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Ahmari gifted the audience with something I haven’t seen in a while: the conservative perspective on immigration centered on the idea that immigrants themselves suffer with things how they are today. On the one hand, illegal immigrants drive down wages; he castigated the wealthy liberals and big businesses who profit from cheap labor and forcefully argued that there’s really no such job that “Americans won’t do,” just ones they’ve been priced out of. Even more powerfully, he asked the audience to consider the position of an undocumented worker, unable to do anything about being exploited, shut out of the criminal justice system unless they themselves are arrested, living in fear. It’s a great argument—so great that it used to be the Democratic Party’s, which Ahmari repeatedly pointed out with ever-increasing glee.

Here’s where the event’s cracked axis revealed itself: His argument didn’t belong on the same stage as Coulter’s, neither did he, and it showed. One of my personal pleasures during the debate was watching Ahmari physically shrink to the side of his chair, repelled by Coulter’s outsized (if also skeletal) presence. I sensed the audience shrinking away from her a bit as well. The post-debate text poll showed a swing of the “don’t shut” side by eight points: 63 percent for “shutting” and 37 percent against. (No word yet if they’ll follow up the poll after everyone in the audience completes Coulter’s racist homework.)

At the after-party (as one does), I found the better-dressed and older contingent of the audience positively giddy. Conversation bubbled with compliments for Weiss and the event. “I just love what she’s doing,” one gentleman in a fleece vest told me. “What a great debate!” I heard from another man in a fleece vest. The near-universal sentiment was that Coulter came out on the losing end, at least in terms of her approach: “It wasn’t a good argument” and, “She didn’t do her side any favors.” I forwarded the assessment, “Well, she’s an unrepentant racist,” in almost every conversation and got in response everything from, “Well, I wouldn’t say that,” to wholehearted agreement, though one woman who had come to the same conclusion pivoted unexpectedly. Coulter was clearly a hateful xenophobe, yes, “And I loved that I got to hear every word she said.”