The Democratic Debate 2015: Political Inequality in the Democratic party
On October 13th, 2015, five democratic presidential candidates met in the Wynn Las Vegas resort to debate the rising issues that are affecting the United States and how each candidate would go about fixing these issues. The candidates covered topics likes immigration, gun violence, equality of the genders and unemployment. While these topics are quite interesting to debate about, and I'm glad that many of these issues were brought up, another thing caught my attention during the debate. I noticed that Senator Hilary Clinton and Bernie Senator Sanders were both allowed to speak much more than either of the other three candidates, governor Martin O'Malley, Senator Jim Webb, and governor Lincoln Chafee. Senator Clinton was given 31 minutes to speak and Senator Sanders was 28 minutes to speak. This is outrageous compared to the pitiful amount of time given to any of the other candidates. O'Malley was given 18 minutes to speak, Webb 15 and a half minutes, and Governor Chafee a pathetic 9 minutes. I thought these debates were supposed to be fair and balanced, where each candidate is given equal time to express their thoughts on the issues that are present. Senators Clinton and Sanders combined took more time than the other three candidates combined. While watching the debate, I noticed multiple times where O'Malley, Webb, and Chafee were trying to chime in to the discussion, but were completely ignored in exchange for Clinton or Sanders.
This type of complete disregard for a fair debate format is a disgraceful display by CNN, who was hosting the debate. Why were Senators Clinton and Sanders given so much more time than any of the other candidates? This kind of blatant favoritism isn't something that is just a simple mistake. Clearly, some ulterior motive must be at hand. I say this because the Republican debate that took place on September 16 had over 10 candidates participating in the debate, and the time allotted for each candidate to speak was much more fairly distributed. If a debate with over 10 candidates cand be regulated very well, how could a debate with only five candidates be run so poorly? I fear that groups with certain political affinities, such as CNN, who were involved in running the debate, may have had an effect on how this debate was skewed so far in favor of only Senators Clinton and Sanders. Debates, especially ones as important as ones about who the future leader of this country is, need to be fair and balanced, not just for the sake of the candidates, but for the sake of the millions who are watching the debate, skeptically thinking about who they want to vote for. This even affects all of us students, who will be allowed to vote for the very first time next year.
What do you think about this issue of political inequality? What do you think could be done to fix this issue? Why do you think that these inequalities exist in the first place?
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I think that this political inequality is inexcusable. Every candidate in the debate should be allowed to have the same amount of time to present their view on the topic. I have no idea how this debate could have been run so poorly. It is not fair to the other participants. I agree with you in the fact that groups like CNN have too much of say in how the debates are run. They can give more time to the more popular candidates. I will be voting for the first time in the upcoming election and I would like to see what all of the candidate have to offer.
ReplyDeleteI have seen several debates and realized they are run so poorly. I still remember when we read Tannen Roots of Debate and this debates don't assemble what I read there. The candidates are not given equal participation and the debate is out of control. Candidates focus more on exposing other candidates instead of making their policies and ideas more appealing to the public. For me, it looks like the TV networks use the candidate debates as an opportunity to make profit from them and commercialize the elections. Up to now, I have just heard about two candidates, Clinton and Trump, and I don't like neither of them. What if there's another candidate I may like? Why can't they have the same coverage as the other two?
ReplyDeleteI completely agree with your point on political inequality. The Democratic debate this year was so poorly run and gave clear favoritism to one candidate: Hillary Clinton. A couple other things I've read online, include factors that allowed Clinton to reign control over this debate. The moderator of the debate, Anderson Cooper, had a bias towards Hillary. Anderson Cooper used to be a member of the Clinton Global Initiative, so naturally, whenever another candidate wanted to speak, Cooper would interrupt in order to let Hillary speak again. This explains why Clinton got double the speaking time of some candidates. Another bias towards Hillary, is that this debate was run by CNN, none other than one of the Clinton's biggest donors. Before the debate even began, everyone knew Hillary Clinton had already won. Another thing I noticed while watching the debate, was a question being asked to everyone BUT Hillary. A question was asked, "Do black lives matter or do all lives matter?" Each candidate was asked to answer the question, but when the commentator got to Hillary, she was asked a different question. Just everything that this debate provided us with is a reason to believe that the media runs this debate and not the people of America. It wouldn't surprise me if we see Hillary win the primary just because the media wants her to.
ReplyDeleteThere is a great political inequality in our nation but this is simply not one of them. The time allotted to each candidate is based upon how many points each candidate has the polls. Television companies realize that if the candidates with the higher points get more time, they will have a higher audience and make more money. However, since we the people are the ones voting in the polls, then we are the ones who are actually allotting the time each candidate gets. Yes, the Republican Debate times were much more evenly spread out, but that is because it is a tighter race. Currently they are two candidates will 26 and 22 points respectively and then there are 8 candidates who have between 8 and 2 points each. However, in the Democratic Primary Clinton leads with around 50 points, followed by Sanders with around 25 points. The other three candidates have less than 1 point each (Joe Biden has the remaining points although he has not declared that he is running). Yes CNN has given money to Hillary's campaign, but debate moderator Anderson Cooper is a very well respected journalist, and he asked all of the candidates tough questions. There are a lot of issues with our own political system, such as finance laws and gerrymandering, but this is not one of them.
ReplyDeleteAfter reading the CNN article, I for a moment, forgot that there were other politicians running. The entire article is based on Hilary Clinton and how she dominated most of the debate. Granted, she was given the most time to speak with 31 minutes which is completely unfair. There's no reason for her to be able to speak that much verse the other candidates whom could barely speak at all. After reading Mary's comment I was a little shocked to be completely honest. I had no idea that Anderson Cooper was a part of the Clinton Global Initiative. Just this little advantage came a long way for her because I as well did notice the favoritism for her as well. I mean you obviously shouldn't have someone who's all about Hilary run the political debate but instead should be someone who is informed with politics but doesn't fancy one candidate over others. The numbers don't lie. Clearly the line was drawn with Hilary vs the other candidates and that's mainly because of media. The media hypes Hilary Clinton because so many people know her involvement with the government.
ReplyDeletePolitical inequality is a huge thing that is going on in our country, it is absurd for Clinton to be given 31 minutes to talk, and Chafee only 9. This is pathetic. Running as any political candidate you can buy your time on the screen. It's too bad that this is what the media is coming to when they are portraying all candidates. Another thing I don't understand why is that this talk among the candidates was on CNN. This whole scene is painted for Clinton. To make her look so much better than all the other candidates in the primary. To be honest I'm not sure how you would be able to fix this because the candidates running and the media is corrupted. It would take so much time and effort by all to put an end to unfair debates. And I don't think it will happen in the near future because this income that candidates are getting, they do not want to give that up. Not at all. Political inequalities are ridiculous and should be stopped because it gives corrupt politicians a way to get the edge over a politician who may have a great plan for the position they are running for.
ReplyDeleteThis is completely ridiculous, I can't believe that there could be such favoritism within the Democratic debate program. Its unfortunate that this happened, It makes me think only about one thing, tv ratings. In my experience as an average student I've heard a lot about Bernie Sanders and Hilary Clinton because there's a lot of drama involved in their policies and personal lives. Bernie wants to make everything free and Hillary is a Clinton and also has had issues as secretary of state. The other candidates aren't that radical or interesting so the media doesn't want to cover them, they'd rather cover the more interesting candidates. Unfortunately that translated into the democratic debate. It seems that the media didn't want to focus on the more "boring" candidates and so they gave them a minimal amount of time to speak so that they could appear to be balanced and then focus on the main people who would bring in ratings, Bernie and Hillary. This overall is a disgusting event that has occurred in the democratic debate program. The other candidates that didn't get to talk as much could've drummed up quite a bit of support for their campaign or had really good thoughts and solutions on different issues but they didn't even have the opportunity to share those thoughts. I read recently online that one of the democratic candidates was dropping out, perhaps if he had some more time to talk during the debate he wouldn't have needed to drop out of the race. We need to find a way to create an unbiased debate system so that all candidates can get equal chances to talk and share their thoughts and ideas. We need change.
ReplyDeleteI think that the inequality in the political process and unjust and unfair. Candidates with the most votes in the polls get the majority of the time to express their view points on social issues that are plaguing our country. They have more time to debate with other top prospect candidates to see the different perspectives and pick out the flaws in each approach. I think that it is smart to do this later in a political race because Americans usually have turned their focus down to two candidates. Early in the race it is important that all candidates have their voices heard so that American citizens can hear the different view points of candidates they may not know much about. However, when the focus is narrowed, I think it is okay to give front-runners more time to debate. At this point I believe the time difference is too great for how early in the race it is, but when January hits I think it should be more acceptable.
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