2016 Primary Debates Favor Republicans by 2 to 1 Margin

2016’s primary debates season kicked off in earnest with a double-header on Fox News last night as 17 Republican hopefuls filled two separate debate sessions with 10 “Main Event” candidates in the 9 PM session and 7 “Undercard” candidates in the “Happy Hour” preliminary session at 5 PM.

The heavily publicized “first debate” on Fox News was actually preceded on Monday by a C-SPAN “Voters First” Republican Forum with 14 of yesterday’s 17 candidates in attendance. By breaking up the 17 candidates into two separate sessions, the Republican party effectively declared at least six of the seven Happy Hour campaigners as also-rans in the 2016 campaign, while letting Fox News take the blame. It’s going to be a very interesting primary season.

In the meantime, the 2016 primary debate schedule favors Republicans by a two to one margin according to uspresidentialelectionnews, which has published the nearest thing to an official debate schedule. Eighteen separate debates are scheduled, 12 for the Republican candidates and only six for the Democratic contenders, giving the Republicans what might be considered an unfair advantage…if you’re a Democrat.

2016 Primary Debates: How Republicans are Dominating the Conversation

With the two to one advantage in air time that the Republicans are getting – free of charge, by the way – their candidates will have twice as much time to bash each other, and the presumptive Democratic nominee, Hillary Clinton, as they battle it out for the Republican nomination. In the process of doing that, however, they will also get twice as much time to infiltrate the national political conversation with their versions of the facts and their opinions about the issues over the next 16 months, leaving the Democrats struggling to close the information gap with their rebuttals.With the number of candidates in their field, the Republicans feel justified in having not one but two separate sessions on each occasion, doubling the exposure their candidates will receive, so that instead of having twice as many hours of exposure, they will be getting FOUR times the exposure.

If you think this is an accident, think again. With a slate of 17 presumptive candidates on their preliminary ticket, the Republicans have hit upon a strategy for saturating the media with their views without having to pay for the privilege of controlling the public conversation. Considering the rank amateurism of some candidates, and the media celebrity of others, one might wonder whether some of the candidates were asked to run specifically to create this oversized candidate pool. Almost no one in the Democratic party appears to be complaining about the obvious inequity. On the contrary, the Democrats don’t seem to want more debates.

In a June 4th article in US News and World Report, US News political reporter David Catanese pointed out that the Republican party had already held a dozen “candidates forums” around the country and that the Republicans have planned for up to 12 debates while the Democrats were only willing to commit to six.

The Primaries as a Reality Show

With 17 candidates to hem and haw at each other, the Republicans have the makings of a reality miniseries on their hands. With Donald Trump in the mix, that may very well be their conscious intention. In some respects, the current Republican primary process resembles Trump’s Celebrity Apprentice program format far more than it does the calm, cool and collected primary processes of Republican campaigns past…and that may also be intentional.

If you remember the excitement that Barack Obama’s candidacy generated in 2008, and the corresponding disaster on the Republican ticket, it quickly becomes obvious that the 2016 Republican primary campaign is a campaign for the vice presidency, rather than for the presidency itself. Everyone knows that, when the dust settles, the party is going to settle for Jeb Bush because he’s the candidate with the fewest negatives but, in the past two elections, the Republicans have saddled themselves with dysfunctional vice presidents, each of whom hurt their tickets. Evidence for this is obvious: neither Sarah Palin nor Paul Ryan have been invited back into the process for 2016, Palin because of her general stupidity and Ryan because his budgetary fantasies cost his party more votes than they earned.

So the 2016 Republican primaries are really a tryout for the second slot. No other explanation adequately illuminates Jeb Bush’s apparent complacency. While he may not be doing well in the polls right now, he knows that the Republican political establishment, already well cultivated by his father and his brother, is solidly behind him. The Republican hierarchy wants Jeb Bush, and they don’t care what rank and file Republicans want. Bush already knows that the fix is in, and he’s just watching to see which of his competitors is going to end up being his running mate.

Why aren’t the Democrats debating like Republicans?

One reason the Democrats don’t want to debate like Republicans may very well be that the Democrats don’t have any credible candidates to put up against Hillary Clinton. After Massachusetts Senator Elizabeth Warren took herself out of the running, there were only six serious candidates for the Democratic nomination, and that’s using the word “serious” generously. In addition to Mrs. Clinton, the Democrats have former Rhode Island governor (and former Republican) Lincoln Chaffey, Maryland governor Martin O’Malley, Vermont senator Bernie Sanders, and former Virginia senator Jim Webb. Of those five other candidates, Bernie Sanders is only one who has achieved significant name recognition outside of his home region. (With Vice President Joseph Biden suddenly coming to life, there may now be seven potential candidates, although there are also three wannabees who aren’t worthy of mention.)

Senator Sanders, however, isn’t in it to win it; he’s in it to inject his ideas into the conversation, and that could be devastating for the Democrats. Yes, Bernie Sanders, the socialist senator from Vermont, has some bones to pick with Hillary and, by extension, with the Obama Administration, and his proposals will go over well….with a very small segment of the population.

Regardless of whether Bernie Sanders is right (and I personally think he is right much of the time,) the fact remains that Bernie isn’t in sync with the rank and file voters….yet. After eight years of a Republican administration holding the presidency and both houses of Congress, they might be much more willing to listen, by which time it will be too late. In the meantime, however, an aggressive Bernie Sanders presentation in the Democratic debates could very well force Hillary Clinton further to the right, while simultaneously convincing the “Undecideds” that the Democratic party is moving further to the left on the basis of Bernie’s rhetoric alone.

Sanders knows that he will never get the nomination for two reasons: He is, after all, a socialist, and he’s also Jewish. The people United States may have been ready for a black president, and we may be ready for a woman president, but there is zero likelihood that the United States will elect a Jewish president, and the people certainly wouldn’t elect one who is also a socialist. That’s just too much to ask from this electorate.

First of all, there is the Israel problem. How does a Jewish president lean on an Israeli Prime Minister? (My Jewish grandmother would have said, “Very, very carefully” to that.) As a Jew, he has emotional ties to Israel that go far beyond the emotional ties that most non-Jews have to their ancestral homelands. As president of the United States, however, he might be called upon to make decisions that would adversely affect Israel, and every decision he made affecting Israel would be closely scrutinized by people looking for evidence of favoritism, forcing him to be harsher than necessary toward our sometimes recalcitrant ally.

Secondly, there is the problem of Antisemitism. We would all like to believe that the bad old days when it was all right to call someone a kike in public are gone forever. They are not. No Jew will ever be elected president or vice president in this country, which makes Bernie Sander’s candidacy more divisive than quixotic.

The rest of Hillary Clinton’s opposition is running under a very simple campaign premise: “Hey, I’m not Hillary,” which isn’t going to get them -or Hillary – many votes in November of 2016, when it really counts.

The Democrats Have Nothing to Debate About

The second reason the Democrats don’t really want any serious debates is even more obvious: they have nothing to debate about. As a former member of the Obama cabinet, and the architect of Obama’s foreign policy for five years, Hillary Clinton can’t debate against the policies of the Obama administration because her mandate as his putative successor is to perpetuate his policies, not argue against them. This means that anyone up against Clinton in a debate has to argue against Obama’s policies or else they would have nothing to debate about.

The Democratic Party’s platform is already well-formed: continue the slow but steady job growth, invest in energy alternatives, try not to invade any other Middle Eastern nations, protect Affordable Care, secure Social Security, bring down the absurdly high cost of education (look for an Affordable Care Act for education), address the nation’s addiction to the war on drugs, come up with a viable path to citizenship for children who were brought to the US at an early age by illegal immigrant families. Protecting women’s reproductive rights will come up, as well as protecting gay marriage rights.

In the final analysis, however, the Democrats have no choice but to campaign on the sixteen years of economic success forged by the Clinton and Obama administrations. The keystone of Hilary Clinton’s campaign has to be: look, my husband fixed the economy and then George Bush left it in a shambles that Barack Obama fixed again. Which do you want? A Republican party that has demonstrated that it isn’t able to manage the economy, or a Democratic party that has demonstrated that it can.

Unfortunately, that’s not the kind of stump speech you want to dust off during the primaries because it opens up cans of worms that no one wants to eat during the primary season. Better to wait until the dust settles and the parties can see who and what they are shooting at.

Right now, however, the disparity between the number of Democratic and Republican primaries means that the Republicans have a clear field to offer into evidence whatever versions of the facts they wish to present, without the Democrats having an equally strong forum from which to refute them. The Democrats couldn’t even use that forum if they had it because they don’t have enough Donald Trump look alikes to populate the debates and make it look interesting.

Where Does this Leave the Democrats?

In a heavily orchestrated effort to cope with the cornucopia of candidacies, the Republican party has introduced the political equivalent of musical chairs. As the candidates sort themselves out in the poll rankings over the next few months, expect some candidates to rise and others to fall. Fewer podiums will be set up. Fewer candidates will appear for grilling. Just like being voted off the island. The Republicans are mounting a cross between the Celebrity Apprentice with Survivor, with just a touch of America’s Got Talent to spice up the mix.

All the Democrats have is a tired old grandmother, who may just be the only thing standing between us and a long-term Republican dictatorship.

Whether you are a Republican or a Democrat, just stop for a moment and ask yourself this question: Would you give the keys to the family car to any one of these clowns? I’m not saying the Democrats are any better than the Republicans. What I am saying is that maybe we shouldn’t give anyone a virtual dictatorship over the country.

Also See:

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Donald Trump Has Chronic Foot in Mouth Disease
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Defeating ISIS is a Piece of Cake Say Republican Candidates
The Politics of Accountability

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