I figured that now is a good time for a brief history lesson.
Walter Mondale slaughtered Ronald Reagan in the first debate of 1984. Newspapers said that Reagan looked, "baffled", "uninformed", "befuddled" and was generally "inarticulate".
Many people did start to wonder if it really was "just Reagan's time" and "soft support" eroded away a bit.
What happened next? Reagan came back to trounce Mondale in the 2nd and 3rd debates... you know the rest.
Reagan was up 14ish, and not 4ish, going into the first debate.
