The debate last night: meh.
The Queen Of The World and I went to some friend's house last night for a "Debate Party". This is Trump land and so the atmosphere was a whole lot different than back in Maryland. Trump threw lots of red meat to the home crowd, which everyone enjoyed. But Biden did the same for his supporters, which they no doubt enjoyed, too. Overall, I don't think that either candidate changed any minds at all.
This made me wonder what debates are all about. Way back in the day, it was really the only way for citizens to size up the candidates. The Lincoln-Douglas debates are justly famous for this, where the debate would go on for hours. It was really the only time that the crowd could get direct, unfiltered access in a pre mass-market media marketplace.That's changed, but the debates continue. Why? What do we get out of this whole brouhaha?
Partly this gives us a chance to see the two candidates in a highly stressful situation. It may be the only time we see them in a highly stressful situation. Neither candidate has any control over the other and needs to react to unanticipated circumstances. Quite frankly, this is a pretty helpful insight into how someone ticks - especially someone who will have his finger on the Doomsday Button.
I'm not sure how many people realize how important this is, or pay attention to it. Certainly there are a lot of political analysts who are talking about how Biden didn't react well to Trump, and even asked moderator Chris Wallace for help controlling the President. There may be a lot of people who didn't consciously pick up on this but who got a bad vibe about "leadership" and "strength", but this is pure speculation on my part. As far as I can tell nobody is polling or focus grouping this so all we have is conjecture.
My scoring is that Trump did much better than Biden did on this point last night. He had to react not only to Slow Joe but also to Chris Wallace who was clearly trying to help Biden. His reaction is in stark contrast to Mitt Romney who rolled over to Candy Crowley in 2012. Now it didn't really tell us anything we didn't know - that Trump is much more adaptable and thinks better on his feet in unpredictable situations - but this is confirmation that we saw with our own eyes.
Anyway, I can't see anything else that comes from the debates, but this seems pretty valuable.