Rachael Maddow To Interview Three Democratic Candidates But Prohibited from Doing it at Same Time
WaPo: Free Rachel Maddow (and Clinton, Sanders and O’Malley)
On Friday, Nov. 6, MSNBC host Rachel Maddow will be at Winthrop University in Rock Hill, S.C. So will former secretary of state Hillary Clinton. So will former Maryland governor Martin O’Malley. So will Sen. Bernie Sanders. All of them are seeking the Democratic presidential nomination, and all of them will be interviewed by Maddow on that day.
Just not together. Rules set out by the Democratic National Committee (DNC) allow Maddow to interview these three candidates sequentially — in a format known as a “forum” — but not jointly, as in a “debate.”
Blame “exclusivity” for the formatular madness. Back in May, the DNC announced that there’d be six sanctioned debates spread through the campaign season, starting with the CNN debate next week in Las Vegas and ending in February or March in Wisconsin. The party leveled a threat at candidates who would dare exercise their freedom of assembly and freedom of speech to debate outside of those parameters: “Any candidate or debate sponsor wishing to participate in DNC debates, must agree to participate exclusively in the DNC-sanctioned process,” noted the DNC. “Any violation would result in forfeiture of the ability to participate in the remainder of the debate process.”
We turned to Jaime Harrison, chair of the South Carolina Democratic Party, for some guidance on what things could legally happen in a “forum” versus what things could happen in a “debate.” Here’s what he said: “The candidates can’t engage in the back and forth because it denotes more of a debate than an actual forum. … They cannot engage in asking each other questions or being asked the same question while on stage.” Got that, Maddow, Clinton, O’Malley and Sanders? None of that prohibited stuff!
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