You want to know the problem?
Obviously both candidates suck, but The questions the moderators ask, can just be ignored by the candidates. There hasn’t been a good moderator in years, if ever. No one insists that the questions be answered and they continually ignore them.
Hold the candidates’ feet to the fire. Don’t let them go off tangent. Slap them down and insist on an answer to the question. They don’t want to answer? Cut their mic and move to the other candidate who might actually answer it.
Too many times during the debate were questions like abortion and climate asked, they were just ignored.
One of Trump’s debates, Anderson Cooper kept grilling him on something he refused to answer about. At one point he declared that Trump is refusing to answer that question, explicitly. It was probably the best moderation I’ve ever seen.
Then in one of the primaries, one of the moderators called Pete Buttigieg a liar after he said their information was false and corrected them (he in fact was not lying). That was possibly the worst moderation I’ve ever seen.
At least in this one they would say “the question was…” when they didn’t actually answer.
The problem is that the Trump and Biden camps set the rules at this debate.
The moderators were not allowed to live fact check, nor could they cut the candidate’s mic during their allotted time.
This means that the responsibility of countering Trump’s lies fell completely on Biden. There are so many lies, it would be a difficult task for any person.
But Biden signed up for this, and he failed spectacularly. None of Trump’s bullshit was effectively countered.
the responsibility of countering Trump’s lies fell completely on Biden.
Hitchen’s razor should apply, but this wasn’t really a debate in the first place. Hell, neither of these geezers is prepared to properly debate and their prep teams are just tic tacs and ice cream.