ToTheCenter

Navigation

· Home
· Discussion Forum
· News Categories
· Staff Page
· Search
· RSS Feeds
· Ultimate Stat Page
· Links
· Contact
· Voice Your Opinion

News Feeds

Welcome

Kucinich Blasts Edwards for Suggesting Smaller Debate Field

Advert

by Michael S. Leonard

NEW YORK, July 14—An off-the-record remark captured by television microphones has touched off a heated internecine meta-debate among Democrats.

According to The Associated Press, Representative Dennis Kucinich of Ohio is taking former Senator John Edwards to task for his suggestion that the frontrunners for the nomination should try to exclude long-shot candidates from the debate field.

“We should try to have a more serious and smaller group,” Mr. Edwards whispered to Senator Hillary Clinton after an NAACP forum in Detroit, Michigan.

The microphones also captured Mrs. Clinton’s reply. “Our guys should talk,” she said.

Mr. Kucinich responded to the incident by accusing the frontrunners of trying to rig the field. “This is a serious matter and I’m calling him on it,” Mr. Kucinich said. “Whispering, trying to rig an election, then denying what’s going on and making excuses. It all reflects a consistent lack of integrity.”

The debate about the debates is not new. Mrs. Clinton has complained throughout the primary campaign that the eight-member forums and debates have “trivialized” the discourse, reducing it to sound bites and applause lines. Some observers consider her objections ironic, noting that she has benefited the most from the format, often distilling the essence of her campaign into terse one-liners that play well with liberal audiences and a sound bite-hungry media. There is a wide consensus among political observers that even as her main rival, Illinois Senator Barack Obama, has catapulted to an early financial lead, Mrs. Clinton has “won” the debates.

Meanwhile, Senator Obama may have suffered most from the format. His tendency to indulge in thoughtful, occasionally roundabout answers has often been described as “professorial,” and it has struck some voters and commentators as indecisive, academic, and ill suited to the current debate format.

Mr. Kucinich and other critics of the proposed consolidation charge that media coverage itself is what defines a “frontrunner” at this early stage of the campaign, when polls are often inaccurate. They claim that early labels of “first-tier” and “second-tier” often become self-fulfilling prophesies, and they warn that denying “long-shot” candidates the media exposure of the primary debates could adversely affect voters and the process by limiting the contest to a few pre-selected media darlings.

The last two Democratic presidents were considered long-shot candidates until just before the primaries. When Jimmy Carter, former governor of Georgia, entered the Democratic primary race in 1976, he had national name recognition of only 2%. The media mocked his efforts by asking, “Jimmy who?”

At this stage of the Democratic primary race in 1991, Senator Clinton’s husband, then-Governor Bill Clinton, was polling in the low single-digits nationally, around where Representative Kucinich is polling today. After placing a surprise second in the 1992 New Hampshire primary, Mr. Clinton rode the momentum of his “comeback kid” victory all the way to the White House.

Critics of Mr. Edwards’s suggestion worry that there may be no more healthy political surprises if first-tier candidates succeed in excluding long-shot candidates from primary debates.

Comments

#1 | njrepublican on July 16 2007 01:37:31

Edwards says, “We should try to have a more serious and a smaller group.”

Clinton grabs Edwards by the throat and growls, “Smaller? Listen, you ultrafem SOB, you’d better not be making cracks about my ankles!”

#2 | seaman93555 on July 16 2007 11:54:14

I saw John Edwards on GMA this morning and he was not trying to exclude candidates from the debate. His explanation was he wanted smaller groups of candidates, which would allow for more substantive debates, rather than a short "sound bite" response. This makes sense to me, since I have noted in previous debates the time alloted for substantive responses and getting a feel for their political stance on the issues has been very low on quantity.

#3 | Mike Leonard on July 16 2007 13:07:29

Seaman, good point. I had meant to include that, but I guess it slipped my mind. Apologies if the article was a bit long on background, short on news.

#4 | Joan1234 on July 17 2007 17:25:43

Of course thats what they wanted. But I do wonder what they would say if debates were held and they were excluded. You would hear the screaming from one side of this country to the other. They both seem to think that they are the only ones who have anything of inportance to say. As I posted elswhere they are beginning to eat themselves. They wont be able to stop soon. This should be fun to watch.