A debate isn't for the true believers, it's for the absurdly uninformed dip shits who think it's centrist to half agree with autocracy and ethnic clensing. They always need more convincing, and motivation to actually show up and vote.
But anyone who is uninformed to that level is completely unlikely to watch a debate. I mean, if they invested five minutes a night (maybe even a week) listening to the top news headlines, they wouldn't be undecided.
A debate is probably a waste of everyone's time other than for entertainment value and selling clicks.
they’re gotten so accustomed to rejecting evidence that they’re now doing it preemptively. saying no to a second debate means there will be less evidence that they’ll have to reject later
I've watched my MIL completely lose all capability of critical thinking since becoming a trump supporter. She was a very smart person with good education and great street smarts, but by their words they didn't like when Obama met only with democratic party leadership shortly after becoming president, and therefore voted for trump in 2016. At the time they would've been split ticket voters, voting Trump for president, but vocally in opposition to our republican governor at the time. The by the pandemic they were spouting nonsense that was opposing basic germ theory (MIL was a nurse for a while!) and now all of her kids are socially and emotionally separating from her more and more. For someone with 4 kids who's all about their family, she sure is doing a great job of alienating her entire family!
So yeah, I strongly believe that becoming part of Trump's cult of personality harms peoples ability to think critically about anything based on my anecdata
Trump is a symptom, not the problem, this has been happening for years with Rush Limbaugh, Shawn Hannity, the sane side of republican radio, there's unhinged full blown racism and fascism that's been on AM radio for decades. It fucks people up who listen to it. Same lies over and over and over.