Democratic Debate: Candidates So Different You Can Barely Tell Them Apart
15th November 2015
Well, maybe hair style.
It seems fairly clear that the Democratic presidential primary debate schedule was deliberately designed to ensure that as few people as possible tuned in: After the first debate, the next two events were set on Saturdays—including one the Saturday before Christmas—and the one after that set for the Sunday before the Martin Luther King holiday.
And in a way, it makes sense: Why would Democrats want more viewers? Even though Sen. Bernie Sanders is performing notably better than many expected, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton remains the prohibitive favorite to win the Democratic party nomination. Because she is already so well known and well established with the general public, debates have little upside and large potential downside: She’s unlikely to say anything to help her chances all that much, and, given the base-pleasing incentives of the primaries, more likely to say something that would come back to hurt her in a general election. The Democratic party scheduled presidential debates so that they could say they had debates—not to actually have a contest.