The Democratic National Committee has announced the debate schedule and participants:
June 26:
June 27:
The order within each group is the order that 538 lists their poll averages, which probably overstates O’Rourke’s standing and understates Warren and Buttigieg’s standing in The Church Of What’s Happening Now, but is otherwise fairly accurate. Despite DNC attempts to balance out the two debates, it’s obvious that the second debate is The Group of Death, with four of the five most popular candidates, while Elizabeth Warren is exiled to the kiddie table debate. Moreover, they shoved the two most interesting weirdos (Williamson and Yang) into the Group of Death, along with both candidates from California and both candidates from Colorado. (The kiddie table got stuck with both candidates from Texas.)
Left out: Steve Bullock, Seth Moulton, Mike Gravel, and Wayne Messam. Bullock and Moulton got late starts, and Gravel is a protest candidate. Messam missing the debate stage in his home state is a sign he should pull out, though he won’t.
As frontrunner, Biden has the most to lose, and Biden and Sanders probably don’t benefit from having an early go at each other. Warren may benefit from being the oldest kid at the kiddie table (literally, in this case; she’s all of two years younger than Hillary Clinton, which means she’ll be two years older in 2020 than Hillary was in 2016), but that assumes that people tune in and she dominates the debate, neither of which is a sure thing. Everyone but Biden and Sanders is probably going to get time-screwed by the attention on the two front-runners, but maybe one of the long-shots (Yang?) can draw attention to themselves by wounding one of them. Theoretically Gabbard or Delaney has the same opportunity to blood Warren in the kiddie table debate.
I am hard-pressed to think of many instances an inter-party Presidential debate really changed the trajectory of the race in a meaningful way. Reagan’s “I am paying for this microphone!” moment comes to mind, but he was already the frontrunner. Rick Perry’s brain freeze because he was hopped up on goofballs might have finished his campaign, but it’s hard to think of any real Democratic contender whose debate performance changed the outcome of the race.
Normally a bad debate performance, or failing to make the debates entirely, would push most of the no-hope candidates out of the race, but this year feels different. With Gravel running his campaign entirely from Twitter and YouTube, what’s to keep other cash-poor campaigns from doing the same if they continue to get even a modicum of attention?
What incentives do any of the clown car candidates have to drop out before Iowa? Any of them might suddenly get hot. Or at least they can keep telling themselves that…
Tags: 2020 Presidential Race, Amy Klobuchar, Andrew Yang, Bernie Sanders, Beto O'Rourke, Bill De Blasio, Cory Booker, Democrats, DNC, Elizabeth Warren, Florida, Jay Inslee, Joe Biden, John Delaney, John Hickenlooper, Julian Castro, Kamala Harris, Kirsten Gillibrand, Marianne Williamson, Michael Bennet, Pete Buttigieg, Tulsi Gabbard