For several weeks now, virtually every political pundit here has been offering the same analysis of what Kamala Harris would have to do to if she was to stand any chance against Donald Trump in the presidential debate: She would have to provoke him into an outburst of angry, intemperate rhetoric.
Forewarned with such obvious advice, amazingly Trump let her do exactly that.
She goaded, she picked at, she provoked - and she got him - on the issue of crowd sizes at Trump rallies.
It was exactly what his own supporters had urged him not to do, get distracted by a side issue and explode in an unpresidential way. This one tipped him into a rant about illegal immigrants eating the cats, dogs and other pets of Springfield, Ohio.
She started confidently, with body language. As the two candidates walked onto the stage, Trump went straight to his lectern, but Harris crossed to where Trump was standing, her arm stretched out almost demanding the handshake, introducing herself by name. Politeness as political gesture.
Trump then had an open goal on the very first issue of the night - affordability for ordinary Americans - but failed to put the ball in the back of the net.
The moderators began the night with a question Trump has used at his rallies - asking the crowd if they felt better off now than they did four years ago (when Trump was president).
Harris was clearly nervous, and tried a classic Trump tactic of diverting into an answer she wanted to give to another question: What she would do in the future.
There has been a 21% increase in general prices since the Biden/Harris administration took over, and grocery prices have particularly hit hard on ordinary American families.
But when it came to his turn, the attack was weaker than one would have expected, not drilling into her with prices and the damage they have done to middle and working class living standards. He let her escape.
Then it was abortion, and she was on comfortable ground, able to sound empathetic and passionate, while Trump had to bob and weave, seeking refuge in states' rights and legal theories.
But that was all expected - Trump would do better on the economy, Harris would do better on abortion. And both were adhering to the main tenet of their campaign staff advice, don't lose. Roll with the jabs, but don't open yourself to a haymaker.
Trump should have done better on the issue of immigration, like the economy and areas where Harris is weak.
Again she used the Trump tactic of starting to answer the question from the moderator then suddenly veering off onto another topic, in this case the crowds at Trump rallies.
And that is where she found his trigger. She had started to defend herself on immigration with the usual answer about Trump blocking a border security bill earlier this year in Congress that would have provided many of the tough measures Republicans (and quite a few Democratic Party voters) have for several years called for. But suddenly lurched into the topic of the Trump rallies.
"And I'll tell you something, he's going to talk about immigration a lot tonight, even when it's not the subject that is being raised.
"And I'm going to actually do something really unusual, and I'm going to invite you to attend one of Donald Trump's rallies, because it's a really interesting thing to watch.
"You will see during the course of his rallies, he talks about fictional characters like Hannibal Lecter. He will talk about windmills causing cancer. And what you will also notice is that people start leaving his rallies early out of exhaustion and boredom."
The moderators asked Trump why he had killed the border control bill in Congress, but he didn't want to answer that - he wanted to talk about the rallies.
"She said, people started leaving. People don't go to her rallies. There's no reason to go. And the people that do go, she's bussing them in and paying them to be there and then showing them in a different light. So she can't talk about that.
"People don't leave my rallies, we have the biggest rallies, the most incredible rallies in the history of politics, that's because people want to take their country back.
"Our country is being lost. We're a failing nation, and it happened three-and-a-half years ago. And what's going on here?
"You're going to end up in World War Three - just to go into another subject - what they have done to our country by allowing these millions and millions of people to come into our country and look at what's happening to the towns all over the United States.
"A lot of towns don't want to talk about it because they're so embarrassed by it. In Springfield, they're eating the dogs, the people that came in, they're eating the cats. They're eating, they're eating the pets of the people that live there.
"And this is what's happening in our country, and it's a shame. As far as rallies are concerned, as far as the reason they go is, they like what I say. They want to bring our country back. They want to make America great again, very simple phrase, make America great again.
"She's destroying this country, and if she becomes president, this country doesn't have a chance of success, we’ll will end up being Venezuela on steroids."
From then on it was plain enough sailing for Harris. She had the upper hand and didn’t need to try too hard - making very few attempts to come back into the conversation, unlike Trump who sought out more and more rebuttal time after every answer.
It was almost as if she had turned the tables on the Trump-Biden debate in June - where she wanted Trump to do more talking because he was undermining his own case.
Harris needed to appear presidential, to appear like someone who could hold their own in a stressful situation up against a larger than life personality. It was a big ask.
She was able to achieve that, after a shaky start, in no small part thanks to Donald Trump and his inability to control himself and use his opponent's weaknesses - of which there are many - to his advantage.
But he was strangely passive when it counted, and raging and at times incoherent when it was not worth it. He allowed her to take the fight to him.
Instead of taking on his actual opponent, he instead confronted his own worst enemy - himself.
