I agree. And this can also continue on to be the general post-debate analysis thread.
I din’t see that as a problem. We have many long threads that are perfectly usable, including some that reached the 10,000 post limit and started a new cycle. I have a lot more trouble finding posts among many similar threads (“now which thread did I see that in?”) than I do when a single-topic discussion is kept within a single thread.
New thread or this one, I trust my fellow Dopers to do a good job on the play-by-play, since I won’t be watching it for a number of reasons, not least because I CANNOT listen to or even look at The Donald at this point. Thank you all in advance for watching and commenting.
Ah, very good point.
Thank you for making this point. As someone who must often find posts in varying threads, I much prefer to search one per topic than several.
If Trump is incoherent, she should do as Trump did with Biden. Refer to it. But only once. It makes the point with those who accept it, and does not alienate people by looking mean or insensitive. She can rely on other things to persuade those who are persuadable but think Trump makes more sense “live” than by transcript.
Of the seven general election debates Trump has participated in, post-debate pooling showed him doing poorly in all except the last one. Debating him is not a gift.
The people who are going to decide this thing have a low opinion of Trump. But a lot of them are used to making their judgement on the candidates at a debate. That isn’t dumb. It makes more sense than judging based on television advertising.
Well, I didn’t say anything about advertising, or most of what was in your post, but thanks for quoting me.
… moderate conservatives and independents who find Trump detestable but who worry that Harris and her party will balloon the size of government and prosecute a retributive culture war.
One of Harris’s major tasks, I think, is to define herself as a moderate who will run a responsible government, and not the radical that Trump tries to make her out to be, and that he’s repeating exactly the same lies he said about Biden in 2020, even using exactly the same words.
The segues nicely into exposing Trump as a serial liar who can’t be trusted on anything, who not only lies about Harris and Walz, but just about everything else, too. I’m sure the debate will turn up many examples, because he just can’t help himself, and is only dimly aware of actual facts anyway. Trump needs to be exposed as an existential threat to democracy, one who’s already engaged in election interference, fomented an insurrection to stay in power, and directly threatened Harris supporters.
I’m hoping something like that will happen, honestly. It’s a long shot, but it would be so sweet. It would have to be a bad slur, or a very visible sign of infirmity.
I would prefer a new thread, as it would be nice to be able to find the start of the actual watch-along. But maybe this thread would need to be closed for that to work
This would be my slight preference, too: close this one, open a new one.
A vote for a dedicated watch thread.
We’re now tied, 4-4, same thread for watch v. dedicated thread for watch.
I vote same thread. I like limiting the number of threads I’m following and it’s easier to stay with one thread. I’m frankly already confused with the number of “Kamala” threads plus the number of “Walz” threads.
You could stop at five or six threads… or just one.
We’re now 5-4 for same thread. Plus, I think your own preference for keeping the same thread should carry extra weight. You asked for a “compelling reason” to start a separate watch-along thread. I still haven’t seen such a compelling reason. I’ve seen good reasons to keep a single thread.
I’ll also point out that a lot of points are being made here that will be relevant to watch-along commentary and post-debate commentary. Closing this thread will basically take all those comments out of the loop. It doesn’t really solve the problem of many similar threads where I want to comment on something I saw earlier but can’t remember which of several similar threads it was in.
Indeed. Maybe Trump or Harris will do or say something extraordinary, so let’s spin off a fourth thread on that one extraordinary thing. And then a fifth thread on “how the debate affected the polling numbers”. 
And since all threads naturally meander around the intended main topic, pretty soon you’ve got a disorganized mess where it’s impossible to find anything!
If it’s any consolation, they’ll all get locked by Wednesday afternoon due to hijacks and then we’ll have to start a new thread with a slightly different title. 
We rarely lock threads permanently for hijacking, so that’s a bit unfair. The general posture of the Board is to leave threads open unless they become a real problem for some reason.
Re continuing the same thread for the debate, I’ve put my own vote in that column. But I’ll do this: I’ll confer with my fellow P&E mods, and we’ll decide.
‘Holy fuck, that guy sounds as incoherent as Biden did, amirite?’
I’m hoping that Kamala has a few tricks up her sleeve: a key word or phrase that infuriates trump into going off on an insane rant.
I vote for “same thread,” plus a suggestion to edit the title to say “(watch-along starts in post X)” when the debate actually begins and we know what X is.