In a couple of weeks Republican presidential candidates will be having their second debate while Democratic candidates still won’t have a single one. In fact, they won’t have one until mid-October with only six total. There are those who are not happy with arrangement.
There is Martine O’Malley, for one. In fact, he criticized the DNC last night in a speech for their handling of debates, saying that the limited number of debates is meant to help Clinton’s campaign. He also said, “Think about it. The Republicans stand before the nation, they malign our President’s record of achievements, they denigrate women and immigrant families, they double down on trickle-down, and tell their false story. And we respond with crickets, tumbleweeds and a cynical move to delay and limit our own party debates.” The chairwoman of the DNC wasn’t too happy with his remarks.
Sanders has agreed with O’Malley, saying that the debate schedule is rigged. There’s currently a change.org petition trying to get Wasserman-Schultz to either resign or get removed from her positon. There’s plans for a protest at the DNC on September 16th, the date of the second Republican debate.
There was a discussion about this with a Sanders group I attended recently, the consensus was that it was an effort to help Clinton get the nomination by limiting the number of debates which would make viewers realize there were more progressive options to Clinton in the primary.
The front runner always wants fewer debates and everyone else always wants more. But… six seems like plenty for a field of only a few candidates. We usually only have 3 for the actual president.
In the 2008 democratic primary there were 26 debates, so the fact that there are only 6 in this primary leads some people to believe that some people are pushing to reduce the number.
Campaign debates are little more than political theater. It’s certainly not as if, in 2015, watching a debate is the only way to find out what a candidate believes and where they stand on issues. I can’t personally recall ever having my mind changed by watching one. It seems like they’re little more than sporting events that people watch to root for ‘their guy’ so they can celebrate when he/she gets in a zinger.
I don’t think its that mysterious. I assume the number of debates is set more or less via the campaigns negotiating with eachother, even if its technically the DNC that sets them up. Its not like the DNC can force the candidates to debate if they don’t want to, or stop them from having their own debate if they decide they want more. So there doesn’t need to be some sort of conspiracy within the DNC, the decision is made by the campaigns themselves, since they’re the only ones with leverage.
Hillary sensibly doesn’t want to have 26 debates because she’s a substantial front-runner. Six is presumably the maximum the other candidates could coax out of her, so six debates are what there will be. If Hillary loses her lead for a sustained period, I imagine there the DNC would announce a few extra debates.
Of course the other candidates, can (and maybe will) have their own debate sans Hillary. I doubt it will do them much good though.
I think the reasoning is different. Hillary does decently when everything is carefully scripted, rehearsed, and planned. She does well when she knows what questions will be asked. She does well when she’s rehearsed her answers for weeks or months beforehand. Consider this from March:
Clinton spoke Monday at a carefully choreographed two-hour event involving her No Ceilings project at the Clinton Foundation, highlighting economic and educational opportunities for women and girls. She took no questions. When she sat down to lead more informal conversations with invited speakers, participants appeared to be reading from teleprompters.
An “informal conversation” with no questions where everyone reads from teleprompters. That’s what Hillary’s campaign is all about.
When Hillary doesn’t know what will be asked beforehand, when she has to think and speak spontaneously, when she has to answer questions herself rather than having consultants write the answers for her, things go badly. For instance, witness her epicly bad answer when asked whether she had wiped her email server.
So it’s not that debates are bad for moderate front-runners because they give progressives a chance to speaks. It’s that debate are bad for Hillary because Hillary has to speak.
I think Hillary did well enough in her 2008 debates. Speaking off the cuff does not seem to pose a problem for her, in my opinion.
We could use more Dem debates because the public needs to hear Dem ideas. There isn’t much difference between any of these candidates, so the debates don’t do much to help or hurt any of them individually. If you’re into politics enough to watch them, then you already know which party is getting your vote. It’s getting Democratic ideas in the soundbites on the evening news where we need more Democratic debates.
Yea, we’ve already seen Hillary do 20-odd Presidential debates. There’s no mystery about how she does with them. She isn’t particularly great, but she does well enough. If she weren’t the front runner, she would surely be pressing for more, and who ever was ahead would be trying to get less.
Actually googling, there were only six sanctioned debates in 2008. The others were unsanctioned, so apparently it happens a lot. But the difference this year is that the DNC is insisting candidates who participate in unsanctioned debates won’t be invited to the sanctioned ones.
Hillary walked all over Obama in the 2008 debates, and he still won. I’d put her up in the top whatever percentile of debaters among the bunch running right now.
Six is enough, I think the real issue is stacking them so close to the caucuses. Earlier debates give underdog candidates a chance to be in the spotlight and raise more money, recruit more staff.
You know how they say that it’s impossible for Biden to catch up to Clinton’s fundraising and staffing and organizing? Well, for Chaffee, Webb, and O’Malley, the October debate, should they do well, will be seen as their actual entry into the race. A good debate performance would probably benefit those candidates more in August.
So yeah, the calender is set up to benefit Clinton, so that even if she does poorly, it’ll be too close to the primaries to make a difference.
I don’t really agree with that. Obama’s performances were uninspiring, but he didn’t have Clinton’s epic screwup where she came out for DLs for illegals and then went back on it when she realized that her main opponents weren’t for it. It just exposed her as a fake.
Then there was the time she got ganged up on at a debate and whined. Such performances, like her crying in NH, seemed to help her a little in the short term, but didn’t exactly give her Commander-in-Chief credibility. It only helped her at all because voters just wanted to see something, anything, from her that was real.
I’m not a big Clinton advocate but the others come across as whiny here. Six debates is more than plenty. As mentioned though, those behind always want the free face time and those ahead don’t see value in the risk of a quotable gaffe. I don’t believe that if Sanders or O’Malley were leading that they’d be demanding more debates.
