I wonder how many people actually sit through the entire debate and whether it’s necessary to have a captive audience. So many people watch video clips of the debate highlights the next day. Maybe the goal is to create some highlights.
The other goal is to not look completely stupid and unprepared like Rick Perry was in 2011.
The top 4 just need to survive; the pressure is really on Kamala Harris, Beto O'Rourke, Cory Booker, and maybe Amy Klobuchar. They still have hope, but they need to be remembered for something positive.
As for everyone else, there’s literally no hope. The rest of the field has almost no hope at all and are aiming for potential cabinet spots or future runs for office.
Either way, it’s about clips. You want to generate some good clips for your people to show, and you want to avoid having bad clips for your opponents to show.
Well, that, and impressing the pundits. If enough people say “So-and-so performed strongly in the debate”, it won’t matter if it’s not true.
My goodness. I think if I switched my registration to Dem, then I might qualify to be in one of these debates.
The random selection seems silly. Nobody wants to hear from the nobodies taking time away from the frontrunners. The GOP had the format right: stick the wannabes in their own debate and if someone shines, then maybe he or she moves up the next time.
Rather than submitting to chance, a trusted wise man should be appointed to select the slates for the two nights (possibly keeping his criteria secret). Here’s how I’d set them:
I assume there will be three 2-session debates. There are three ways to choose a pair from the front-runners (Biden, Sanders, Warren) and each way would be a setting for one of the three debates. In the first 2-session debate, the odd-man out from the front-running trio would appear on the stage with both Buttigieg and Harris (or whoever the 2nd-tier runners are). Remaining contenders might be set randomly. I would use performance in the 1st debate to adjust the size or composition of this 2nd-tier group for the following debates.
The GOP format was effectively random for a lot of candidates. The difference in poll averages between those who made the last slots of the top card and the undercard/wannabe debate was statistically meaningless for a lot of the early debates. It felt less random because we attached numbers. They just weren’t meaningful numbers.
septimus, what if the identity of the top three changes in between the debates? I mean, theoretically, any of them could end up being the front-runner: If that’s not true, then why even have a primary at all?
2% seems like a silly cut-off to me, treating the top three or four as same to those not within that pack. I’d have stated that the top four in polling need to be divided to two each night by random selection, then the next four, and then randomize everyone else.
That said the “trusted wise man” making the decisions … likely smoking a cigar in a back room … is precisely what needs to be avoided.
I suspect they will also be fairly strict about trying to give each candidate near equal time in this go around. Of course that’s going to end of night come to maybe a total of six minutes per candidate, spread out over multiple 60 second answers and 30 second possible follow ups.
I’m expecting that most of them will pretty much ignore whatever the actual questions are in favor of pushing their main campaign themes, telling their life stories that they want people to connect to, listing their accomplishments, and delivering canned zingers looking for media play. Maybe six 60 second snippets is not the best way to actually debate ideas. This will be more like competing Twitter feeds than anything else.
Not sure how this sort of format can change too much, barring a Perry-esque meltdown. Yes as noted somewhere above, people will more react to how “presidential” they come off in tone and body language, than anything about any ideas.
Off-topic: It is the lack of trusted wise men that has turned main-stream media into unreasoned or badly focused click-races. Trustworthy “cigar smokers” might have stopped the hyper-polarization of Congress and certainly would have stopped the election of Trump. We’ve touched on this before in other threads.
No perfect criteria for debate line-ups can be decided in advance. That is the appeal of letting them be set by trusted wise men. (Admittedly, trusted wise men may be in extremely short supply these days. )
(In my proposal, there would be 8 or however-many candidates on each stage, getting equal time. I’m just “seeding” the line-ups.)
It may be hard to jointly satisfy with certainty the TWO goals of
(a) Splitting the four then-current front-runners 2-2 in all three 2-session debates.
(b) Ensuring the big pairings (Joe v Bernie, Liz v Bernie, Joe v Liz) each occur exactly once.
As you saw, with the 4th-place contender still unclear I made some flexibility there. If standings change radically, then I, as trusted dictatorial wise man , might reserve the right to make major changes for debates #2 or #3.
Personally, I think that whoever is sponsoring a debate should just decide on their own who to invite when, what format to use, and so on. If the debate is sponsored by the DNC, then it’s the DNC’s call how to run it. Does this mean an opportunity to put their thumb on the scales? Yes, and this is a problem why?
But then, I also thought that it was perfectly kosher for the DNC to favor Clinton over Sanders, even though I myself supported Sanders.
The problem with the cigar filled room is that those select few choose the candidate, not that people reasonably try to keep a debate below 10/20 people.
As you note, the candidates that the people really want to hear from get only six minutes of time and are drown out by at least 15 or 16 candidates who have absolutely no chance of winning, but get equal time to the real candidate out of some perverse sense of fairness.
Even when that happens, like in the GOP debates in 2015, the moderators always focused on Trump with the wannabes bitching that they didn’t get “their” equal time.
The selection will be somewhat arbitrary, but I would rather see a manageable debate of 3-5 top candidates that two debates, with the front runners split between the two, just to adhere to a sense of “fairness” to let someone will 11 supporters be heard.
And many others would rather give those less known a chance to become known rather than have a sense of a foreordained conclusion.
A balance must be struck.
While I have significant quibbles with the specifics the idea of a debate in which those who have met some reasonable minimal standards get a chance (even be it vanishingly small of one) to break out is reasonable. The CNN town halls were also that chance (and was part of Buttigieg’s breaking out into the second tier pack).
But no question after round one the criteria need to be tightened, and then more as the round after comes along. Because, yeah, this won’t be any debate so much as Cliff Notes stump speeches and scrolling through dating app profiles. After this it needs to get down to a list small enough to at least meet for a cup of coffee. Then real dates, before we decide who we want to meet momma.
As was described about a billion times during the 2016 primaries, it is against their own damn rules to put a thumb on the scales. I am really rather flabbergasted that it hasn’t sunk in with everyone who reads Elections regularly.
Looks like they’ve set up Warren to be the big winner in the first night in hopes that she will knock off Bernie, who is problematic from their standpoint. Look for the post-debate talking heads and media coverage to be lauding Warren despite a mediocre performance. Easy opportunity for a free day of positive media. Very smart move by DNC.
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, might reserve the right to make major changes for debates