Most voters have a tribe and they stick to it, come virus or high water. The (small) part of the electorate that can be swayed mostly considers the immediate future: is it looking better or worse? They could give shit one about the verbal gaffe of the day. Doesn't even register.

I think this is a thing Twitter misses about elections. People who hang out here to hyper-tweet politics are largely getting off on a kind of verbal sport with the other side. But all the points you score right *here* doesn't really count for anything *out there*.

Those voters who can be persuaded will decide based on the simplest of questions. Are things good? If they are, why fix what isn't broken? If things are bad, the voter asks: do I believe my current representation will fix it? If the answer to that is "no", the incumbent is fkd.

Everything else is just noise. Really. Pretty unsatisfying for folks who are refreshing their social media news feed every 12 minutes to get the latest (and I have been among them at times). All that crap that looks like it matters probably doesn't.