Tom Steyer qualifies for December debate

[brooklynite]

Politico

Tom Steyer's campaign says he has qualified for the December Democratic presidential primary debate, making the billionaire activist the seventh candidate to do so.

To qualify, candidates need to hit 4 percent in four polls approved by the Democratic National Committee (or 6 percent in two polls in early-states) and get contributions from 200,000 donors. Steyer’s campaign announced that he crossed the 200,000 donor threshold on Tuesday; he had already achieved the requisite number of qualifying polls.

Steyer joins six other candidates who have previously qualified for the debate: Joe Biden, Pete Buttigieg, Kamala Harris, Amy Klobuchar, Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren. Candidates have until Dec. 12 to qualify for the debate, which is hosted by POLITICO and PBS NewsHour.

Candidates’ qualification is based off of POLITICO’s tracking of public polling and donor information; no candidate’s qualification is official until confirmed by the DNC after the qualification deadline has passed.

[rampartc]

1. i'm certainly not sold on steyer

but he is running a lot of tv ads calling trump out as a fraud and a bad businessman.

I might call them "negative ads" but in this case too true to be "negative."

[crazytown]

2. We need a debate. This is a farce.

December 19, 46 days before caucus night, and still far too many people on stage.

[brooklynite]

3. What is your definition of "a debate"?

[crazytown]

4. Real back and forth between the competitors,

not limited to one/two minutes snippets.

[brooklynite]

6. I'll observe that you want a debate format that no candidate has insisted on...

[crazytown]

7. Biden on 60 minutes

O'DONNELL: How would you rate your performance in the debates?

JOE BIDEN: A learning curve. And by that, I mean, they're not debates. They're one-minute assertions … when someone says, you know, "You've done something awful, that's not true, respond in 30 seconds," you know, it's awful hard to do.

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/joe-biden-60-minutes-democratic-debate-performance-learning-curve-gaffes/

[brooklynite]

8. And where has Biden insisted that the format be changed?

[crazytown]

9. Not in public obviously.

Perhaps you might inquire with TPTB.

[BannonsLiver]

10. When proven wrong just...

[StevieM]

13. Well they could have split the 12 candidate debate into two nights, like they were supposed to.

Then we would have had a couple of debates with just 6 candidates.

Ironically, we are seeing just how unfair it was when Bernie and his people said that not much went right in the 2016 debates. Having a smaller debate allowed people to get to know all the candidates, not that it did too much good for Chafee, Webb, or O'Malley. Still, I would have liked to see Lawrence Lessig on the debate stage, at least once.

I think there will be debates in Iowa, New Hampshire, Nevada and South Carolina in January and February. My guess is that the threshold will go up again and that will remove Steyer, Gabbard and Yang from those debates. The Iowa debate will probably be limited to Biden, Buttigieg, Sanders, Warren, Harris and Klobuchar.

In the mean time, I expect that Gabbard and Yang will also wind up making the December debate.

[Politicub]

5. I support the approach that Steyer is taking

He is attacking Trump and not the other candidates. That is a refreshing approach to a primary that is contorting itself into more of the same sniping that we have seen in years past.

So I’m glad he’s in the debate. His voice is as important as anyone else’s. And like Yang said, it’s not automatically bad that he has money; it is now he uses his money that counts. And Steyer has done a lot of good with his wealth and privilege. He is using his resources as a form of intersectionality, and intersectionality needs to be the defining philosophy of the Democratic Party. Without it, we do not have a coalition.

[virgogal]

11. Can't stand the guy....I have to mute his ads.

A billionare trying to buy his way in.Sound familiar?

[redqueen]

14. Can't tell if you're talking about Trump or Bloomberg

not that it matters anyway.

[StevieM]

12. Congratulations to Mr. Steyer on making the debate stage.

He is a valuable addition to this campaign. And I hope he is given a fairer allotment of speaking time at the next debate than he had at the last one.

[tritsofme]

15. It is long past time for the minor candidates to leave the stage.

Biden, Sanders, Warren, Buttigieg. Everyone else is wasting our time at this point.