Bring Back The League Of Women Voter Debates

Of course CNN, Tapper, Lemon, Bash, created a Republican-pleasing Democratic "debate" CNN was FOX-lite before FOX existed.  That shouldn't have baffled anyone, least of all professional journalist.

Everything the host network did tonight baffled me. Much of the debate, moderated by CNN’s Jake Tapper, Don Lemon, and Dana Bash, seemed like it was designed to confront Democrats with Republican arguments and create a spectacle at the expense of substantive debate.

For starters, CNN spent the first 10 minutes on a patriotic display and then cut to commercial. Bam, 10 minutes gone.

After one-minute opening statements by all the candidates, Tapper pivoted to health care — but repeatedly interrupted the candidates to enforce an absurdly short time limit, making it impossible for candidates to give full and interesting answers on some difficult policy questions.

The Vox article lists Republicans as one of the winners of this Democratic "debate". 

That's what anyone who allows the cabloid media, any broadcast media to run such "debates" should expect, it's what they do, they know their first and foremost obligation is to set things up to favor Republicans, it's what they do.  It's what they've always done.  And if not that to set it up so that no Democrats who will do what Democrats want to get done gets done. Why the DNC plays along with this, after seeing how that works for thirty years is baffling to me.  Democrats should have run these "debates" themselves.  Or even better, if it were up to me, I'd have the former and very good management of them as used to be commonly done by the League of Women Voters revived.  The way that ended in 1988, in an updated version of the smoke filled room by a scheme cooked up by the two campaigns, is worth remembering.

"The League of Women Voters is withdrawing its sponsorship of the presidential debate scheduled for mid-October because the demands of the two campaign organizations would perpetrate a fraud on the American voter," League President Nancy M. Neuman said today.

"It has become clear to us that the candidates' organizations aim to add debates to their list of campaign-trail charades devoid of substance, spontaneity and honest answers to tough questions," Neuman said. "The League has no intention of becoming an accessory to the hoodwinking of the American public."

Neuman said that the campaigns presented the League with their debate agreement on September 28, two weeks before the scheduled debate. The campaigns' agreement was negotiated "behind closed doors" and vas presented to the League as "a done deal," she said, its 16 pages of conditions not subject to negotiation.

Most objectionable to the League, Neuman said, were conditions in the agreement that gave the campaigns unprecedented control over the proceedings. Neuman called "outrageous" the campaigns' demands that they control the selection of questioners, the composition of the audience, hall access for the press and other issues.

"The campaigns' agreement is a closed-door masterpiece," Neuman said. "Never in the history of the League of Women Voters have two candidates' organizations come to us with such stringent, unyielding and self-serving demands."
Neuman said she and the League regretted that the American people have had no real opportunities to judge the presidential nominees outside of campaign-controlled environments.

"On the threshold of a new millenium, this country remains the brightest hope for all who cherish free speech and open debate," Neuman said. "Americans deserve to see and hear the men who would be president face each other in a debate on the hard and complex issues critical to our progress into the next century."

Neuman issued a final challenge to both Vice President Bush and Governor Dukakis to "rise above your handlers and agree to join us in presenting the fair and full discussion the American public expects of a League of Women Voters debate."

I remember those two "debates" and what a disaster they were for Dukakis under the "moderation" of Jim Lehrer of the always Republican friendly McNeil Leherer News Report and the second one "moderated" by Bernard Shaw who worked at CNN.   Dukakis's campaign managers played an enormous role in that catastrophic gift to the Republican-fascists.

I'll apologize that for lack of time to get better documentation that I'm relying on Wikipedia to point out that one of the parties in that sandbagging of the League was Dukakis' campaign manager, Susan Estrich who went on to become a fixture at FOX and Newsmax and to do this.

In July 2016, Estrich was retained as legal counsel to the former Fox News chairman Roger Ailes — whom she met on the George H. W. Bush campaign trail in 1988 and whom she considers a close friend. Ailes lost his job after a number of women who worked for Fox News accused him of sexual harassment. Her attacks against Gabe Sherman, the New York reporter who broke the scandal, were negatively viewed by some who felt the representation to be inconsistent with Estrich's pro-feminist philosophy.

Two sleazes killed off that tradition.  I'm reading that one of the foremost voices slamming progressive Democratic campaign issues this year is Obama's campaign strategist and one of the architects of Obama always playing his weakest hand, administration,  David Axelrod, who seems to be following something like Estrich's post-presidential trail only with CNN.   I loathe these people.  He's heading up the campaign against Medicare For All from his base at the University of Chicago.