"It was as if they were two employees who work for the same company"

Well, yeah! That is exactly what they are. Look, if there were two committee leaders in a big multi-national corporation competing over who gets to run the cushy new project next year, and they both had to conduct a demo of how they were going to do it and get help from their teams...what would it look like? Pretty much like what you see in these lacklustre debates.

These guys are flunkies for the same huge $y$tem and there is nothing the public can do about it. The $y$tem itself is the problem, just like it was in the old Soviet Union (or the new Russia, for that matter). This is not democracy, it's a rigged game, bought and paid for.

Rubber stamp your chosen corporate flunkie in November, and settle back for 4 more years of betrayal and deceit. As long as they can divide you bitterly against each other (over hostile partisan lines) they will conquer you.