Opinion: Democrat debate season will be short

Well, the first Republican presidential debate was held on Aug. 23, and we celebrated Labor Day last Monday, so I guess the 2024 presidential campaign has well and truly started.

I have thought for a few years now that the primary debates in their current format have reached their sell-by date, and this year may drive the nail in their coffin.

A cast of 10 or so candidates, all competing for time and all attacking the supposed front runner doesn’t make for attention-grabbing television viewing and has never provided the gotcha moment everyone hopes for. And in this case, the front runner was absent.

The second Republican debate is scheduled for Sept. 27 to be held at the Reagan Library in Simi Valley, Calif. The schedule I saw had a list of candidates and networks with TBD next to their names; that indicates no one has committed as of yet.

Should the same folks who were at the first debate decide to take a Mulligan, I think viewers, if there are any, can expect the same results. That is, anyone not named Trump will fall into the losers’ bracket and Vivek Ramaswamy will continue his upward climb.

Ramaswamy already has some folks worried, as one headline I saw read, “An Obnoxious, Bigoted, Businessman is Rising in GOP Polls, and it’s not Trump.”

There is a third Republican debate also listed as TBD for date, time, network and place, indicating that the results of the second show will determine whether or not there is a third. Don’t bet on a third.

What would make block-busting television is a Democrat primary debate between the sitting president and his only challenger, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. These two candidates are worlds apart on many issues including the war in Ukraine as well as the whole COVID-19 fiasco that included masking mandates, lockdowns and medical doctors fighting over the best way to treat their patients.

Just one of those issues could take up more than an hour of debate time and could generate some actual “news,” which would be a major change for the networks.

Alas, as I’ve said before, Biden won’t debate. I do not mean to imply that Joe is afraid to debate Kennedy, Joe won’t debate anyone.

Having asserted the above, it goes without saying there will be no presidential debates this year if Joe Biden is the candidate.

Rube Render is a former Clovis city commissioner and former chair of the Curry County Republican Party. Contact him:

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