Last week’s debates between the 20+ Democratic presidential candidates was a hot mess in almost every respect.
First of all — and we all expected this — the substance of the debate itself was little more than every single no-name trying to one up each other. Rather than presenting serious policy proposals that Americans actually want — like securing the border — candidates instead focused on how they could appear more purely socialist than one another. The result was one candidate pandering to one demographic, and the next pandering to another but with a louder voice.
Then, there were the production problems. On Wednesday, Chuck Todd was forced to cut to commercial because of some microphone issues coming from the control room. Casual readers may not know this, but this is normally an easy fix. Nevertheless, the hosts panicked and tossed to a break.
Part of this challenge likely comes from the fact that there are just so many people on stage. The beginning of Thursday night’s debate was stifled by every single candidate trying to talk at once, where Kamala Harris actually made herself appear as the voice of reason by reminding her rivals that Americans weren’t interested in a “food fight.”
We like to think this won’t be as much of a problem as more and more no-name candidates realize that they’re wasting their time and simply drop out, but we’re not ruling anything out.
