Hillary Clinton was the recipient of an extraordinary gift this week. No, not the State Department determining that her attorney, David Kendell, can possess likely classified materials on a simple thumb drive despite his lack of appropriate security clearances because, well, he’s within Hillary Clinton’s lawless orbit and is thus immune from repercussions. No, the gift she received was from the Democratic National Committee. The party released its official 2016 election cycle debate schedule on Thursday, and it is nothing short of a pre-coronation gift for Hillary Clinton.
When the Republican Party revealed that its 2016 debate schedule would look dramatically different from the previous presidential election, the reaction it received from observers was mixed. Some balked at the reduced debate schedule, expressed frustrations with the metrics (public polling) used to assess which candidates would be excluded from the top-tier debates, and wondered if the Republican National Committee would exercise more control over the media’s moderators than they had in the past. Writing in the Wall Street Journal in June, RNC Communications Director Sean Spicer insisted that the national committee could only try to limit the number of debates, insofar as networks and independent groups would cooperate with RNC directives. Beyond that, the situation was beyond their control.
“It is important to acknowledge that the networks and the networks alone are responsible for determining such criteria,” Spicer wrote. “Such criteria must be clear, transparent, objective and neutral. No special exemptions can be made; special treatment cannot be given to certain candidates.”
The GOP hoped to avoid a repeat of 2012, when a proliferation of debates compelled the party’s eventual nominee to lurch to his right, only to emerge the battered, diminished victor after a grueling primary season. It appears the Democrats were watching closely.
Hillary Clinton had long sought to limit the amount of competition she would face in the quest for her party’s nomination, and the debate schedule was key to ensuring that her stroll to her party’s convention would be an easy one. The Clinton apparatus had hoped that the number of debates would be modest and late in the season; just enough to give Democratic voters the illusion of a contest, but not so many as to actually invite one. After a prolonged period of speculation, the Democrats revealed their 2016 debate schedule on Thursday. It is everything Clinton could have hoped for.
The DNC revealed that there would be a grand total of six primary debates beginning in mid-October, after the Republicans will have already met in two contests. “The first debate will be Oct. 13 in Nevada, sponsored by CNN, the DNC said. It will be followed by debates in Des Moines, Iowa, on Nov. 14; in Manchester, N.H., on Dec. 19; and in Charleston, S.C., on Jan. 17,” the Wall Street Journal reported. The rest have not yet been scheduled, but they are likely to be set for some time in February or March, likely after the Iowa caucuses and the New Hampshire primary had already occurred.
Clinton’s highest profile primary opponents – Martin O’Malley, and Bernie Sanders – were incensed by the overt favoritism their party had shown the presidential frontrunner.
“The schedule they have proposed does not give voters — nationally, and especially in early states — ample opportunity to hear from the Democratic candidates for president,” said O’Malley’s chief strategist Bill Hyers. He added that the proposed schedule “seems geared toward limiting debate and facilitating a coronation, not promoting a robust debate and primary process.”
Sanders, too, noted that he was “disappointed, but not surprised.”
“At a time when many Americans are demoralized about politics and have given up on the political process, I think it’s imperative that we have as many debates as possible — certainly more than six,” the self-described socialist senator from Vermont said in a statement.
Not everyone chafed at the proposed schedule, though. The other Democrats vying for the nomination, Jim Webb and Lincoln Chafee, just seem happy to have been invited.
For the Democratic Party, this decision is as smart as it is revealing. The party has dropped any pretense of the notion that it is not actively facilitating Clinton’s ascension to the nomination, and it wants to limit the internecine bloodshed as much as it can before the inevitable occurs. For those who are invested in Clinton’s viability as a presidential candidate, the memories of her performance on the debate stage are not always warm ones.
“Mrs. Clinton’s campaign at one point had pondered whether to even commit to debates,” the New York Times reported on Thursday. “While she is known to be a skilled debater, one of her worse moments in the 2008 presidential race came at an October 2007 debate, when she stumbled over a question about letting undocumented immigrants get drivers licenses.”
It wasn’t a “stumble” so much as it was a flagrant flip-flop, and Chris Dodd made her pay for it. But the Hillary Clinton of 2007 looks like a paragon of intellectual consistency compared to the Hillary Clinton of 2015. In order to appeal to the Democratic Party’s left-wing base former secretary of state has embraced the preferred liberal position on issues ranging from immigration, to the lifting of the Cuban embargo, to gay marriage rights, to free trade, to crime and incarceration, to ethanol subsidies. Any of her Democratic opponents who would like to make an issue of her careless pursuit of political expediency will have ample ammunition to do so.
The irony is that Democrats would be far better served if they were to expose Clinton to as much scrutiny as possible before general election voters begin to tune into the race. But it seems as though neither the party nor the Clinton campaign have much faith in their candidate to not wither in the spotlight. That’s not much of a vote of confidence.
