I dont expect the national media to cover the 2020 Democratic Presidential Primary/eventual nominee

[NewsCenter28]

If the current occupant is around in 2020 and running. Instead, all we will hear about are his tweets and calls to lock him/her up (the eventual nominee) that is. The only oxygen we will get is during the 3 debates, themselves, and all of the post-debate coverage will be on how Occupant conducted himself. I also expect Occupant to try to steal the show from us during our VP pick and the Democratic National Convention. His stooges, the right wing media, will happily oblige. The media will make it seem like Occupant is running unopposed. Sickening! Sorry, he disgusts me so much I am no longer capable of saying his name.

CNN and MSNBC will air his speeches in full all through prime time during the campaign and give a brief 30 second update, at best, each day on our nominee.

The nominee will need to get their message out through carpet bombing the airwaves (he/she should be flush in cash) and vigorous social media outreach along with interviews with local newspapers and TV station affiliates along with interviews with Telemundo, etc.

The nominee should build a strategy around knowing that the national media will try to ignore him/her. Calling the media out on their sick obsession may be a good tactic for the nominee as well. Also, far be it from me to continue to offer the nominee advice, but I think he/she should invest in a massive door knocking/telephone/GOTV effort to get every last possible sympathetic voter out who may not be aware of who the nominee is since our nominee will likely be operating under a media blackout.

**Venting over**

[Mike Nelson]

1. They will...

...not cover the Democrat and then say s/he has "no message" and was not appealing to unemployed Pennsylvanian coal miners. The media likes the ratings under chaos and constant "BREAKING NEWS" and will promote THE DONALD again.

[Scarsdale]

2. THIS is why

his orange arse needs to be in prison. His cabinet members are all unqualified crooks, just like his family, too. Where is Ivanka these days? Getting her face re-aligned ready for daddy's new campaign? Maybe in the witness protection program (Wit-less) Beavis and Butthead are eerily quiet, too.

[OnDoutside]

3. It all depends who the Democratic nominee is, and if there are Rep primaries. If no one stands up to

Trump on the Republican side, then all the media attention will pile on to the Democratic primaries, which will be a multi-candidate roller-coaster event.

[Hoyt]

4. They'll cover it. Overexposure of trump/GOPers should work against them, except with his base.

Have never believed that any person who is truly open to voting for a Democrat is going to be swayed by the overexposure of trump.

[Jim Lane]

5. One counter is for us to have more debates before the convention

The mistake of 2015-16 should not be repeated. As compared with earlier cycles, the Democratic debates began later and there were many fewer of them. This constriction gave the Republicans a big edge in free media.

This isn't a panacea, because there are millions of voters who pay no attention until the nominees are chosen. Nevertheless, there are also millions who do either watch the primary-season debates or at least see some of the news coverage. They are thus exposed to the cases being made by the contenders for the Democratic nomination, including the eventual nominee.

[StevieM]

6. The goal was to not be overexposed after 8 years of Obama in the White House.

We can debate whether that was a good idea or not.

Either way, it was insane that it was made out to be a giant conspiracy to get Hillary the nomination. She didn't exactly fall apart in the 2007-2008 debates.

[Jim Lane]

7. Regardless of whether that was the actual goal, it won't apply in 2020.

As for your characterization of the criticism of the decision last time, I agree that there was no giant conspiracy. A conspiracy, especially a giant one, requires multiple participants. IIRC, the limitation on debates was promulgated by Debbie Wasserman Schultz acting unilaterally, not by the full DNC.

We can improve the process for next cycle by having more debates and by having more openness and broader participation in party decisionmaking.

[StevieM]

8. Regardless of what constitutes a conspiracy, I don't think it is reasonable to suggest that

the decision was made in order to increase HRC's likely hood of becoming the nominee. She didn't get clobbered by Sander and O'Malley in the debates. She did blow Donald Trump out of the water in their debates--something none of his GOP opponents were able to do. And she was very strong in the 2007-2008 primary debates.

Besides, she did have one bad moment in a 2007 debate. And it was very beneficial to have another debate a few weeks later.

[Jim Lane]

9. I disagree.

The standard wisdom is not "more debates benefit a good debater." Rather, the standard wisdom is "more debates benefit the trailing candidate(s) by giving the front-runner more chance to stumble and by giving more voters a look at the rest."

I note that, in Hillary's 2006 re-election campaign, she did not agree to any debates with her challenger in the Democratic primary. My explanation is simple: She had the lead in the polls and she had more money, so she correctly decided that her best chance of winning was to debate as few times as possible. In 2015-16 those who supported her could reasonably conclude that a drastic reduction in the number of debates would benefit her, as would starting the debates later in the season.

Was that the actual motivation for Debbie Wasserman Schultz's decision? We can't say for sure. Nevertheless, I don't think that dismissing the idea out of hand as "not reasonable" is justified. Even where, as here, there are other possible explanations, Cui bono is usually a theory worth considering.

Anyway, second-guessing the procedures used last cycle is less important than planning for the next one. It's unlikely that there will be such a strong early front-runner as Hillary was in 2015. The other rationale you mentioned, of avoiding "overexposure" after eight years of holding the White House, won't apply, either. I hope the result will be that the full DNC will consider whether to repeat the novel rule of last cycle, under which there were certain sanctioned debates that were made exclusive (because anyone participating in any unsanctioned debates would be barred from the sanctioned ones). If that exclusivity rule is retained, there should at least be more debates than last time.

Furthermore, the debates should start earlier. In 2015, the first debate was held after the party-registration deadline in New York. A registered independent or Republican or Green who saw the debate and was inspired to become a Democrat, so as to vote for one of our candidates, couldn't do so. In the previous cycle with a Republican incumbent (2008), the first Democratic debate was on April 26, 2007, a more appropriate choice.

[StevieM]

11. It would have been very unusual for an incumbent senator to take part in a debate

against an obscure primary challenger. I don't think that can provide parallels to a presidential contest.

Every election cycle has a different debate format. I am sure that this one, with an incumbent GOP president in the White House, will have a lot more debates. And I am also sure that there will be a condescending, matter-of-fact narrative about how "we've learned our lessons from the past and are doing it the right way this time."

[Cha]

10. Of course it wasn't.. but those with

some agenda can't understand that.

It's very unreasonable.