The Democrats are having a debate about debates. Party members are concerned they are missing an opportunity, and perhaps skewing the whole primary process in favor of front-runner Hillary Clinton, by having too few. Party leaders, however, are mostly refusing to budge.
In May, the Democratic National Committee announced it would sanction six debates between the candidates for the party’s 2016 presidential nomination. “We’ve always believed that we would have a competitive primary process, and that debates would be an important part of that process,” said DNC Chair Debbie Wasserman Schultz said at the time. “Our debate schedule will not only give Democratic voters multiple opportunities to size up the candidates for the nomination side-by-side, but will give all Americans a chance to see a unified Democratic vision of economic opportunity and progress — no matter whom our nominee may be.”
Once the details were announced, some Democrats didn’t think they lived up to this promise. Not only did they believe six debates was too few. Just half of the debates occur in 2016, with only four occurring before the Iowa caucuses.
Of the four debates for which the DNC set specific dates, three will be held on weekends. One is scheduled for the weekend between the end of Hanukkah and Christmas.
At first, it didn’t seem likely that anyone would mind. The six debates were still more than Clinton, far and away the front-runner when the initial decisions were made, had reportedly wanted. The main agitator for additional debates was former Maryland Gov. Martin O’Malley, whose campaign remains mired in the low single digits. Most of the other candidates who would participate are doing even worse.
But the Republicans’ debates, aided by the presence of Donald Trump, have generated big ratings, with 23 million tuning into the CNN prime-time event this month alone. Democratic strategist Simon Rosenberg has complained “the superior RNC schedule could easily reach 50 to 100 million more eyeballs than the current Democratic schedule.”
Now that Bernie Sanders has taken the lead in Iowa and New Hampshire, and as speculation mounts that Joe Biden will also get into the race, some Democrats are second-guessing the idea of a debate schedule designed to protect Clinton. House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi and former DNC Chairman Howard Dean, both Clinton supporters, have called for more debates.
So far the DNC has made only the token gesture of an additional “candidate forum” in South Carolina, which hasn’t mollified critics. Expect the Democratic debate to persist as long as the current debate schedule does.
