The Group of Death and The Kiddie Table

[Elderberry]

Lawrence Person's BattleSwarm Blog 6/15/2019

https://www.battleswarmblog.com/?p=40726

The Democratic National Committee has announced the debate schedule and participants:

June 26:

Elizabeth Warren
Robert Francis “Beto” O’Rourke
Cory Booker
Amy Klobucher
Julian Castro
Tim Ryan
Tulsi Gabbard
Jay Inslee
Bill de Blasio
John Delaney

June 27:

Joe Biden
Bernie Sanders
Kamala Harris
Pete Buttigieg
Andrew Yang
Kirsten Gillibrand
John Hickenlooper
Michael Bennet
Marianne Williamson
Eric Swalwell

The order within each group is the order that 538 lists their poll averages, which probably overstates O’Rourke’s standing and understates Warren and Buttigieg’s standing in The Church Of What’s Happening Now, but is otherwise fairly accurate. Despite DNC attempts to balance out the two debates, it’s obvious that the second debate is The Group of Death, with four of the five most popular candidates, while Elizabeth Warren is exiled to the kiddie table debate. Moreover, they shoved the two most interesting weirdos (Williamson and Yang) into the Group of Death, along with both candidates from California and both candidates from Colorado. (The kiddie table got stuck with both candidates from Texas.)

Left out: Steve Bullock, Seth Moulton, Mike Gravel, and Wayne Messam. Bullock and Moulton got late starts, and Gravel is a protest candidate. Messam missing the debate stage in his home state is a sign he should pull out, though he won’t.

As frontrunner, Biden has the most to lose, and Biden and Sanders probably don’t benefit from having an early go at each other. Warren may benefit from being the oldest kid at the kiddie table (literally, in this case; she’s all of two years younger than Hillary Clinton, which means she’ll be two years older in 2020 than Hillary was in 2016), but that assumes that people tune in and she dominates the debate, neither of which is a sure thing. Everyone but Biden and Sanders is probably going to get time-screwed by the attention on the two front-runners, but maybe one of the long-shots (Yang?) can draw attention to themselves by wounding one of them. Theoretically Gabbard or Delaney has the same opportunity to blood Warren in the kiddie table debate.

I am hard-pressed to think of many instances an inter-party Presidential debate really changed the trajectory of the race in a meaningful way. Reagan’s “I am paying for this microphone!” moment comes to mind, but he was already the frontrunner. Rick Perry’s brain freeze because he was hopped up on goofballs might have finished his campaign, but it’s hard to think of any real Democratic contender whose debate performance changed the outcome of the race.

Normally a bad debate performance, or failing to make the debates entirely, would push most of the no-hope candidates out of the race, but this year feels different. With Gravel running his campaign entirely from Twitter and YouTube, what’s to keep other cash-poor campaigns from doing the same if they continue to get even a modicum of attention?

What incentives do any of the clown car candidates have to drop out before Iowa? Any of them might suddenly get hot. Or at least they can keep telling themselves that…

[Elderberry]

@240B

Quote from: 240B
    I'm running too.
    Currently I'm in 56th place. Just waiting for the debates.

Sorry. It don't look like you made the cut.

[Elderberry]

The DNC Tried To Avoid A Lopsided Debate. It Got One Anyway.

https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/the-dnc-tried-to-avoid-a-lopsided-debate-it-got-one-anyway/

The lineups for the first Democratic debates — on Wednesday, June 26, and Thursday, June 27 — are out! Only 20 candidates qualified, obviating the need for any complicated tiebreakers. And on Friday, the Democratic National Committee held a two-part random drawing to determine who would debate on each night. The eight candidates with polling averages of at least 2 percent were drawn first (four debating on one night, four on the other), and then the 12 remaining candidates were drawn (six on one night, six on the other). Here are the resulting lineups for each night, as well as each candidate’s average in qualifying polls:

By separating the candidates into higher- and lower-polling groups, the DNC hoped to avoid a scenario where the lottery put all the top-tier candidates on the same night — effectively relegating the other debate to “junior varsity” status. (In 2016, some Republican debates grouped candidates into higher and lower tiers and put them on separate stages, a setup sometimes referred to as the “varsity” and “junior varsity” debates, which caused a lot of issues and complaints.) However, as you can see from the table, that kind of happened anyway. Four of the five highest-polling candidates (former Vice President Joe Biden, Sen. Bernie Sanders, Sen. Kamala Harris and South Bend, Indiana, Mayor Pete Buttigieg) will all debate on the same night (Thursday). Meanwhile, the four higher-polling candidates on Wednesday’s slate include Sens. Cory Booker and Amy Klobuchar, who are polling either right at or just barely above the 2 percent dividing line. In total, 21 percent worth of polling support is appearing on the first night of the debates and 64 percent is on the second night.

What implications will these lopsided lineups have for the debates and the candidates in them? We don’t really know right now, but it may mean the Thursday debate, with more heavy hitters, will get higher ratings. On the other hand, being in the Wednesday debate might be advantageous for a less-popular candidate because they will now have more of a chance to step out of the front-runners’ shadows. We’ll be closely following the debates on our live blog; be sure to join us then.