Both national party machines engineered the schedule of “officially sanctioned” debates with a view to minimizing prime-time gaffes and freakshows and dark horses coming out of nowhere, favoring the expected “sensible choice” mainstream frontrunners-presumptive (Hillary and a Jeb-type if not the guy himself) with a handful of token ideological outliers for spice, while having the campaigns spend more time hitting at the other party than fighting internally. That included, as mentioned, imposing terms that you don’t get to make it into an “official” debate if you go free range.
Still, candidates in the back of the pack can get themselves face time and put out their ideas if they bother doing and saying things that will interest the broadcast and online media, and frontrunners tend to hog the light and air – that has always been the challenge, it’s not new to this year. It’s not fixed by making us sit through a dozen debates with a dozen people onstage.
That some people in both parties feel they wound up with the “wrong” frontrunner and want more chances to make someone shine against him/her, or to let him/her stumble, is to be expected but really… we already saw one debate in which that did not seem to work as expected.
But, as noted above, how does one force HRC to agree to more debates? If the other candidates want to debate each other, and if they can convince a media outlet to cover said debate, no one is stopping them. Had HRC come out and said “I will attend one debate and one debate only”, I think there would be plenty of room to criticize. But 6 debates? I find it impossible to criticize her for that.
Well, as godwins go that sorry attempt at humor needs to have the note that there are much less than 6 degrees of separation from Trump to Arpaio to Neo Nazis.
Trump is really clueless about the guys he is seeking support or to be his buddies, or that he does not care about that and still likes them as fellow travelers. Choose his poison.
I liked that format, where each debate addressed issues starting with the next letter of the alphabet. By the time they got to zootropic epidemics, I felt fully informed.
What kind of maladjusted misfit toy watches six Democratic primary debates - and then clamors for more?
Six debates is already, like, five and a half more debates than any normal person is going to sit through. The only people who want more debates are the cable “journalists” who need constant fresh material so that they can gin up their ratings. Cable news companies are doing their damnedest to turn our democracy into a reality-tv series. Anything that caters to that goal is a bad idea.
