Debates don’t change minds, they change feelings

🎤 Last Thursday’s U.S. presidential debate was the first without a studio audience since 1960, when JFK debated Nixon.
Issue #110: questioning the meaning of life, an Olympian’s defense, and a writing tip
By Harris Sockel

Since their inception in 1960, presidential debates have been more about vibes than substance. The biggest story to come out of 1960’s showdown was that Nixon was too sweaty, not any specific policy. You can trace the vibe-y nature of political debates all the way back to the very first ones in American history, the Lincoln-Douglas debates, essentially a seven-city tour by two senators who wanted to get famous so they could eventually run for president (and they both did!).

Most studies show that Presidential debates don’t change the outcome of an election in the long run, though they might move poll numbers temporarily. On a person by person level, debates don’t change minds or political affiliations — because it is extremely difficult to change someone’s mind by arguing with them, or yelling at them from behind a podium.

Our minds tend to change when we’re ready. This happens, in the words of Barry Davret, when “the framework that underpinned [our] belief system no longer matches [our] reality.” That kind of cognitive dissonance can take years to manifest.

So, if debates don’t (usually) change behavior, what do they accomplish? They change the way we feel about who we were already going to vote for.

I’ve been digging through topic pages on Medium to get a sense of how people are processing the vibes last Thursday, and the consensus in the community is clear: President Biden’s performance was sad. The New York Times’ editorial board called him “the shadow of a great public servant,” and an Ipsos poll of 1,700 likely voters found they had a worse impression of Biden at the end of the debate than at the beginning.

It’s unlikely — though not impossible — that those feelings will change election results on their own. But they’ll definitely affect the stories we all tell ourselves, and each other, leading up to it and after.

Elsewhere on Medium

• Former pastor Dan Foster lists the 10 most popular meaning-of-life questions his congregants used to ask him, and what each one reveals about human nature. I loved his response to “Does prayer really work?” (Yes, but only insofar as it changes your perspective, or your mood.)
• Last week, olympic swimmer Michael Brinegar — who rep’d the U.S. at the 2020 Tokyo games — was banned from the sport after being charged with blood doping, or boosting his red blood cell count to deliver more oxygen to his muscles. He posted an impassioned defense on Medium, publicly sharing his blood samples and claiming that his elevated hemoglobin levels were a reaction to recovering from Covid-19. Brinegar believes the U.S. Anti-Doping Agency’s entire doping evaluation system is flawed, and that its “approach in this case effectively shifts the burden of proof onto me, requiring me to prove my innocence rather than them proving my guilt.”

Your daily dose of practical wisdom: on writing

If you’re getting stuck trying to write something: Don’t start with the first line! “That’s entirely too loaded and too much pressure,” writes novelist Felicia C. Sullivan. Start in the middle, at the end, or wherever you want.

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Edited and produced by Carly Rose Gillis

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