Due to More Incompetence from the DNC, the Next Debate Will Probably Have 10 Candidates Again

At this point in the primary process, what voters are craving—what we need—is to see four candidates on the same stage at the same time. Those candidates are Joe Biden, Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren, and Kamala Harris. If you want to throw Pete Buttigieg in, even though he has made exactly zero inroads with black voters, fine, but those first four are the frontrunners, and everyone else is a no-hoper. What’s more, we need those four to debate on a smaller stage, where we won’t have Jake Tapper or Anderson Cooper throwing it to John Hickenlooper every 30 seconds for an irrelevant take.

After the debacle of the first two debates, it wasn’t unreasonable to think we might get there. Instead, for the next debate(s) in Houston on Sept. 12, the DNC decided to do the following:

1. Hold two debates, with the field split in half randomly, unless
2. There were ten or fewer qualifying candidates, in which case they’d all go on the same night.

What that meant, in practice is that either the major candidates would be split up in smaller fields, or they’d be together in a really large one—both of which fail to meet the criteria of the ideal debate. (Worse, the requirements for the October debate are exactly the same, giving the candidates who get crossed off the list more time to rejoin the fray.)

These are terrible bylaws, and as it happens, it looks like the DNC is going to wind up with exactly ten candidates, meaning they’ll have one giant cluster**** of a debate just like the first four.