It’s Time For Democrats To Severely Limit Access To The Debate Stage
The time for coddling the candidates polling below 5% is over.
The deadline to qualify for the next Democratic debate in October is fast approaching, and Democrats are already debating the criteria for the debates in November, December, and January:
As Democratic presidential candidates barrel into the fall, they are still waiting for the party to write the rules for the most important events of the campaign.
The candidates are bracing for another round of strict new debate criteria from the Democratic National Committee, which has already halved the list of candidates making the debate stage and could once again shrink it drastically within weeks.
Ten candidates participated in September’s DNC debate and 11 have qualified for the October edition, but the DNC has yet to spell out the thresholds it will use to ration debate participation in November and December with time running short. Even small changes in the criteria could have far-reaching effects: When the DNC set its thresholds at 65,000 donors or 1 percent in polls earlier this year, 20 candidates made the stage.
But merely increasing the polling threshold to 2 percent in four DNC-approved surveys, and doubling the donor threshold, capped the September debate at one night. Even a modest increase for November could spell the end of several campaigns that are just hanging on to the debate stage, and while we know the criteria are likely to keep going up, no one knows exactly how it will affect the 2020 field. And in a nationalized presidential election, the debates have proven to be the most important opportunity for candidates to introduce themselves to large audiences and try to change the direction of their campaigns.
“My only complaint with the DNC’s process is that they haven’t announced what the heck is going on for the November debates yet,” Democratic candidate Andrew Yang told POLITICO, asking whether any reporters knew what the new thresholds would be.
Yang has made every debate so far and is confident of meeting future criteria, and he said “the DNC’s thresholds to make the debates have been incredibly helpful, because then you just know what to aim for.”
Yang is right that the Democratic National Committee should make the criteria for the November and December debates clear as soon as possible. These will be some of the final debates before the voting starts in February 2020 and will likely be the ones that get the most attention from voters in the early primary states. That being said, I would also argue that because of this the criteria for these debates should be far more stringent than they have been so far.
To qualify for the June and July debates, for example, candidates had to hit at least 1% in a series of pre-identified polls and demonstrate that they have gotten donations of at least $1.00 from roughly 65,000 individual donors. For the third and fourth debates, those criteria were doubled to provide that the candidates must his 2% in the respective polls and get donations from roughly 130,000 voters. For the subsequent debates coming in November, December, and January, the criteria ought to be even more stringent. Personally, I’d draw the line at 5% in the polls and minimum of 250,000 cumulative individual donors. This would likely mean that the debates will be limited to Joe Biden, Elizabeth Warren, Bernie Sanders, Kamala Harris, and Pete Buttigieg. Some may call that unfair given the fact that nobody has voted yet but, let’s face it, if you’re still polling below 5% three months before the Iowa Caucuses the odds that you’re going to be a contender for the nomination are about as good as the odds that the New York Jets are going to win the AFC East this season.
I was going to suggest a 10% polling threshold, but your 5/250 hurdle winnows the field nicely. Now more of the back markers need to drop out.
I’m fine with that lineup.
An opposing view from Matt Yglesias:
https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2019/9/23/20875725/campaign-2020-polling-democrats-biden-trump
Headline:
@charon: Yeah. I kind of feel like the desire to cut the field early is a version of the Pundit’s Fallacy A term coined by Yglesias.
Yang has done what I wanted him to do on the national stage: make UBI something that people would talk about and give consideration to, without framing it as some kind of far-left horror story.
As far as I’m concerned, he’s done his job and can go away. I’d be tentatively okay with it if he chose to endorse someone, but I don’t think there’s a good option for that on the field, so I’d rather he die a hero than live long enough to become a villain.
I’m not sure narrowing the field this early is really a good thing. I mean, I want Andrew Yang gone as much as the next guy, but still…
Is it better to have the field narrowed by media attention three months before the voting, or to have the field narrowed by a voters in a few unrepresentative early primary or caucus states?
Neither seems particularly good, but the latter gives more candidates more time to make their case, and doesn’t otherwise seem worse given that those states are going to have an outsized influence either way.
Rather than restricting access via higher polling requirements, if they put the stage at the top of a steep hill, so the 70 year olds couldn’t get there easily, I would be ok with that.
A gauntlet of Old Country Buffet, Ice Cream and TVs showing Matlock would also be fine.
If Biden scales a significant, steep hill with an ice cream cone in his hand, and isn’t winded, I’m willing to say that he has the vigor to be president. Same with Bernie and Elizabeth.
(I think Warren could totally do it)
@Gustopher:
Harris seems to be fading away — the e-mail pleas for money I get from her campaign sound increasingly desperate — and I believe at some point people will realize that Mayor Pete’s accomplishment is being mayor of a city of 103,000 — a city that wouldn’t make the top ten cities here in Colorado, and not the top 50 in California. So the choice seems to be between three old white people from the northeast urban corridor. I’m peculiar enough to believe in the jinx on Democrats from the NE urban corridor — none of them have won since 1960.
@Michael Cain:
“So the choice seems to be between three old white people from the northeast urban corridor.”
While I believe a person not from the Northeast would be more electable (which is why Klobuchar started off as my first choice), Warren only has lived in the NE Corridor since she became a Professor at Penn Law School in 1987 when she was 38, and was born in Oklahoma. Biden was born in a not-particularly NE Corridor part of Pennsylvania, Scranton (while it is only about 2 hours drive from both NYC and Philly, it is definitely coal country, to the extent that the most advertised attraction is a tour of an out-of-service coal mine).
@michael cain–What if the Democrat was born in Oklahoma?
@Moosebreath:
@Teve:
Interesting questions. When my friend the anthropologist and my friend the political scientist and I discuss this, the question always comes down to something along the lines of “How does it play in the suburbs of state X?” There, Biden is running as the very long-time Senator from Delaware and VP (ie, DC). Bernie is the mad Social Democrat from Vermont (and DC). Hillary Clinton was the Senator from New York and long-time DC insider. Kerry was what he always had been. Gore had to run as a VP and long-time Senator (DC insider), not a good ol’ boy from Tennessee.
If Warren is the nominee, she’s running for President as an Ivy League professor and Senator from Massachusetts — she’ll get no credit for her time in Oklahoma or Texas.
This doesn’t seem to apply so much on the Republican side. Eg, Mitt Romney won state-wide races in both Massachusetts and Utah without a consistent identity being attached to him.
@Michael Cain:
I swear I thought you were setting up a joke here!
@charon: I found that very persuasive, charon. Thanks for linking!
I think the problem is that we haven’t had a vote (a caucus or an election) yet, and that tends to winnow out the 1%-ers.
I’ve actually enjoyed the contributions of Klobuchar, Buttigieg, and Yang, so I’ll be sorry to see any of those 3 excused from the stage.
@R.Dave:
I think Yglesias point is good as a generalization, but it presents problems in 2020 with two highly flawed frontrunners (Biden, Sanders) and the implicit need to find an “anyone but those two” to coalesce around.
Here is the latest from Uncle Joe:
https://twitter.com/AnandWrites/status/1176276591883837441
Another day, another Paleolithic Biden moment.
Some discussion at LGM:
http://www.lawyersgunsmoneyblog.com/2019/09/the-absurdity-of-joe-biden
…
@charon:
That was an attractive young woman, BTW, so this from the LGM comments thread: