Well, here we are; the great debate where the champions of the two world views of the American public can face off. They will be forced to defend their works and ideas for running the republic and will be devoted to a civil and intellectual discourse to help us all sort out who to vote for.
Of course; we know that's not true. Political debates are nothing more than stage managed PR sessions for candidates now with moderators, guests and rules handpicked by the two parties. Because both parties are involved in the crafting of the debate, they decide not only what subject matter to include but what questions to avoid. Therefore, you won't hear about any of the bipartisan problems affecting our country.
This is all by design.
A brief history of presidential debates. The modern debates as we know them were started in 1960 and were sponsored and moderated by the league of women voters. In the 1990's, Ross Perot came to the scene and embarrassed both parties by taking 19% of the popular vote. At that point, both parties recognized the debates as a threat to their monopoly on power and put a bunch of arbitrary rules in place to prevent outsiders from being able to take part in the debates.
This is the reason that Gary Johnson isn't invited to the party even though he's polling at 13%. To put that into context, with no money behind him, no political machine promoting him and constant hit pieces taken out on him by both conservative and liberal pundits, he still would be expected to receive roughly 18,000,000 votes were the election held today. That seems like a lot of people to disenfranchise.
To even make it into the debate, you need to be polling at an average of 15% and that's without the benefit of matching funds, an institutional support system and millions of dollars of free media exposure.
So ask yourself when you're watching it, what does this debate say about our commitment to democracy? Whomever you're voting for, are you really comfortable with more than 10% of the population not being represented?
