Screaming into the void, I query: Is the televised political debate as antedated as political televangelism in general? Did last night's debate matter in terms of changing minds?
It is possible that there were some truly undecided viewers last night who may have been influenced to vote for either Clinton or Trump. But those would have been few in number, I think.
Mostly it was (as it was intended to be) spectacle, the hope of most viewers being that one or both candidates would fail spectacularly and thus obviate the need to worry about the election itself.
On those grounds, the debate actually favored Trump, in that he was about as bad as expected, and not disastrously worse.
And if he takes his poor performance to heart and works a lot harder on the next two "debates", then Clinton is in trouble -- she won't get any better than she was last night, and she didn't knock Trump out when he was at his worst.
