I’m a politics nerd. I freaking love debates. But I also understand why they’ve fallen out of favor.
In today’s media-saturated environment, people’s attention is fractured. Fewer people are willing to watch a full hour live, and so few people are actually persuadable that it doesn’t really make sense for candidates to take the risk and invest the time. Campaigns would rather control the message than take the risk of a real back-and-forth.
If debates were truly decisive, Dan Forest would be governor right now. He absolutely clobbered Roy Cooper in the one and only debate of 2020.
The bigger issue is that general election debates can only do so much. By the fall, most voters already know what a Democrat and a Republican are going to say on the biggest topics. The choice is clear. A debate might confirm impressions, and it can reveal competence and temperament, but it rarely helps you discover what’s actually different.
Primaries, though, are where debates really matter.
In a primary, vote…
