How Democrats got bogged down in a messy dispute over debates

By Greg Sargent September 21 at 3:17 PM Follow @theplumlinegs

The Democratic Party is embroiled in an increasingly loud argument over the schedule of presidential debates, one that flared up in New Hampshire over the weekend when DNC chair Debbie Wasserman Schultz got heckled by audience members. Senior Dems such as Nancy Pelosi and Howard Dean have criticized the DNC. Hillary Clinton’s rivals have charged that the DNC has only scheduled six debates to deny them airtime and protect front-runner Clinton, who has subsequently said she’s open to more debates but won’t say whether she actively wants more of them.

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Last spring, when negotiations between the DNC and the Dem campaigns over the debate schedule got underway in earnest, the Clinton camp’s preference was to have only four debates, one in each of the early contest states of Iowa, New Hampshire, Nevada and South Carolina, according to a senior Democrat with knowledge of those conversations.

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Here an important nuance needs to be noted. At that point, the DNC had only announced the amount of debates, and not their schedule. The dates of the debates were announced in August. It was at that point that outrage really began to build, because the dates themselves created a situation that began to be seen as problematic. (Those dates are October 13, November 14th, December 19th, January 17th, and two in February or March that are not nailed down yet.)

The problem is that of the four debates that are actually scheduled, three come on weekends (as opposed to during weeknight prime time), one of them on the weekend between the end of Hanukkah and Christmas. The two remaining (as yet unscheduled) debates are in February and March, one on Univision and the other on PBS. Between those two and the one in January, there will be only three Dem debates in 2016, during the period in which Democrats will be voting in dozens of contests — from the early contests through the big state primaries in early and mid March, a period that could very well settle the outcome. By contrast, Republicans have six debates scheduled throughout that period, many on major networks.

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https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/plum-line/wp/2015/09/21/how-democrats-got-bogged-down-in-a-messy-dispute-over-debates/