With the most recent presidential debate focusing too little on policies and entirely on Vice President Kamala Harris reeling former President Donald Trump in for the bait, there’s little differentiating between the content of a debate and the bickering of a Twitter disagreement.

After the fallout of the presidential debate in June between Trump and President Joe Biden, leading to Biden dropping out of the race, the steadily changing format of the debates is losing the potential they once had since their revitalization in 1987. What started the chain reaction that gave Democrats enough time to push Biden out and thrust Harris into the race was Trump telling Biden, “Any time, any place.”

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Besides Trump, another common denominator between the last two debates is the absence of the Commission on Presidential Debates sponsorship. Previously, the CPD was in charge of organizing debates, deciding on locations, rules and communicating with all campaigns involved. But before the June debate, the Trump and Biden teams were unsatisfied by the bipartisan organization’s handling of times, choosing to set their own terms.

The decision to take the backdoor on the CPD gives too much power to the two parties, leading to disagreements on something as minute as muted mics that could upend future debates, setting a harmful precedent to no one’s benefit. Gone are the audiences whose presence previously allowed candidates to show how they communicate with everyday citizens. Much like vice president picks, they have little significance on the Electoral College map besides making a mess or derailing a campaign beyond repair.

Flash forward to the September debate, which was touted as a high-stakes debate but was more of the same. Harris was vague in her answers to several questions posed by the moderators, an unsurprising yet disappointing occurrence from the Vice President amid voters still learning about her, while allowing Trump to dig deep into his barrel of tired rhetoric.

Before the September debate, Harris’ background as a prosecutor led some to speculate she would embody a similar role when standing six feet next to Trump. At her best, she treated Trump like a defendant and rightfully grilled him on topics she knew inside out, such as abortion. However, when it came to direct questions, she let Trump display his inadequacies while tap dancing around questions she either lightly touched or ignored altogether.

While most people would say Harris had a stronger debate performance, she won by getting Trump on the topic of crowd sizes and giving Maya Rudolph more facial expressions for her to choose from. Rather than addressing issues concerning Americans in their day-to-day lives, both candidates risked alienating swing voters by making the debate too much of a contrast game.

The sudden switch to unconventional debate formats is largely because Trump is unconventional in every sense of the word. Although Harris ignored multiple questions, Trump igniting baseless accusations against Haitian immigrants in Springfield, Ohio echoes the language he used that contributed to the Jan. 6 Capitol attack. For both the Biden and Harris teams to willingly play ball with the Trump team and avoid bipartisan groups like the CPD shows the lack of accountability either party holds for one another.

Debate formats, although declining in quality at a rate that resembles more of a plateau plummeting beneath the already low standard it existed within, are also subject to viewer discretion. As far back as the first televised debate in 1960, viewers at home have fixated on John F. Kennedy’s attractiveness despite radio listeners believing Richard Nixon won the debate. Even after the creation of the CPD, one-liners like “Senator, you’re no Jack Kennedy” are still talked about, while the actual candidates’ arguments get the short end of news attention.

The lack of consideration on the viewers’ part for each candidate’s content could be attributed to the constantly changing structure of debates, ranging from the League of Women Voters to the CPD. Democratic and Republican campaigns alike have long denied voters from knowing what an actual, balanced debate could look like. To call a debate a boxing match would give it too much credit. At their core, they are nothing more than televised joint rallies that go nowhere, and everyone is forced to watch.