The Daily Background

Without coming out and saying it, Clinton’s people have indicated that their candidate won’t be showing up for the CBC/Fox News debate this September. This comes on the heels of the Obama campaign announcement that the Illinois Senator will not be attending the debate either, opting to attend the CBC/CNN debate next year because it seems like a more “appropriate venue.”

Clinton’s campaign has said that it is not planning to attend more debates than the six scheduled with the DNC, which appears to indicate that she will skip both CBC debates- a move that may hurt her with African American voters. Her spokespeople say that she’s committed to the Tavis Smiley PBS debate as well as the South Carolina one.

John Edwards was the first candidate to drop out of the original News/Nevada Dems debate (which has since been cancelled) as well as the CBC/Fox News debate last week. After the first debate was cancelled, Fox pretty much lashed out at Democrats, saying that it was their loss and that nobody should take them seriously because they’re afraid to go on FNC. Naturally this doesn’t make Democrats more likely to attend future debates, so they pretty much shot themselves in the foot here.

It’s important that Democrats, especially in primaries, refuse to debate on Fox News. Nobody who is voting in the Democratic primary watches Fox News, and we need to make clear that the reason that the network is beingn avoided is because of their constant and consistent conservative bias. They are not fair, they are not balanced, and there is no reason for Democrats to appear on their airtime (and give a major boost to their ratings) so that the network can make them look bad by asking loaded questions.

Now that the big three are out, the second tier candidates will of course whine a little bit. From their point of view, any airtime they get is a good thing, so they want as many debates as possible– even if they broadcast by Fox News.

Here’s my question though: can this debate even proceed now that the top three candidates have dropped out? I mean, if they go ahead with only Dodd and Richardson and Biden and Kucinich and Gravel, will they be a laughing-stock? Will anyone tune in? Is the CBC going to cancel it due to lack of participation? Will a fourth candidate drop out and up the ante?

Filed under: Z-Feature