While debates do not affect ultimate election results, it is clear that Joe's debate preppers screwed up badly.

[FBaggins]

14. "There you go again"

debates have had NO ultimate impact on the outccome. ZERO.

That simply isn't true

Show me ONE instance in the long history of presidential elections where a debate had ONE tiny bit of impact on the
the ultimate outcome. You can not.

There's no way to spin the 1980 Carter/Reagan debate as anything other than consequential (FAR more than "one tiny bit of impact). Depending on which polls you look at, the president was either slightly ahead or slightly behind with less than two weeks to go (the best-known poll from right before the debate showed an 8-point Carter lead)... yet mere days after the debate, Reagan won in a landslide and we lost 12 senate seats.

The second point you're dodging is that you can't reduce the question to debate win/loss and election win/loss. We lost senate races in Nevada and Arizona that we could have won if Obama had done just a couple of points better. You can't say "he lost that debate... but he still got reelected... so there was not the tiniest bit of impact"

The next point of course is that the President is currently behind in the race. If he loses, can you continue to argue that the debate had no impact because he was already losing? It's nonsensical spin.

Lastly - and once again - nobody is worried about the President losing a debate. The concern is that while he was narrowly losing the debate... he ended any ability to refute the "too old" narrative. That didn't have to happen at a debate. Indeed, it could have happened at a debate that he objectively "won"... and it would still be devastating.

Not necessarily fatal... but devastating.