A show of hands please for those who really think the second presidential debate tonight is necessary. How many voters will change their minds after tonight.
Imagine watching 90 minutes of this mud fight tonight and telling yourself, “Wow, Donald Trump was amazing! Sorry, Joe but I’m voting GOP!” It’s not going to happen. Perhaps in elections past but this year minds are made up, even set in stone for their choice.
Here’s another question: How much did you learn about either candidate’s positions during the last debate? Did anyone make it through all 90 minutes? Did any candidate actually answer the question they were asked? Five Thirty Eight writes:
Political science tends to be skeptical of general election debates. The people who are most likely to tune into debates tend to be highly informed and already engaged in politics — and thus already likely to have formed an opinion. This has become especially true in recent years as partisanship has grown stronger.
Both campaigns are aiming for undecided voters. Given the number of people who’ve voted already, how many undecideds can there actually be? The Associated Press reports somewhere between 2 and 8 percent of voters remain. That’s half of what it was in 2016.
Polls have remained remarkably stagnant despite the attacks and counter attacks by the candidates.
Yahoo News writes: Undecided voters are also the subject of equal parts fascination and derision from some members of the public who find it inexplicable that anyone could still be on the fence this late into a race with such starkly different candidates. “To be undecided in 2020, to me, you literally would have to be on an ice floe,” one political analyst said. Late night host Stephen Colbert called such people “mentally impaired unicorns.”
And lastly, this isn’t really a debate. It’s a joint appearance by the presidential candidates. We’ve been watching these since Kennedy-Nixon in 1960. Sure, some were fun over the years. But not anymore. This is painful, excruciatingly so.
Regardless, here we go again, thankfully for the last time in 2020.