No! Make a show of it. Stand on stage for an hour and read everything wrong your opponent has every done

That happened here in Romania last presidential election. Our neofascist candidate (Simion) got dunked on by the neoliberal (Dan) in the first debate, so he came up with excuse after excuse as to why he couldn't come to the rest.

The media companies got pissed off, and instead of cancelling decided to dunk on Simion by asking the questions to Dan and playing the absolute worst clips they could find of Simion answering those questions. Definitely didn't singlehandedly lose Simion the election, but it definitely didn't help him.