July's Democratic Presidential Debates: One Last Chance for Half the Field of Candidates
The stage is set for CNN’s Presidential Debates in Detroit, spread over two nights;Tuesday, July 30th and Wednesday, July 31st at 5pm PT. Ten candidates will appear each night.
CNN’s Dana Bash, Don Lemon and Jake Tapper will moderate both debates.
Each candidate will deliver opening and closing statements. They will have 1 minute to respond to a question from moderators and 30 seconds will be allotted for responses and rebuttals.
CNN has promised not to include questions requiring a show-of-hands or one-word answers. If a candidate consistently interrupts the debate flow, he or she could have their time reduced.
More than half of those appearing in round two won’t make it to round three. The Democratic National Committee is raising the bar for the third and fourth debates. Candidates appearing on those debate stages in September and October, will have to meet the threshold for both polling and grassroots fundraising, instead of just one of those two criteria.
The polling threshold will be set at 2 percent support in four qualifying polls. The fundraising threshold will require at least 130,000 unique donors, with 400 different donors per state in 20 states.
The third debate, hosted by ABC News and Univision, will be held on Sept. 12 and 13 at Texas Southern University in Houston. A fourth debate will be held in October, but further details have yet to be announced.
The DNC is promising a dozen primary debates during the 2020 presidential election cycle. Six will be held in 2019 and another six will take place in 2020.
FiveThirtyEight’s Nate Silver estimated just eight candidates — Biden, Sanders, Warren, Harris, Buttigieg, O’Rourke, Klobuchar, and Booker — will make the September debate. Andrew Yang’s campaign announced today that they’ve met the criteria.
Just one --or maybe two-- of the rest of the pack has a shot of making it to Houston. Perhaps billionaire Tom Steyer --who’s not yet made it on stage--can buy his way on.
What all the lesser campaigns are looking for is a breakout moment, one where the eloquence or contrast of their candidate generates enough buzz to pick up supporters.
From CNN:
"Maybe 12, 13 of these candidates, there's not going to be another shot after this. To some extent, not qualifying for the next debate is a death sentence," Robby Mook, who managed Hillary Clinton's 2016 presidential campaign, told Borger.
The top candidates also have a lot at stake, as POLITICO's Christopher Cadelago points out:
Advisers and allies to the top candidates said the first round of debates showed they can’t afford to be caught off guard, as Biden was in his exchange with Harris over desegregation and busing. To that end, Buttigieg, working to overcome his mounting struggles with voters of color, is out with a “Douglass Plan” to help the nation stamp out racial inequality. And Harris, who opposed marijuana legalization as attorney general of California, completed her evolution in favor of legalizing the recreational use of it — narrowing a possible avenue of attack by pro-pot Cory Booker.
Those aren’t the only signs of predebate positioning. Elizabeth Warren, while warning this week of an economic crash, touted plans to help save capitalism — an unmistakable contrast with Bernie Sanders, the Democratic socialist with whom she’ll share the stage on Tuesday. Sanders has been playing nice with Warren while chiding Biden and others over their commitment to deliver health care, doubling down on his push for “Medicare for All.”
Even Biden, who preferred the statesmanlike tranquility of a Rose Garden strategy, is flipping the tables on the others.
“They realized all bets are off, the gloves are off. There’s no more ‘Mr. Nice Guy,’” Karen Finney, a Democratic strategist, said of Biden’s increasingly combative approach. “You’ve got to be prepared to take a punch — and the question is, can you land a punch?”
While there’s no way of knowing which issues will predominate in this week’s debates, I’d say the Ranty Racist-in-Chief’s tirades will provide candidates with the opportunity for forceful denunciations across the political divide.
Criminal justice reform, civil rights, and health care seem --according to the pundit class-- to be likely topics. And smart candidates will raise issues of concern to organized labor in a setting that once was the heart of American manufacturing.
Tuesday’s line up:
Sen. Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts
Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont
Gov. Steve Bullock of Montana
Rep. Tim Ryan of Ohio
Former Colorado Gov. John Hickenlooper
Former Rep. John Delaney of Maryland
Author Marianne Williamson
Sen. Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota
Mayor Pete Buttigieg of South Bend, Indiana
Former Rep. Beto O'Rourke of Texas
Wednesday’s line up:
Former V.P. Joe Biden
Sen. Kamala Harris of California
Rep. Tulsi Gabbard of Hawaii
Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand of New York
Sen. Cory Booker of New Jersey
Mayor Bill de Blasio of New York City
Sen. Michael Bennet of Colorado
Entrepreneur Andrew Yang
Gov. Jay Inslee of Washington
Former Housing Sec. Julián Castro
There are four hundred and sixty or so days until the presidential election. We are rapidly approaching a tipping point in the fight to save American democracy.
I have a sense that by the next round of debates Dear Leader will be openly be pursuing criminal prosecutions for perceived past and present enemies. So one additional thing to be watching for this week will be backbone.
Local Indivisible debate watch parties:
What: Watch 2nd Dem Presidential Candidate Debate, Night 1
When: Tuesday, July 30, 4:45 PM
Where: Mission Hills United Church of Christ, San Diego, CA
Click here to RSVP.
What: Watch 2nd Dem Presidential Candidate Debate, Night 2
When: Wednesday, July 31, 4:45 PM
Where: Mission Hills United Church of Christ, San Diego, CA
Click here to RSVP.
Check out Indivisible’s Debate Watch Guide, with candidate profiles and tips for evaluating responses to questions. Here’s a snip on the “electability question:”
One thing we’ve been hearing a lot in media narratives around 2020 is that Democrats care most about finding a candidate who’s “electable.” A lot of the time, that’s code for older, white, and male. Honestly?
We don’t buy it. No one was considered less electable than Donald Trump in 2015. There’s no paint-by-numbers code to crack to find the perfect candidate to beat Trump next year.
The most strategic thing we can do is nominate a candidate who’s able to genuinely excite a broad multiracial coalition of voters—and the way to do that is to find the candidates who are speaking to the issues we think will drive the next election cycle.
This isn’t just based on our opinions: we saw this strategy work in 2018, when grassroots engagement wound up retaking the House and—at the same time—electing the most diverse freshman class in the institution’s history. So don’t let pundits tell you who’s electable—look at who you find most exciting, and make it happen.
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Email me at DougPorter@WordsAndDeedsBlog.com