Democratic Presidential Candidate Debates

Dear Friends,

Despite tons of criticism, Debbie Wasserman Schultz, the chair of the Democratic National Committee, continues to stick with her limited number and timing of debates by Democratic candidates for President as well as her exclusivity rule which prohibits any candidate from debating in an unauthorized debate.  Simon Rosenberg starts his piece entitled, "The Democratic debate schedule is a mess.  Here's how to fix it." on MSNBC (here) with the following paragraph.

The critics are right: If the point of presidential primary debates is to give candidates a forum to make their case to the tens of millions of people who will pick their party’s nominee, the current Democratic debate calendar is wholly insufficient to the task at hand. There are too few debates, too many are on weekends or holidays when viewership is much lower, and there aren’t enough close to when the most consequential voting will take place.

He then discusses the Democratic primary schedule and concludes (as others have as well)

The result is that the Democratic nominee will be effectively locked in by mid-March, only six weeks after primary voting begins. It is potentially a very compressed calendar.

By that time the Democrats will have had only four of the six debates that are authorized.  Clearly that is not enough.  It is clearly not enough when you consider the incredibly stupid times that the debates are scheduled.  While Simon Rosenberg's analysis of the dates is very good, Laura Clauson at the Daily Kos (here) has a much more colorful analysis of the dates.

And check out some of these dates: Saturday, November 14. Saturday, really? Who exactly is the DNC expecting to watch a Saturday night debate? But it gets better! Saturday, December 19. Yes, the Saturday six days before Christmas. Hmm ... I could attend a holiday party with my friends and loved ones, do some last-minute shopping, or watch a presidential debate. Why not just schedule it on Christmas Eve, FFS? But let's keep going through this debate schedule: January 17. That's the Sunday night of Martin Luther King Day weekend. This is absurd.

Simon Rosenberg cites the debate schedule from the 2008 Presidential election in an extremely convincing argument to follow the same schedule.

The last time Democrats had an open presidential race, the DNC held 19 debates, starting in April of 2007. The end result of that wide open process was a 53% victory in the general election by Obama and unprecedented levels of citizen engagement in our politics. That wide open and early system helped produce the best election result for the Democratic Party in 44 years, and should only have been significantly altered if there was a powerful rationale and argument from the party leadership. This is particularly true given the enormous policy commitment Democrats are making today to reforming our political and electoral systems to give more Americans a more meaningful voice in their democracy.

Corey Canter on the New Democratic Network has a blog that gives lots of articles on the subject (here) if you want to read more.

Please contact Debbie Wasserman Schultz and complain. I did it through the Democratic National Committee website which was a real pain so I would suggest contacting her campaign office (here).

Thanks for reading and please comment,
The Unabashed Liberal