RW media is saying Wallace ambushed T by giving him the softest softball question in the softball question Olympics of "will you condemn white nationalism" so how do folks expect aggressively shutting the president down would have gone down? https://mobile.twitter.com/Johnubacon/status/1311167519856746496

If the guy with the nukes has so little self control that you need your moderator to aggressively manage him to get him to not beclown the nation, follow simple rules, and shut up for five seconds, the problem isn't the moderator.

It is important for voters to see them unvarnished and unfiltered by the networks, and the more artificially enforced moderation you put there, the less voters will see the candidates as they are under pressure, and the more the story will be about playing the refs and moderators

Everyone wants the debates to be "my gentle honorable friend wants to raise taxes by 2%, but sir, I hesitate to posit to you that 1.5% is the better figure" or whatever, but that's just not the decision facing the nation.

For literally both parties, there is only one issue. Trump. Republicans want more. Democrats want less. And every second of the debate not spent showing exactly what that is in its rawest base form is a second wasted on irrelevance.

Trump literally cancelled having a manefesto because he *is* the manefesto, and democrats could have picked a scarecrow with a blue badge and a baseball cap that says "not trump" and the election would be basically the same

Everyone deeply internally wants to pretend that there's something more profound and intellectual under the surface of the choice, but there just isn't, and the metadebate is just everyone being super uncomfortable with that

You visit the zoo to see the animals, not to watch the zookeeper put the leopard back in the cage every time it acts like a leopard. The questions are a pretext to get them to show who they are. It's why people tune in.