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The Democratic Strategist

Political Strategy for a Permanent Democratic Majority

First 2020 Democratic Debates Will Be…Interesting

On reading a description of plans for the first Democratic presidential candidate debates of the 2020 cycle, I put down some thoughts at New York:

[A]nyone who has thought for a few moments about the giant Democratic presidential field that is currently assembling has probably wondered how it will affect candidate debates. Faced with a similar problem in 2016, Republicans devised a poll-based formula for participation in the first several debates. But since there were 17 (or a bit later, 16) candidates in the field, the networks sponsoring the debates divided them into two groups, with the top tier (ranging from 8 to 11 candidates) getting a spot in the main prime-time debate, and the remainder appearing in a prior (but little-watched) “undercard” or “kiddie table” debate.

As you can imagine, there was a lot of complaining about this arrangement from those left off the big stage. But it probably helped Republicans gradually winnow their enormous field into, well, Donald Trump and an assortment of candidates who were supposed to beat him.

Now Democrats are preparing for their first round of 2020 Democratic debates for June, to be sponsored by NBC News, MSNBC, and Telemundo. And with a field that could potentially include well over 20 candidates, the Democratic National Committee has had to face some of the same decisions Republicans encountered last time around. Perhaps because of residual bitterness from former and current Bernie Sanders supporters over the DNC’s role in minimizing the number of debates in 2016 — presumably in the interests of Establishment favorite Hillary Clinton — the party is taking a lighter hand this time around. So while there is a formula for getting on the stage, there’s no “kiddie table,” and if the field is really large, random rules for sorting out participation could lead to some rather interesting combinations:

While that would exclude some completely anonymous schmo from the debates, the threshold is not that high. More importantly, the random assignment of candidates to the two nights means there may not be the kind of interchanges among the truly viable candidates that debates are designed to produce.

What this means more strategically is that a gun-shy DNC has decided it won’t try to use the debate structure to winnow its crazy-large field. And if said field doesn’t get winnowed on its own, then the debates could be unwieldy free-for-alls for quite some time.

Gird up your loins and get ready.

One comment on “First 2020 Democratic Debates Will Be…Interesting

  1. Candace on

    “More importantly, the random assignment of candidates to the two nights means there may not be the kind of interchanges among the truly viable candidates that debates are designed to produce”

    for crying out.. can’t they have their own debates or just call them discussions?
    Do we not have youtube?

    “the threshold is not that high.”

    okay then. never mind

    “Gird up your loins and get ready”

    I almost googled it but then felt offended at the site of those words in a kind of Scarlet O’Hara way and I have no idea why.
    I suspect those words have some kind of well known meaning say south of Maine but for me this mystery will have to remain right alongside other unknowable unknowns like which D candidate will run against the pres. ??

    Reply

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