Drama over Tuesday night’s Democratic debate has disinterred an important question from liberals: Why is the party establishment so scared of having voters see their presidential candidates on TV?

As we’ve noted in this space, the Democrats have limited the number of their debates to just six, compared to the Republicans’ eleven. Even worse, they’ve scheduled them for time slots when few other than hardcore supporters will watch. They’ll be like those Potemkin debates in the Senate that you see on C-SPAN, in which a senator is on screen proclaiming rhetorically as though to a crowd, when everyone knows that the chamber is empty and he or she is doing it just for TV.