The Daily Background

Earlier today I flagged the following quote from Howard Wolfson, one of Hillary Clinton’s top campaign aides:

“When we were unable to say yes to the Fox debate…we made it clear that we were not going to do any debates outside of the DNC-sanctioned debates…. That was in fact our reason for not doing it.”

They “made it clear” they would not attend in early April. Since then however, I wrote that Clinton has participated in at least ten non-DNC sanctioned events. I communicated briefly with The Politico’s Ben Smith about this earlier today, and he subsequently got in touch with Wolfson, who said that the events Clinton participated in were technically forums, not debates.

To me, this seems like a campaign is just excusing themself from a double-standard based on minor technicalities that the average person wouldn’t understand (after all, could you tell a debate format from a forum format if you were presented with two of them?).

However, since the campaign claims this explanation exonerates them, let’s go through the ten non-DNC events Clinton participated in since early April and look at what each event was billed as, by the organizers, sponsors and if applicable, the television networks which broadcast them.

- April 26th, Orangeburg, South Carolina (SCSU/MSNBC)

This event, sponsored by the South Carolina Democratic Party and South Carolina State University at Orangeburg and broadcast by MSNBC was formally billed and promoted as a “debate” (even boasting to hold the “first debate of the 2008 campaign title).

- June 3rd, Manchester, NH (Union Leader/CNN)

This event, sponsored by the New Hampshire Union Leader (a local paper), WMUR (the local CNN affiliate) was broadcast nationally on CNN and promoted and billed as a formal “debate” (again, not a “forum”).

In both of these events, the moderators repeatedly referred to them as debates, not forums, and the candidates themselves repeatedly referred to the events as debates. Promotional materials consistently billed the events as debates.

The following non-DNC sanctioned events Clinton attended were billed as forums:

- June 28th, Washington DC (Howard University/PBS)
- July 12th, Detroit, MI (NAACP)
- August 4th, Chicago, IL (Yearly Kos)
- August 7th, Chicago, IL (AFL-CIO/MSNBC)
- August 9th, Los Angeles, CA (HRC/LOGO)
- September 9th, Coral Gables, FL (University of Miami/Univision)
- September 20th, Davenport, IA (AARP/PBS)

A tenth, the September 12th Huffington Post/Yahoo! event was billed as a “mash-up.”

So Clinton attended two non-DNC events that were officially billed as debates, and then turned down the Fox News debate saying they wouldn’t attend any debates that weren’t DNC-sanctioned. Forums are often referred to as debates anyway, and the Fox News/CBC event (which was cancelled pending rescheduling due to lack of participation) was referred to both as a debate and a forum, even in the same sentence in some instances, as seen in this article from The Politico, earlier this year:

The Democratic debate hosted by Fox News and the Congressional Black Caucus Institute threatens to be 90 minutes of bad TV, a planned presidential forum without the big-name candidates, a political event with few politicians.

What’s the difference between a debate and a forum when the terms are used so interchangably anyways? Clearly, Wolfson’s technical excuse that the events Clinton attended were forums not debates would hardly hold up, even if she hadn’t attended two events specifically billed as debates (which she has).

The point is, Clinton’s aide, Wolfson, clearly is exercising a double standard when it comes to attending non-DNC debates. Hillary will attend some, but won’t attend the Fox News one. In the interest of full disclosure, as a partisan, I’ve argued several times that Democrats shouldn’t attend the FNC debate, but I’d rather they be honest about why they’re not attending, instead of coming up it these excuses like “we’ll only attend DNC debates” which are obviously false.

Update: Ben just pointed out to me that both of the formally-billed debates Clinton attended were before the first DNC sanctioned debate happened. Though that still doesn’t negate the fact that she announced she wouldn’t attend any non-DNC sanctioned debates, and then the DNC announced its schedule, and then she attended a non-DNC debate. The point could be made that her self-imposed non-DNC debate boycott was only meant to go into effect when the first DNC sanctioned debate happened (July 23rd) though.

Filed under: Z-TDB Blog