The Daily Background

John Edwards became the first Democrat to cancel out of the 2008 Democratic CBC/FOX News debate scheduled for September 23rd. Here’s a statement from the Edwards campaign on their decision not to attend:

“We just called the CBC to let them know that we’re looking forward to their January debate with CNN but we’re not going to participate in the proposed debate with Fox. The CBC champions critical issues that matter enormously to the future of our country, and we look forward to discussing them throughout this campaign and at their debate in January. But we believe there’s just no reason for Democrats to give Fox a platform to advance the right-wing agenda while pretending they’re objective. If there was any uncertainty as to Fox’s objectivity, it was put to rest when they attacked Democratic candidates, Democratic constituency groups, and the Nevada Democratic party when their last proposed debate was cancelled for lack of support.”

Brave words. What it does is basically confirm that when Edwards pulled out of the now-cancelled Fox debate with the NV state Democratic party citing schedule concerns and the fact that it was Fox, it had more to do with the latter than the former (how many months in advance was that?). Here’s Ben Smith on the possible implications:

Clinton and Obama are scrapping, right now, not for voters but for endorsements of, particularly, black members of congress. It’s going to be a bit tough for either of them to, particularly, be the first to rebuff the CBC for that reason.

But as a couple of people have pointed out to me, there may yet be a stampede. Three things give them cover.

The first is Howard Dean’s decision to formally sanction six non-Fox debates. If you’re a frontrunner, that’s already more than enough.

Then there’s the fact that there’s a second CBC debate, on CNN.

Third, Tavis Smiley is hosting another African-American themed Democratic debate, to be shown on PBS.

So the Fox-CBC forum may be the Mike Gravel vs. Dennis Kucinich showdown we’ve all been waiting for, after all.

Hopefully we’ll be able to convince the other big candidates will follow suit and skip this debate as well. It doesn’t work so well with smaller candidates, because they want all the press time they can manage, although Richardson did pull out of the first Fox debate, and that was brave of a guy who is literally running around asking to be everyone’s second choice. Edwards’ people did the right thing to stress that this was not a knock against the Congressional Black Caucus, but rather a knock against Fox.

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