Twitter Declares A Surprising Loser Of The Presidential Debate

The second and final presidential debate is now in the books now, and one thing's for certain: those books won't be bestsellers. While plenty of viewers were secretly hoping for a repeat of the first debate's train wreck, that really wasn't how things unfolded. We didn't even see a cameo appearance by a limelight-loving insect, like the VP debate. Instead, all we got was really what, at times, amounted almost to live reenactments of each candidate's campaign commercials. They largely repeated, often word for word, and anecdote for anecdote, the exact same phrases they've practically worn out by now. No October surprises, or anything surprising at all, really. And little chance that anyone would have had their opinion swayed by what they heard. Undoubtedly, each side will declare their guy the winner, but the night's biggest loser, according to Twitter, was whoever was supposed to be operating the mute button. Oh yes, the mute button. Such a nice idea, wasn't it? It seems we all heard the magic word "mute" and got excited, imagining that every time a candidate went off on a rant, somebody would immediately shut him up. Not quite as satisfying, perhaps, as using a hook to literally drag them off stage as in the vaudeville days, or even giving them the gong like in the old Gong Show. Still, as it turns out, the muting was never intended to keep things quiet throughout the entire debate. According to the New York Times, the idea was that each candidate would have two minutes to speak, interruption-free, on each topic while their opponent's mike was switched off. The Times, however, did disclose that after the two minutes were up, both mics would be on, and there were no plans to cut them off at any point after the two minutes per topic per candidate were up. Oops, guess not too many of us read the fine print. But did that initial muting even happen? George Stephanopoulos, commenting on ABC after the event, said the mute function appeared to have been used "at least four times," but one Twitter user said they didn't notice Trump being muted until about 45 minutes in. While CNET has already declared "Who muted the mute button?" to be the latest 2020 presidential debate meme, yet another tweet came from someone who actually did seem to have read the fine print regarding the debate rules: "It was cute to sell us on the mute button, but it was always going to be like this." Well, we've survived another round of presidential debates, and now it's all over but the shouting, or the crying, or the endless rounds of vote recounting, if we get something like a repeat of the 2000 election. And we probably can't count on a letup in those relentless campaign ads until the very last ballot has been found clinging to the bottom of someone's shoe. Still, as Stephen Colbert said in his post-debate Late Show monologue, for Trump critics, at least, the best part of the whole affair is that they might never have to watch Trump debate again. He compared the post-debate relief to getting that last wisdom tooth removed. But at least this rough debate season has finally, itself, been muted. Keep watching to see Twitter Declares A Surprising Loser Of The Presidential Debate. #Debate2020