Republicans have scheduled ten presidential primary debates ahead of next year’s elections. Democrats, on the other hand, have limited the number of debates between their party’s candidates to just six.
This has put the Democratic National Committee in a bit of a bind. Its leaders want to have fewer debates, so that the odds are enhanced of reaching the preordained outcome — a victory by former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. To that end, they have not only scheduled fewer debates, but they have scheduled them mostly outside of the primary season and on days when people are unlikely to watch.
Yes, Clinton will have to face her competition, but it will happen when most Americans will be watching college football (on Saturday, November 14) or shopping for Christmas (on Saturday, December 19) or enjoying an apolitical Martin Luther King Day weekend with their families (Sunday, January 17).
Many rank-and-file Democrats are not happy about this. On Wednesday, the Washington Examiner’s Ariel Cohen reported that the DNC had to rope off protestors outside of its Washington, D.C. headquarters just south of the parking lots that ring the House office buildings. They were there to demand more debates. Democratic Party officials may not realize, but it is in their best interest to listen.
The Democratic Party — and for that matter, the entire nation — can only benefit from a robust debate schedule on the Democratic side. This is something Republicans and independents should care about, too. Only by improving the chances that both parties will nominate quality candidates can the American people be assured of getting a competent president, no matter how the vote goes next fall.
Democratic voters are right to demand more debates and to demand them in time slots where more people will be most likely to watch. To see why, one need only look at how well the Republicans’ Wednesday night debate went on CNN. The record ratings it drew — roughly 23 million watched — surely helped broaden interest in the party and its candidates, most of whom performed at least adequately or even quite well.
Even more importantly for the Republicans, Wednesday’s debate helped some lesser-known but possibly superior candidates show their stuff. Carly Fiorina, the clear winner of the debate, might never had had such an opportunity were she a Democrat. For Democrats, a stronger debate schedule could give a similarly situated candidate a real shot. What if one strong debate performance in front of millions of Democratic voters is all that former Rhode Island Gov. Lincoln Chafee, an advocate of the metric system, needs to set his campaign kilometers apart from the rest of the field?
What’s more, the lengthy and broadly inclusive nature of Wednesday’s eleven-candidate debate helped humble a front-runner whose ability to win a general election is very much in doubt. Democrats face an analogous situation with Clinton. Her flouting of government transparency and secrecy laws, and the trouble she faces now that her computer aide is taking the Fifth, could well make her unelectable, despite the Democratic establishment’s best intentions.
Democratic voters — and frankly, all voters — deserve better than the presidential debate schedule that the Democratic Party has prepared for 2016.
