This article was written with with a democratic establishment political agenda, praising and defending Biden, calling Bernie Sanders the loser in the last debate, and taking a shot at Trump in the last paragraph. If the article was meant to be an argument for why we should have debates without audiences, author Fred Kaplan surely lost readers when he input his own political stances as accessories to his larger point. Here's the best example of this: "Amid the early warnings of the coronavirus, Biden delivered his speech to just a small group of supporters. It was a quiet speech, calling for party unity, and he delivered it quietly. In earlier speeches, he’d had to yell to be heard over the loud, hooting crowds, and the yelling often triggered the stuttering from his youth. This time, there was no crowd, no yelling, no stuttering, and, as the Washington Post reported, many called his words and his demeanor “presidential, a sign of leadership, and a contrast to President Trump’s bluster.”

Op Ed masquerading as news. While I will concede the author makes, in my opinion, a valid point: that debates are too theatrical now, it is irrelevant. Furthermore, he takes the liberty of throwing some politically motivated jabs at a candidate who is off the beaten path from his argument for the sheer sake of doing so (which is quite hypocritical in context of the argument he makes).