President ial debate between kennedy and nixon. Heres a picture of them that shows really the problem. The very first televised president ial debate was between these two men in 1960. The idea did not come from the candidates or the political parties, it came from the networks. Kennedy quickly accepted. Nixon, against the advice of many, also accepted. That now widely thought 1960 seven debate was a disaster for nixon, who had been sick, who had eight no effort to cover up his 5 00 shadow, and who looked bad compared to the tan and rested jack kennedy. As you can see in these photographs, nixon is wiping sweat from his face. Those who heard the debate on radio thought nixon had won. Those who saw it on tv had thought kennedy had won. The first president ial Campaign Debate show the incredible impact of television and added a new requirement to president ial candidates. That they be telegenic. 16 years passed between the first and second debate in 1976, when president gerald ford agreed to debate jimmy carter. That debate, along with an amendment from the communications act, solidify the tradition, and we have had debates ever since. It is not surprising that some of the greatest debate moments ever were had by candidates and then present i candidate and then president Ronald Reagan. The Fall Campaign in 1980, reagan and carter were neck and neck in the polls. In the following clip from reagans 1980 debate against president jimmy carter, he asked the question that many think was responsible for his subsequent landslide victory. Are you better off today than you were four years ago . Next tuesday a lot of you will go to the polls and stand there in the polling place and make a decision. I think when you make that decision, it might be well if you would ask yourself, are you better off than you were four years ago . Is it easier for you to go and buy things in the stores than it was four years ago . Is there more or less unemployment in the country than there was four years ago . Is america as respected throughout the world as it was . Do you feel that our security is as safe, that we are as strong as we were four years ago . If you answer all of those questions yes, then i think your choice is very obvious. Who to vote for. If you do not agree, if you do not think that this course that we have been on for the last four years is what you would like to see us follow for the i could suggest another choice that you have. Four years later, president reagan was running against jimmy carters Vice President , walter mondale. In his first debate, things did not go so well. Reagan appeared old and confused in a performance that led many to wonder if he was too old for the job. But in his second debate, reagan had a memorable come back. Watch. Mr. President , i want to raise an issue i think has been looking for two or three weeks and casted in National Security terms. Already are the oldest president in history, and some of your staff say you were tired after your most recent encounter with mr. Mondale. Kennedy,that president who had to go for days on end with very little sleep during the cuban missile crisis is there any doubt in your mind you would be able to function in some circumstances . Not at all. I want you to know that also i will not make age an issue of this campaign. I am not going to exploit for political purposes my opponents youth and inexperience. [laughter and applause] in 1988, Massachusetts GovernorMichael Dukakis was running against Vice President george h. W. Bush. It was a close race, but dukakis was not helped when, in the second debate, he gave the following answer to moderator bernard shaw. Watch and see if you can see what is missing there. Dukakisnor, if kitty were raped and murdered, would you favor an irrevocable Death Penalty for the killer . No, i dont, bernard, and i think you know i proposed the death shy oppose the Death Penalty my life. I dont see that it is a deterrent and are better and more effective ways to do with violent crime. We have done some in my own state, which is one of the reasons why we had the biggest drop in crime of any industrial state in america, why we have the lowest murder rate of any industrial state in america. Michael dukakis was not the only president ial candidate to insufficiently empathetic during a debate. Have a look at this photo from the 1990 debate when president bush was caught checking his watch during an exchange with a woman who asked about the impact of the recession on him. Clintons response came as a stark contrast to bushs seeming indifference. ,ets move on to the next photo which shows that sometimes you dont need to say anything to hurt your debate performance. During the 2000 debate between Vice President al gore and Texas Governor george w. Bush, gore, thinking the camera was not on him, grimaced and sighed loudly while bush was talking. Saturday night live made merciless fun of him, as had many other politicians. The satire frankly solidify the impression that gore was just rude and arrogant. And in his 2016 debate against ,illary clinton, donald trump repeatedly invaded her space, keeping the camera on him and his looming presence. Hello, everyone. Can you hear me . Im back. Ok. I am back with our two distinguished panelists, after that little tour of previous president ial debates and highlights from those, and so i thought ed start our discussion today with going to russ. Russ come as you know, because you have been involved with them, has as have i, right now at this moment, presumably both trump and biden are seriously involved with something called debate prep. So what is debate prep . Can you tell the audience what happens . Is interesting is that debate prep starts, and in a normal campaign in normal years in normal times, debate prep starts often literally months in advance, where the candidate will get his Team Together and start thinking about what questions could possibly be asked. And what answers would they want to put together and give. I have been involved with where the candidate has literally had a notebook, with a question and then their answer specifically. The very small number of people to get him kind of prepped for these debates because he realized it was going to be a big deal, and it is something he needed to perform well with. As you get closer, you start to have backandforth sessions with a staff and they will throw questions out and try to get you to think on your feet quickly, and then news of the day and headlines of the day and try to throw them at you. And as you get to the week before, you will have literally debate sessions where you find someone to play your opponent, like nick romney that mitt romney in 2012 had someone who is playing barack obama. In the Vice President s debate, someone was playing joe biden, which was a great choice, and it was very interesting. Be asmock debates can specific as you want. Some of them can be sort of around Kitchen Table or around a big conference table, but in some cases you literally recreate a set, you have the distancetly they are going to be, exactly the height, you try to create the same situations, you try to get someone to play the moderator or moderators, and you run through with an hour, an hour and a half with no breaks, no stops, and come back and have a peek at the performance afterwards. Dick cheney, famously, was want to have reversals at the exact same time as the debate would be occurring, so he would have the debate was going to occur at 8 00 tonight, he would want to have a full run through at 8 00 at night. In fact, there was probably no one more disciplined in the way he approached debate prep then Vice President cheney was in 2000 and the 2004 campaigns. Romney was a little bit of both. He likes to sit around and have conversations about his policy and potential answers to questions. But when it came time to have a game day situation, there was very serious mock debate moving into the session. That normally happens. Other candidates just want to sit around and toss questions out. Other candidates, there is no discipline. Our experience is that a small number of people are much better at debate than a large group, then in a debate session where there are 15 plus people in the room. Any time you get 15 or more people in a room with a president ial candidate, everybody has to be the smarts person in the room and everybody has to tell the candidate exactly how to answer the question even though it has already been answered and has been answered well. Things wind up becoming not particularly protective, and productive, and have seen candidates literally kick everybody out and reestablish a debate practice may be an hour later with a smaller core of maybe three or four people. The other thing that we kind of like to start thinking about, kind of the strategy of the debate. What kind of debate you want . We always kind to freeze it in terms of do you what a hot debate oracle debate. A hot debate is in general a hot debate or a cold debate. You might want to try to get an unforcedt into error. A cool debate, you are ahead, you really dont want anything to happen. You want the News Headlines the next day to be candidates , candidates mix it up in cleveland. Those are the kinds of headlines that cool debates give you. Hot debate usually wind up having an outcome that can evenbly change some votes if it is just temporarily. It helps you kind of with the next three to five days in the new cycle. I also have heard over the years that sometimes the president ial candidates, if the standin opponent is doing a really good job, the candidate gets really mad at them and says that they are so in the role. Replaced george bush and the debate i was in with al gore. Al gore got really mad at him, like, all, how could you say these things . So ould be george bush, absolutely. We had a session once i will not say who the candidate was where we literally had to take a break and the candidate walked out of the room and we had to start a halfhour later and everybody had to say they were sorry and we apologized and went back into it again. Exactly. , you wrote a book about this a long time ago. You keep writing about media and the politics of communications. Where does the mastery of the media come in in a president ial debate . Kathleen a lot of people say it is in the opening. The 1960 example where the presumption is that it was an advantage for nexen, the reverser candidly, one of the study we need to say is a it was so small and in academic term so underpowered commit can establish that. Intuitively it just seems to be true. And you listen to the debates and will and youre seeing something about how humans process information. The visuals through which we communicate, the tone of voice that you can hear, are all communicating things beyond what you can see. To the extent that they are consistent with the message that says competent, shares my values, trustworthy, that is beneficial for the candidate. Television, of television as a media has the capacity to do you win if you are a candidate. If you look at the split screen with trump and with clinton in 2016, trump knows he is on camera in split screen. He is grimacing, nodding, scowling, drawing attention away from Hillary Clintons answers. It is distracting and reframing. You saw it verbally in the 1960 campaign when the camera cuts away to nexen and nexen is seen nodding as if he agrees with something that candidate is actually saying. To the extent that the medium is the vehicle through which we see the debates, the candidates and the producers capacities to what we are seeing and experiencing can exact how we perceive it in very different ways than if we were sitting in a live auditorium. Let me ask both of you i guess i will start with kathleen and go to russ. Do these debates matter . Can you pick if you have to pick a debate where it seems like it had an impact on the substantive vote, which one would you pick, or which two or three . Pick 1976. Would it is interesting and complex. The question frame it for our viewers who might be younger than we are. Task an the press answer by gerald ford and i can max frankel, who made the question and repeatedly followed it up implied that it was a mistake, and people who watched the debate before theyre totally be a commentary afterwards made nothing of it. People who saw the media, terry after it perceived it was problematic before. That tells us that the Media Coverage of the debate, the median interpretation framing of the debate can have an effect just like different exposure from the debate itself. The reason i would pick that as an example of the case in which it may have affected the outcome is that for lag in the polls in the area immediately after the debate, and he held his ground and said i did not make a mistake. The policy that u. S. President s had held over an extended period, that is they refused to grant the soviet unions right to be in eastern europe, and that is that the soviet union did not dominate, saying this is our policy and we will not grant it. Poland altering, he was vindicated historically. Affirming the peoples right to sovereignty. He failed to apologize for something about wish he wasnt wrong. That is potentially a media effect. But nonetheless, he was closing on carter in the polls and had he continued to close at the rate he was before the debate, he would have won that election. Elaine russ, can you think of one . I dont know if it was a complete game changer, but i will talk about the one that i think we are most familiar with was in 2012, where you remember the first debate between mitt , whoy and president obama was widely affected that obama did not bring his a game nor his b again, and possibly brought his c game, and mitt romney was on fire. Very good, solid debate, and it really helped to the campaign helped the campaign with momentum moving forward. With kind of a push, the second debate. The third debate was a foreign ball as policy debate. That is where mitt romney said russia is our greatest geopolitical foe, where he said the 1960s called and the 80s want their Foreign Policy back. Momentum, any momentum that we had moving into that had stopped, and it was the last debate, so the campaign was really set. There are a couple of big moments and campaigns the conventions are one, nominating youre Vice President is another, and debates are another where there is a set piece wherefrom that maybe the dynamic in change. And maybe it doesnt change completely, the trajectory of the race, but what it does is it changes it for a while. And being the last debate, that really changed the direction. It seems that obama had gotten the upper hand on romney in the last debate, and for the next two and half, three weeks, then we had hurricane sandy, and it was just starting for romney to start going down. Our polling showed that we were very competitive to that point, we never won in the states that we needed to win. That would be the one that i would point to. Elaine it is interesting. We have seen incumbent president s. Sometimes they screw up their first debate, and i wonder if it is a that we had obama, we had bush i think you could say gerald ford. I think you could probably say jimmy carter in the debate against reagan. Russ and reagan in 1984. Elaine i wonder what that is. They feel like there are so many other important things to do, why do i have to sit in here in this room with my aids for two days and answer questions and, you know, they probably resist doing the sort of debate prep that they should be doing. Russ it is very different. As you know, when youre in a campaign over a long period with a candidate, maybe even a governor or a senator or a Vice President , there is an ability, a familiarity that you have two go back and forth in a giveandtake. You are not sitting with the guy who is the candidate or the woman who is the candidate who might have been the senator or governor. Youre are now sitting with the president of the United States and you are giving the president United States criticizing his record in a way that, you know, they dont like to hear, that they are not used to hearing, and so, you know, i think you pull your punches. All of a sudden they are facing the candidate now and the entire job is to punch the opponent in the face as hard as he can, and i think that they just got used to taking a punch. What you see is often they recover from that in the second and third debates. Elaine kathleen, what do you think is going on now in the debate that is coming tomorrow night . How do you think each campaign kind of dog to something that will change a little bit of the course of this campaign . Its been remarkably stable. Recents a chart in the brookings piece that i did that shows that from february 1, this justeptember 22, hasnt moved very much. When you think of all the dramatic things that have happened in between a pandemic, black lives matter, conventions, etc. , it is the stability of the race that is astonishing. So what could they hope to accomplish tomorrow night . The thingsne of about the perspective of stability is that is the national perspective, not a state perspective. For practical purposes, it is focused on not simply better ground states, bat battleground states Reach Campaign thanks there are voters who can either orpersuaded or mobilized demobilized to their advantage. ,hile we talk in National Terms the question is how is it going to be perceived in the battleground states . The first question one would ask in this environment is, what are the issues that matter most to those who are most persuadable in the attic on states that i need to mobilize order up or demoralize that or demobilized voters down, and what can i do to change the issues in which they focus to my advantage. Because the debate moderator in the first debate sets the topic, that means topics have already been framed by Chris Wallace. We are in an environment where the votes are being cast right now in most states now. You are able to think not about what im i going to be doing on november 3, but when am i going to cast the ballot i have either received or not received. Messaging usually creates shortterm impact. The last debate happened long before a person cast a vote on election day. We are now in an environment where the ballot needs to be cast right after the debate. People may decide to fill it out that night. We may have a greater capacity to create debate impact than in past years. There was a greater capacity in 2016 than in 2012 because we had more early voting. We will have a storm of early voting this year. Undecideds on average looks substantially lower than in 2016. The question then becomes does the proximity of the debate to the voting decision increase the likelihood that those who will vote will be and then from a candidates perspective, are they addressing the issues that matter, focusing on things that if you focus on it, youre more likely to put for that candidate. Elaine last night there was some pretty bombshell news, which i was watching the football game, so i wasnt paying much attention to it. I had put my phone away and everything. I woke up this morning to see that trumps up tax returns are finally out. How are they going to play that . I mean, will that become the first question tonight . Russ you would think so. You would think Chris Wallace would ask that outofthebox, and you would think that President Trump will have an answer to that. They were talking about that a little bit yesterday. That he is a complicated businessman, i have had a lot of investments, and this is you know, with President Trump, you start the normal rules dont seem to apply. The normal rules are kind of rules that political dont seem to be part of it. Hit attack him for it. They will go back and forth on it, and it will come out kind of a wash at the end. I think it will depend upon, our people, as kathleen said, at home in pennsylvania and michigan and florida are they going to feel offended in some way that they pay a lot more in taxes than the president of the United States does . And theoretically he is a billionaire. So it may not be quite in the back and forth that we will see on the stage, but in kind of how it is framed and how people you really want to say not how they think about it, but really truly how they feel about it. Point,hink to kathleens there are a lot of voters who are having a ballot where they say i made up my mind, biden is the guy, i made up my mind, trump is the guy. You have the early deciders that are likely influenced by that first debate. But i think there will be a bunch of people who will say we will wait for the second debate. Wait for the third debate. People will be mailing in their balance toward the last week when they feel like the game has been played. Do you call it in the First Quarter or the Fourth Quarter with football . You always have to wait for the four quarter the Fourth Quarter if youre watching the patriots. Interestingother thing about the late deciders, to the extent that there are many, is that those late deciders in a couple of campaigns really were impacted by the debates. A lot of people think that in at0, jimmy carter had a shot holding onto his presidency, but they schedule that debate so late in the game. It was october 29. I think maybe, kathleen, that was the latest president ial debate ever. And because it was so late, and because Ronald Reagan managed to switch the narrative on himself and was not a scary warmonger but this nice of a killer man avuncular man. Kill i cannot think of any other debates that had that clearcut impact. Kathleen, can you think of any that fall in that category echo kathleen one of the things that we look at is are you able to study it well enough to answer the question. The question historically is, how do you locate the audience that is going to watch the debate and study it . Then how do you look at the was covering the press coverage afterwards . You cannot parcel those things thaturing to the extent the interpretation frames the debate as you watch the debates to a channel that provides interpretation, it is difficult to separate them. Whenever people ask the question can you know if, my answer is academically we will never have the method underlying to do that because certainly we can answer certain kinds of questions. Debate exposure does change attitudes that we have been able to track, but then you are studying how People Project based on that. You dont know how they in the burke in the book cyber war, about russian hackers, i argue that those who watched the debate, the second and third debate, compared to those who did not watch them, controlling for everything else, im more likely to say that Hillary Clinton says one thing in public and another in private. In each debate that issue was russian text illegally gotten brushing context. Say thatlinton did not she was in favor of open borders. In the second case she was using part of a seconds sentence talking about open tray, open borders sometime in the future, and the rest talked about energy. So we see in those debates a change of perception about she says one thing in public and another in private, and those who have that change perception say they are more likely to vote for donald trump rather than Hillary Clinton. I go through that says that debate exposure changes that attitude. I believe that mattered in a close election. Can i establish it, not principally enough. One of the quickest ways to understand this is in a close election, everything matters. Russ it all counts. Landslides, something matters, so were trying to parse out what it is, what is it. Take the audience questions, what this trump have to do tomorrow night to try to catch up with biden . What does biden have to do to hold on to what looks like a hold, looks like a lead, including in the battleground states because we have seen a lot of bowling in the battleground states, too. What is their goal. When the debated ocean, when the debate is over, what headlines do they want . Russ i will go back to my hot debate, cold debate and analogy. Im sure if youre in trump debate press, you want to say it is a hot debate. You are good and hot. If you have been a cool sort of kind of sleepy, donald trump showing up to debate, that would be good. He is going to prosecute his case against joe biden, is going to throw out my guess is he throws out, you know, his 40your political career, his family, anything that he can think of to try to rattle biden because he wants to fix it up. So that the story becomes anything but Donald Trumps his donald trump and and the coronavirus. Make it about Something Else. You dont like the way the conversation is going, change it. Hes a master at that. Probably better than anyone in changing the conversation. To he wants to get biden chase him down that rabbit hole. Probablyher hand, you he wants to project himself as being a president , project himself as kind of his weaknesses, candy kind of stand up there for a period of time and take the questions . Is he articulate . Does he seem like he still has it at 77 years of age . You look at reagan in 1984, i believe he was 72 at the time. And now we have a candidate for president who is five years older than that. A cools is they want debate. I dont think youre going to get a headline either way, unless something unforeseen happens that is going to be determinant in any kind of big way. I think Trump Supporters will think theyre going to do well, i think that biden supporters think their guy will do well. There are a few people at the margin who have a scorecard trying to figure out who to vote for. But my guess is that they will still wait a little bit longer. Elaine let me reframe the question. I think that each candidate should want to ensure that voters do not vote based on misinformation about their actual positions, and i think we ought to want no voter to vote based on misinformation about position. So of those things that are consequential to a vote, we want the debate to clarify so that people actually know what the candidates have done and say they will do. That means that perceptions about the extent to which who will be taxed by joe biden needs to be clarified for biden. It means defunding the police needs to be clarified. And whatve perceptions he would do in relation to funding with the police. He needs to clarify so that voters do not base on misperceptions. Is confusionthere about trump with Social Security and medicare, that the democrats are trying to increase the likelihood that donald trump in his second term will destroy Social Security and medicare. That is not what he intends to do. Clarify it, make it really clear. Voters tend to be deceived believing the things that they believe about and not thinking critically and looking carefully at what is in the record. So democrats think they are increased taxes on more people than they say they are. Republicans, the perception is increase will not social programs. That they will cut social programs. What that means is they also need to be on that one important function of debates, giving the mass audience a preview in the form of clear statement of what the candidate will do, candidate says i will not, and we take that as a national promise. He in this case will act on as president. Isthat clarity, the second if the electorate as a whole, they deserve to know how the campaign forecast is. To the extent it does, it indicates we have a representative process based on good information that you could have foreseen because the debates help you. The public does not fully realize the extent to which candidates for president try aggressively to keep their promises. When a candidate says i am going to do it on the national stage, the likelihood that as president he will try that he may not have control of congress but he will try to accomplish that. That makes the debates important because the increase me,ne this reminds kathleen, and i think i will send this to you, of one of the questions that has come in from one of our viewers. It relates to, of course, Fact Checking. Kathleen, as many of you know, is the creator of factcheck. Org. Is there any way to introduce realtime Fact Checking of candidate responses for accuracy . Should this be considered . Ow, you guys do some of that explain what you do, and maybe could it be done even more realtime . Kathleen i am going to take this and bounce it right to rust. One time it was clearly done in realtime it was done poorly. That was to mitt romney and that was unfair. One reason we should minimize the likelihood that we do it on the fly is that it is very difficult and extemporaneous speech to lockdown clearly what is said and to get right what it is that you are saying in response . That doesnt mean we cannot anticipate what candidates will say because they can reiterate a whole lot of your past perceptions. Factcheck in advance and have those statements available. Streamersact checking im very leery about checking in realtime because of that experience with the romneyobama debates, and i think, russ, you can give us a commentary of that. Russ i remember that. Not particularly fondly. Listen, governor romney was too much of a gentleman and too much in the kind of plays by the rules as a candidate. I think what you see now, though, is that we saw this in the independent debate, the primary debates in 2012, where Newt Gingrich goes after Juan Williams as a moderator. So if i am trump, if im Chris Wallace tomorrow night and i find im going to step in and trumpheck donald trump, doesnt need to disagree and say thank you, chris, for reminding me, i was wrong there. Hes going to attack Chris Wallace. This is another example of the news media and their thumb on the scale, and this is exactly why you cannot listen to these people come you cannot listen to this guy over here, listen to me. The factcheck in realtime i think becomes particularly wise by the moderator, and it is just danger turned this into a twoonone debate with the moderator, the democratic candidate, and donald trump. In some ways, trump would like nothing more than two debate on the moderator because he leaves biden up on the site. Figure they can try to out what to say. I dont know the answer to it. I think kathleen brings up a good point in having things that are repackaged, by having things that immediately when the debate is over with to have things that are part of the spin and the reporting afterwards. But realtime i think is going to be very difficult. Elaine that is really good, thank you. A question questions can come in over the chat box or over twitter. I do have a question from nancy kirk in the audience. How does body language affect the viewers, affect the perception that the viewers have . Kathleen largely we interpret our candidates through a favorable lens, and the candidates we oppose through an unfavorable one. When people bring questions in terms of what does what is the objective meeting of something, how do you create that meaning of something, how you create a universal concept of understanding . I might look at donald trump moving in on Hillary Clintons alternatively i might look at it as stalking instead of strong and competent. That depending on the republican or democrat perception. It has to be fairly clear in its own right or fairly telegraphic to have its own universal meeting meaning. There are moments you worry a lot about the interpretation that people put on things, and as a result people start to see them through that interpretation. That moment you showed when george bush is looking at his watch is one of them. That is often interpreted as evidence that george bush was just out of it come out of touch in the debates. Let me give you an alternative. Bill clinton was talking at great length, was walking down to find out when was clinton going to end . Side is a clock off to the for the nixonkennedy debate. Nixon looks off to the side. Nixon perspired profusely during the debate. That is genetic. There are answers way way back, and youre sweating under hot lights. The idea that it suggests he was under stress, and as a result was not handling it well, simply runs in defiance of what you know about how biology works. The danger is that we take that we take the interpretation of someone else with what they may critically or we simply cross it through our own partisan lens and we dont see it for what it is. I try to put most of those things aside to the extent that it is possible. Look at youa mentioned the gorebush debate in 2000 when gore was caught grimacing and signing and stalking bush, and there was that famous moment where gore kind of approaches bush and bush looked at him and acknowledges his head and nods his head and kind of pushes him back. For years after that, in debate prep, it was like dont do what al gore did. Dont do that. You dont want to do that. The camera is always on you, look down, take note, dont encroach on your opponent. Not at the was president ial level, but the same thing happened with hillary pledge wast eight given to hillary to sign, and walks over to the podium and seems like he was hectoring her to sign it. Moment forarly a bad lezz io during that debate. Trump, who015 comes literally breaks every single one of those rules. Sim, grimacing and siding making faces, stalking them, and it seems to work for him. That whatow, i think you see i think that viewers we know how, more than anything, to look. We may not read as much anymore, analyzeot as we may not as much anymore, but we are consumers of video like never before, and generations younger than us are entirely consumers of video. Thato they kind of know the video is used quite a bit, and the Younger Generation even more so. Trump seemed comfortable doing that. And therefore voters kind of look at that and say he is who he is, and if you like him, you kind of like him because of that, not in spite of it. Hillary clinton in an interview recently discussed that debate episode for a long time, and discussed her i dont know if you saw this, kathleen, discussed what was going on in her head. She knew he was looming behind her, she felt it was a kind of threatening, inappropriate presence. But she never did know what to do. Should she have turned around and said back off, buddy . Get away from me . What are you doing . Or can i do something for you . It was interesting because when al gore invaded george bush s space, george bush sort of looked had them as if to say, can i help you, buddy . Which had the effect of pushing gore away and stopping and making it look like bush was standing up for himself. So it was an interesting moment that obviously Hillary Clinton is still wondering what she should have done. Russ but there is Something Else that is happening. By virtue of donald trump doing that, he distracted tillery clinton. Part of her cognitive capacity is now dealing with a looming presence of a gigantic, potentially menacing male standing behind her. Each means she does not have all the Strategic Resources available to focus on audience members she is supposed to be answering. So to the extent you are giving cues to the audience member because you are responding to a question, he is actually accomplishing something, disadvantaging his opponent, which is auto which is why we ought to have rules and the moderator should enforce the rules. The moderator should say, excuse me, candidates, please get back over where you are supposed to be. Secretary, lets take that question again. Also, to the extent that the press displaces our ability to understand. They do with shortterm memory and they disappear when we dont move into longterm memory. Intober, trump snorting microphones or al gore siding was not in the commentary. If we come out of these debates and the public that is subject to the cap on deductions of state and local taxes doesnt realize that there is a difference between these two candidates are what they would taxes, that is a significant lapse in journalism. Focus onts, if you that, we are not moving the issue and we have it in longterm memory. Matterortant things that are not moving into longterm memory, and shame on you. At the same time, indicating what wasnt asked and answered is also being flawed. Elaine we have one final question here. But it is a doozy. It comes from the audience, and the question is, have most voters made up their minds for who to vote for, including the undecided voters . It is a really good question. If everybody has made up their minds, do these matter . Russ well, Haley Barbour has know, this used to work for him and he has this great phrase, tell me what the ballot test is on the other. Was,hat he meant by that among those people who are unfavorable to both candidates, trump won that battle. So im going to emphasize who among the undecided scum and that pretty much gives me an idea of where they break on election day. Think there are fewer and fewer undecideds. Ofoll came out, and only 28 the electorate was looking to the debate to make a decision in this campaign, which was down i think at least 10 points over the last few years, which means that the total undivideds is getting smaller and smaller, and i think youre going to be wanting to look at is, which candidate has a higher favorable among those people who are undecided going into the last week of the campaign. And as we see that, i think that could be and then that, along with who is motivating their base, which is what this is all about is donald trump able to get higher numbers of noncollegeeducated voters in the midwest and bump that number up by a couple of points . Moree biden able to get africanamerican voters in the philadelphia area out in order to win pennsylvania . That wee the things will be looking at. Elaine kathleen . Kathleen tell me that you voted reliably in the past and that across those times you always voted for a republican or you always voted for a democrat, and i dont need more information. The people who are more susceptible to influence to those who are not tightly anchored to parties, they are not anchored to voting at all, and they are not consistently voted for one party to the extent that they feel ambivalent about both candidates they are not already anchored in party, the question is, are they going to vote at all . Can i mobilize them or demobilize them to my advantage . Secondly, how do i increase the likelihood that they are focused on issues that matter to them, that this is what they want a president to, framed in a way that they will that i can communicate those two things moste pool that people in the election are already decided in most elections just out of the box. But you have the capacity within that that are not anchored by party. That will shape influence, and that potentially is what matters. Some people are less likely to that whatever happens downstream of the debates, some of the things that circulate within their media spheres it is important that mainstream to the extent that it can break through that with good information about legitimate constrictions between candidates. Come afteris true the debate tomorrow night, it will not be just the debate, there will be articles and clips and news stories and people sending things on facebook about what was said in the debate, etc. There will be an enormous amount posted a information out of postdebate information trying to effective voters. I want to thank kathleen. You are a wonderful scholar. A prodigious scholar. You make me feel totally insecure all the time when i just look at the amount of stuff you can put out in a year. And of course factcheck. Org is doing a great job. Congratulations with that. , your list of candidates and your list of experience all over the country is truly overwhelming, and i hope you have some good candidates this you, too, because i know always do and you always do a great job for them. To our viewers, thank you very much for joining us, and i hope that this little session will help you, if you choose, to join in tomorrow night and have a look at the first president ial debate. And maybe come back and tell us. Does it matter . Thanks so much. The first president ial debate between President Trump and from a Vice President joe biden is tuesday night at 9 00 eastern from cleveland. Watch live on cspan. Biden is recklessly klimt vestrecklessly campaigning against this vaccine. All of this is for political reasons. Biden, his whole deal is catastrophic shutdowns. Again, in his own words, recorded by bob woodward, the president knew back in february that this was an extremely dangerous communicable disease. Mr. Biden think about it. . Many people across the how many chairs across the dinner table because of his negligence and shelf i and selfishness . Watch the live president ial debate at 9 00 p. M. Eastern live on cspan,s treatment ondemand at cspan. Org debates, or listen live on the cspan radio app. President trump will be giving an update this afternoon on coronavirus testing in the ongoing pandemic, that will be live from the white house rose garden setting at 2 00 eastern. Today,an2 vicepresident ial candidate Kamala Harris will be holding a Campaign Event in north carolina. Watch live coverage starting at 215 2 15 p. M. Eastern. It is Available Online at cspan. Org, or listen on the free cspan radio app. Utilizing the cspan