Biden’s campaign proposed that the first debate between the presumptive Democratic and Republican nominees be held in late June and the second in September before early voting begins. Trump responded to the letter in an interview with Fox News digital, calling the proposed dates “fully acceptable to me” and joked about providing his own transportation.
The terms here are how the commission should have been running debates from the beginning.
Trump will never agree to these terms as they undercut his entire debate strategy. With no crowd there, Trump can’t feed off their responses. With the mic time limit he can’t interrupt and interject like he wants to do. That leaves him with his rambling disconnected thoughts.
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Yeah, and that will be another problem. Even with this format, most people aren’t going to watch the debate. What they’ll watch is clips from the debate from their favorite media outlet.
Biden isn’t a great debater, so I’m sure there’ll be plenty of clips of him looking like an idiot. And, well, Trump is an idiot and his supporters know and don’t really care about that… So… Yeah. These debates will ultimately be pointless. The two are known entities that really don’t need exploring. A format change, though, would hopefully help with the 2028 elections.
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I worry that not doing debates for this cycle would be the start of a tradition of not doing them anymore, ever. To some degree, I’m in favor of doing them even knowing they’re only ceremonial.
But even as I write that out, I wonder if the whole thing needs a facelift. This kind of televised debate was made up in a world where television had the broadest media reach. It was a public service to broadcast debates, and there was a time when that might make up the majority of what a voter knew about the candidates.
Now we have the Internet and no need to shoehorn a Very Formal Debate into a prime time slot. Debates could be shorter and focused on the details of particular issues, allowing the candidates to converse more directly on topics. I would listen to a whole year of weekly podcast episodes like that leading up to an election.
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trump allowing Dems to lower the bar again…
President Joe Biden on Wednesday said he will not participate in fall presidential debates sponsored by the nonpartisan commission that has organized them for more than three decades and instead proposed two debates with former President Donald Trump to be held earlier in the year.
3 debates was the standard.
And they were always outside the parties control.
Now it sounds like Dems get one and Republicans get one. Both will win the one hosted by their party and declare the other biased.
And it solidifies the two private parties and prevents anyone else from having a chance.
To be fair, though, three debates is excessive this time around. We know where these people stand. The debates are really a chance to assess their mental fitness, and two will be fine for that.
The non-partisan commission shot itself in the foot by not taking early voting into account in its scheduling. If we are going to have debates, it makes no sense to schedule them after voting starts in some states.
Oh ok…
So let’s put the parties in charge.
Because Republicans aren’t a complete shit show and the Dems didn’t just schedule their convention so late that Biden won’t make the deadline to get on the ballot in every state…
But I’d love a source for the non-partisian debates being scheduled after early voting starts.
I’ve never heard anything about that.
But I’d love a source for the non-partisian debates being scheduled after early voting starts.
I’ve never heard anything about that.
The article itself mentions that both campaigns have an issue with the debate commission scheduling after early voting. But let’s assume the AP is not a credible source and didn’t fact check this.
How long before the election does early voting begin? Looks like it’s 50 days in some instances:
Early in-person voting may begin as early as 50 days before the election … The average start date is 27 days before the election.
https://www.ncsl.org/elections-and-campaigns/early-in-person-voting
So let’s look at how well the commission did in 2020. Election Day was Nov. 3, 2020; 50 days prior was Sept. 14, 2020 and 27 days prior was Oct. 7, 2020.
Based on the schedule here: https://www.debates.org/debate-history/2020-debates/ there were three debates:
- Sept. 29, 2020: Biden v. Trump
- Oct. 7, 2020: Harris v. Pence
- Oct. 22, 2020: Biden v. Trump
So, yeah, not a single one of those dates is before the absolute start of early voting, and two of them are on or after the average start.
Seems like a valid and factual complaint to me.
But you’re acting like the nonpartisan commission picked the dates with no input from the parties…
That people who vote day 1 of early voting aren’t sure of who they should vote for…
And that the parties should be in charge of it, despite the Dems deciding to not declare their candidate till after the deadline to get on some states ballots?
The ones that demanded a state violate their state law to move a primary, and when they wouldn’t removed all their delegates…
You didn’t prove anything about the “late” debates being the commissions decision, or why we should give control to an organization thats clearly terrible about scheduling …
I didn’t set out to prove anything or argue any point other than the complaint about the debates being scheduled after early voting starts are rooted in fact.
In fact, the only thing I really did was provide relevant sources to indicate that, yes, the debate commission has a history of scheduling at times after early voting starts.
But giving control to the parties isnt an improvement…
They can’t even schedule their own events to make sure their candidate gets on the ballot.
In this case, yes it is an improvement, we get 2 debates before early voting is a huge improvement over only 1. Yes, long term I agree with you that I’d rather a 3rd party host the events, but right now for this election it seems they need to get their crap together.
