In any cycle, a large number of people file paperwork with the Federal Election Committee to run for President or file paperwork with state election officials to get on a state ballot.  In 2016, eighty-three people filed to run for President as a Democrat and one hundred twenty filed to run for President as a Republican.  Most of these people, by any definition, are not “serious” candidates — they have no name recognition; they do not file in a significant number of states; and they do not raise the type of money needed to run a national campaign.   It is literally impossible to have all of these people participate in a “debate”  unless by debate, you mean simply having each candidate give a three or four minute stump speech introducing themselves or a multi-day endurance test that nobody would watch (other than to periodically check-in to see which candidates are making gaffes due to exhaustion).

Before most candidates had filed, the Democratic National Committee decided on certain ground rules for participation in its June and July debate.  First, and most significant, the DNC decided to hold its debate over two evenings with a maximum of ten candidates per evening.  (While, perhaps, three or evenings with a maximum of six to eight candidates would have been better, getting networks to agree to a two-day debate was an accomplishment.)  Second, the DNC established a series of objective standards to determine who would qualify.  These standards were facially neutral and did not have the DNC making a judgment call on whom they wanted to have in the debates.

Of course, when you go with “neutral” criteria, there will always be at least one surprise candidate who is able to meet them.  And, there will always be one candidate who surprisingly does not qualify who has a reason why those neutral rules actually are not fair.   By the end of May, twenty-four candidates who claimed to be serious candidates had filed to run for the Democratic nomination.  The field included (by highest office held):  one Vice-President; one former cabinet member; eight present or former Senators; three governors; six present or former U.S. Representatives; three mayors; and two who have never held elective office.  Each of these individuals can make an argument as to why they belong on the debate stage, but putting more candidates on the stage reduces the amount of time that each candidate has to make their points which in turn reduces the usefulness of the debate in providing meaningful information to prospective primary voters (and activists and donors) trying to pick a candidate.  It is difficult to pick any objective criteria based on the success of the campaigns to date that would not favor the candidates who announced earliest.  On the other hand, while you could use objective criteria that considered what candidates had done in past elections, any such criteria would clearly appear to be stacking the deck in favor of the DNC’s preferred model of a candidate.  So we have four candidates who missed qualifying for the June debate now having to play catch-up and hope to bump one of the other candidates from the July debate. Continue Reading...