I actually think O’Malley will take this opportunity to get out there aggressively. While everyone will be watching Clinton and Sanders, I think he has the chance to come in with a few well-placed zingers and soundbites and wow the pants off people.
O’M has no place to go but up, and I think he’s going to go balls in on going up. He WILL attack Hillary, IMO. He’s got nothing to lose.
There’s precious little reason to remember, is there? If they were using a 1% threshold like on the GOP side, it would just be Hillary and Bernie up there.
You can’t drop out of something you never got into.
No, *no! * Bernie shuffles over and asks her if she wants to come up and see his Walnetto.
Gotta get our lines straight, here! Just because it’s been almost 50 years…
Wonder if they can give Hillary a park bench instead of a podium. And can’t they move the debate to beautiful downtown Burbank?
Only if he really thinks he’s running for President, not running mate.
What I wish the Dems would do is take the first 15-20 minutes, taking turns, to talk about all the things they agree on, where the GOP candidates take pretty much the exact opposite position.
I think this would be important because I don’t think most persuadable voters (as opposed to those who go into an election cycle (a) sure to vote, and (b) with their minds made up on which party they’ll support) have yet internalized an awareness of the huge gulf between the two parties not just on most issues, but on the worldview that drives their stands on the issues.
The Democratic Party needs to take advantage of every opportunity to drive this home in people’s awareness, because the blurring of their differences redounds to the advantage of the Republicans, who can only come across as reasonable if they sound much more moderate than they really are. And I don’t think most voters have really caught onto the jump into batshit insanity that’s characterized the GOP during the Obama years.
They won’t do this, of course, but dammit, they should. It would be the best thing they could possibly do.
I’m not expecting much, to be honest. It will be boring compared to the republican debates.
If I could think of a question to ask that might lead to at least a little bit of humor or controversy, I’d submit it to Don Lemon and see if he picks my question. That might make it more interesting.
But I can’t think of anything.
Any who watched the first Pub debate must have!
Anyway, it’s a pre-primary debate – at this stage the candidates are fighting over the votes of registered Dems – why wouldn’t they focus on the things that distinguish one Dem candidate for another? Then the eventual nominee can focus on the differences between the parties – there will be plenty of time yet to do that.
The era of endless, numerous polls is rather new, but I recall plenty of pre-primary talk about Mario Cuomo in 1991 (or was it 1987?), and surely there were a few polls that included his name. I think maybe also Colin Powell in 1999.
I don’t think there will be any surprises in terms of what the candidates say, but the bottom three will definitely be looking to get voters interested in looking them up. O’Malley has the highest upside as far as improving his standing. Chaffee is only going to be there to remind voters that Clinton voted for the Iraq war and he didn’t. Webb will be presenting a completely different thing that might appeal to some Democrats, plus it can’t hurt for him to remind everyone that if not for him, the Democrats wouldn’t have captured the Senate in 2006. He was easily the highest profile Senate candidate of that race and was tapped to deliver the SOTU response in 2007. I don’t think he’ll be able to win, simply because he’s the conservative in the race, but there are a certain number of Democrats who will support him, and they come straight out of Clinton’s coalition, so he can do some damage to her if he tries.
Yup.
Poor guy.
Remember when Howard Dean (and before that Paul Wellstone) said he was from “the Democratic wing of the Democratic Party”?
This time out, it’s going to be a onetime Reagan appointee to SECNAV; the son of a Nixon appointee to SECNAV (and onetime GOP US Senator); an independent “socialist” (who’s admittedly probably more of a progressive Democrat than any of them); Mrs. “New Democrat” herself; and Martin O’Malley? Lest we think Martin “mass arrests” O’Malley is the great Democratic hope, let’s note that his support in his home state of Maryland is pretty low.
Yeah, this is a healthy party all right. :rolleyes:
Maybe they can scrape together a barbecue once in a while.
I’m not sure which is more embarrassing: This gang of posers or the “family business” approach of the JFK/LBJ administrations.
. . . the one who can claim that will be Sanders.
I will be interested in what Hilary does. She has been the front-runner for so long and is so well-known that almost nobody really knows her (i.e., she has been ‘imaged’ by her supporters, and more importantly, by her detractors, seldom by herself).
I think she needs a strong, capable, and ‘mature’ performance, showing that the Democrats are planning to nominate an adult fully capable , while the Republicans continue to shoot their mouths off (and just as often shoot themselves in the foot) and cast doubt on their abilities to be president.
We shall see. I think it will still end up Bush-Clinton in the end, but we shall see.
Yeah, and you know how well that worked for either of them. A candidate who actually wants to win has to be attractive to the convinceables, not just to the already-convinced.
Your concern, like that of adaher, is noted.
I’ll grant you none of this current crowd is Harry Truman. But they’re not going to be facing off against Dwight Eisenhower either.
The problem is, by the time you get to the general, it’s about this person v. that person, or at least that’s how the media covers it. If the GOP candidate says things that sink him in November, everyone will say the GOP just chose the wrong candidate again.
The advantage of doing this now is that the Dem candidates can say, all five of us agree on these things. And 13/14/all of the 15 GOP candidates, plus Walker and Perry who ran but have dropped out, or excepting Pataki who has zero support, are all on the opposite side on these issues.
This is what would make it a *party *thing. It wouldn’t be Jeb Bush or Marco Rubio or Ted Cruz who turned out to be a stinker; the whole vast field would be shown to be on the wrong side of everything.
And the sheer size of the GOP field would add authority to this message. It would be hard to argue that this large and supposedly diverse GOP field, taken together, was a poor representation of the party. If all, or just about all, of the GOP candidates are on the other side of issue after issue, it’s the party, not that candidate. Maybe this can be said a year from now, but it would have a much better chance to have impact now.
The other thing is, next September, everyone will take each candidate’s attacks on the other party somewhat for granted. Nobody’s expecting this now; this would be something that’s never been done before. The upfront show of solidarity among the candidates would be new, as would the turning of that solidarity into a weapon against the GOP.
And it would also serve an important purpose once they got past that 15-20 minute bit of unity, and debated each other. Those watching the debate would know the scope of their disagreements relative to the issues they agreed on, putting their areas of disagreement in perspective. And context is good.
Bwuh?
Please read this: http://www.thepeoplesview.net/main/epeoplesview.net/2010/10/democratic-wing-of-democratic-party.html
Oh, I forgot somebody above. Larry Lessig is also running.
OK, so that’s two arguable “Democratic wing of the Democratic Party” candidates: Lessig and O’Malley; two GOP refugees; “that independent;” and Mrs. Clinton, who is sounding less offensive lately, & even came out against Keystone XL, if you can believe that.
I’m still leaning toward that independent.
Hopefully this debate will give Bernie Sanders an opening to spread his message even more! 
Before you can implement an agenda of any sort, you first have to win.
This debate will be comical. Sanders and Clinton won’t attack each other directly. The rest have no business being there. And I’m being generous by referring to these media events as debates.