Trump in the past and now be willing to loyally stand by his side, Vance claimed he had been misled by media lies. Complete nonsense.

By the end of the debate, Walz had found his feet, especially when the CBS News moderators belatedly brought up the topic that should have started the debate, instead of their initial question about the growing conflicts in the Middle East.

But many Americans had undoubtedly already gone to bed by the time Vance began spreading revisionist history — essentially corollary lies — about Trump’s role in the January 6 riot and his desire to overturn the 2020 election. A role, let us remember, for which he was rightly dropped.

Vance tried to portray Trump as only pushing for peaceful demonstrations, when in fact the then-president incited the riot at the Capitol.

Now Walz was ready to strike.

“Mike Pence made the right decision,” Walz said, making an obvious point about the former vice president refusing to heed Trump’s wishes that day. “This was a threat to our democracy in a way we had never seen before.”

Walz added a blatant truth: “And that’s why Pence is not on this stage.”

That, of course, is the real problem: that Trump’s vice president did the right thing after the 2020 election and that his boss sided with the people who wanted him hanged for it. The two are done with each other. Vance is a late opportunist.

In the closing minutes of the debate, Walz had his best moment when he challenged his rival with this essential question:

“Trump still says he didn’t lose the election. Did he lose the 2020 election?”

Vance attempted a non-sequitur comeback: “Did Kamala Harris Censor Americans?”

To which Walz shot back, “That’s a damn non-answer.”

He was right about that. Trump’s lies and his destructive refusal to peacefully transfer power are exactly why JD Vance stood on that stage.

Vance may have had the upper hand on tone and presentation. But Walz is on the side of democracy and the peaceful transfer of power. I call that a victory.