I’m Not Watching the Debate.

I can think of maybe three reasons why someone would watch tonight’s debate.

Reason #1 is there might be some people out there who haven’t yet decided how they are going to vote. The latest NYT- Siena survey puts the percentage of ‘I don’t know’ voters at 5%, which obviously doesn’t take into account respondents who choose one candidate or the other but might still change their minds further along.

Now how anyone could need any more time to decide how they feel about Trump is beyond me. But to paraphrase David Sedaris, maybe there are still some people out there who aren’t sure whether they want to eat hot dog shit or hot dog shit sprinkled with glass.

Reason #2 is there also may be some folks out there who actually haven’t yet given the election a single thought. Now for those of us who do nothing all day but think obsessively about the political situation, it’s hard to imagine that many people lead perfectly ordinary and average lives without ruminating for an hour or even one minute on what’s going on politically, even up to the election day itself.

But even when 2020 set the all-time record for both the number of voters and the percentage of eligible voters who exercised their franchise, there were still slightly more than 30% of Americans over age 18 who did not deliver any voting preference between Trump and Joe.