First Democratic Debate: Where to Watch, What to Watch For
First Democratic Debate: Where to Watch, What to Watch For
(Bloomberg) -- Twenty Democratic presidential contenders will meet Wednesday and Thursday for the first debate of the 2020 campaign, a high-stakes event for the biggest and most diverse field ever of would-be party nominees.
The participants will be split into two groups of 10, appearing on successive nights. The top-tier candidates -- Senators Elizabeth Warren, Bernie Sanders and Kamala Harris, along with Mayor Pete Buttigieg -- are likely to focus on taking on the front-runner, former Vice President Joe Biden.
The vast majority of the contenders seeking to challenge President Donald Trump are languishing in the single digits in the polls. The forum in Miami will be an opportunity for them to break out by scoring points against better-known rivals in front of a national television audience of millions of Americans, many of whom will be taking notice of the race for the first time.
How to Watch the Debates on TV and Online
The debate at the Knight Concert Hall in Miami is split over two days, each with a mix of top-polling candidates and lower-polling contenders determined by NBC and the Democratic National Committee. Both debates will air from 9 p.m. to 11 p.m. on NBC News, MSNBC and Telemundo and can be streamed on NBCNews.com, MSNBC.com, the NBC News app, NBC News social media accounts and all Telemundo online platforms. Candidates polling over 2% are evenly split between events.
Which Candidates Have Qualified to Participate?
The first night will feature Senators Warren, Cory Booker, Amy Klobuchar, former Representative Beto O’Rourke, former HUD Director Julian Castro, Representatives Tulsi Gabbard and Tim Ryan, New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio, Washington Governor Jay Inslee and former Representative John Delaney. Candidates will stand in order of polling numbers, with the highest-polling candidates in the center. Warren is polling at 12.4% in the latest Emerson poll; O’Rourke is polling at 3.3%.
Thursday will feature former Vice President Biden, Senators Sanders, Harris, Kirsten Gillibrand and Michael Bennet, South Bend Mayor Pete Buttigieg, entrepreneur Andrew Yang, former Colorado Governor John Hickenlooper, Representative Eric Swalwell, and spiritual healer and author Marianne Williamson. Biden and Sanders will be center stage, polling at 32.1% and 16.5% respectively.
The cramped stages mean candidates will be forced to comply with strict rules on timing. NBC says there will be no opening statements, though contenders will be able to give closing remarks. Over two hours split into five segments, candidates will be allotted 60 seconds to answer questions and 30 seconds to respond to follow ups. Some candidates have already criticized the debate for its brevity.
“It’s a little bit of an exaggeration to call it a debate because there’s not really much time,” Biden said the day before the slate was announced.
What to Watch For: Key Issues at Play
Top policy issues voters will be watching include health care, climate change and immigration. There also is likely to be a discussion of Medicare-for-all, which was first proposed by Sanders but has since been endorsed by most of the candidates. Polling shows most voters do not know what the proposal is and are confused about whether they would be able to keep their current coverage. Candidates themselves have struggled to define it. Harris early on botched a question of whether she would allow Americans to keep their current coverage.
The debate is a chance for mid-tier candidates like Booker, O’Rourke, Klobuchar and Yang to have a break-out moment. It’s also an opportunity for the higher polling candidates to blunder or solidify their place center-stage. Biden, 76, in particular is prone to gaffes that could jeopardize his front-runner status.
The past week has been dominated by racially tinged controversies that are almost certain to come up at the forums. Biden is likely to have to defend anew comments he made about working with segregationists in the Senate in the 1970s. Booker and Harris, the two major black candidates in the race, both spoke out against the former vice president. Buttigieg is facing backlash for his handling of a shooting of a black man by a South Bend police officer.
Which Candidates Didn’t Qualify for the First Round?
Three candidates did not qualify for the debates: Montana Governor Steve Bullock, Mayor Wayne Messam of Miramar, Florida, and Massachusetts Representative Seth Moulton. Bullock’s campaign says he has already met the qualifications to be on stage for the second debate at the end of July.
The rules stipulate that qualified candidates must either reach 1% in three approved polls or garner 65,000 unique donors from 20 states. As an attempt to further reduce the number of eligible candidates in the future, the DNC created more stringent rules to qualify for the third debate in September. Candidates must have a minimum of 130,000 unique donors -- 400 from 20 states -- and garner 2% support in four qualifying polls released between June 28 and Aug. 28.
When Will the Second Debate Take Place?
The second debate will be held in Detroit on July 30 and 31 and will be hosted by CNN.
To contact the reporter on this story: Emma Kinery in Washington at ekinery@bloomberg.net
To contact the editors responsible for this story: Joe Sobczyk at jsobczyk@bloomberg.net, Max Berley
©2019 Bloomberg L.P.