From Monmouth's latest polling, released yesterday:
"About 3 in 4 voters (74%) plan to watch the first presidential debate live on Tuesday night, although just 3% say that they are very likely to hear something that will impact their eventual vote choice. Another 10% say this is somewhat likely to happen.... These results are practically identical to a Monmouth poll taken right before the first debate in September 2016, when 75% planned to watch that event live while very few said it was likely to affect their vote (2% very and 10% somewhat)."
Since about a quarter of voters don't intend to watch tonight's debate, we may assume that they are part of the largely resolute 87%. Patrick Murray, Monmouth's director of polling, framed the viewership in a sports metaphor: "The audience for these debates are voters who already have a rooting interest in one side or the other." After all, how many spectators, indifferent as to who wins, attend a baseball or football game?
Added Murray: "The spin and media framing after the fact is more important for potentially moving the small group of persuadable voters who remain." According to Monmouth's polling, that persuadable group hovers somewhere in the 10% to 13% range, unless a significant portion just wanted to impress the surveyor by sounding open-minded.
To me, however, any persuadable voter — at this late stage — is just plain frightening. Anyone who isn't by now convinced that Trump is an irredeemable, treacherous scoundrel is either so ill informed or uselessly naive as to be nearly as dangerous as Trump to the republic's welfare. There is, quite simply, no excuse for any unincarcerated citizen to entertain even the temptation to cast a ballot for a shockingly unAmerican US president.
But they're out there — millions of them. And so Biden must play the debate game. Yesterday E.J. Dionne populated his column with five recommendations on how the former vice president should proceed (remind — often — the audience that "they cannot believe a word Trump is saying," don't be defensive, etc.).
Biden should be able to go on stage, point at Trump, say to the audience, Are you kidding me? — and then leave. But, no, he must play the game.