1st DEM Debate Thread: June 26 & 27, Miami, MSNBC & NBC & Telemundo (9-11pm)

[Mr. Morden]

Interesting that there happens to be three women in each debate. Makes me think it isn't so random.

I just flipped a coin 6 times in a row.  Result:

tails-tails-heads-head-heads-tails

Exactly 3 heads and 3 tails.  I guess the coin flipping must not have been random.

[brucejoel99]

Does anyone have any recommendations on how to keep up with the second debate in terms of radio apps? During that time I'll be driving from Savannah, GA back to TN and would like to listen but not sure how I'd keep up with it driving through rural GA/TN on just normal radio 😂😂😂 Like will the NBC app have radio coverage?

Sirius/XM Channel 118 is just an audio feed of MSNBC, so if you have that, that'd work.

Alternatively, if you don't have it & don't wanna pay for it, you could just start a free trial right before the debates & cancel before the trial ends.

[ilikeverin]

I don't think this is as bad for Warren as a lot of you seem to think, mainly for the reason that it isn't about who watches the debates (I imagine not that many people will and many of the ones who do are political junkies for whom the debates will mean less) as much as what the news media spins afterwards. And Warren seems guaranteed to get attention from her debate.

Yes.  I mean, the headlines for Debate 1 will be something like: "Warren says big policy words.  [Booker/Castro/Klobuchar] surprises."  Whereas the headlines for Debate 2 will be something like "[Sanders/Biden] says something surprisingly negative about [Biden/Sanders].  Harris was also around."  Warren will almost certainly get positive coverage, while one or more of Biden and Sanders will start to be branded as "negative" - this isn't a bad look for Liz.

[Gustaf]

Yeah, to put it differently - imagine you're Kamala Harris and you could switch debates with Warren. Would you want to? I feel like it wouldn't necessarily be a bad trade.

[walleye26]

Excluding Warren, which one of the candidates from Night 1 has the best chance of breaking out?

[Holy Unifying Centrist]

Excluding Warren, which one of the candidates from Night 1 has the best chance of breaking out?

Jay Inslee, because he is not very well known right now but has a credible reason to run.

[Warren 4 Secretary of Everything]

Excluding Warren, which one of the candidates from Night 1 has the best chance of breaking out?

Jay Inslee, because he is not very well known right now but has a credible reason to run.

Yeah, I’d say Inslee, O’Rourke, and Castro.

[Cassandra]

My prediction: This first debate will be the start of Gabbard's breakout.

[Beet]

I don't think this is as bad for Warren as a lot of you seem to think, mainly for the reason that it isn't about who watches the debates (I imagine not that many people will and many of the ones who do are political junkies for whom the debates will mean less) as much as what the news media spins afterwards. And Warren seems guaranteed to get attention from her debate.

Yes.  I mean, the headlines for Debate 1 will be something like: "Warren says big policy words.  [Booker/Castro/Klobuchar] surprises."  Whereas the headlines for Debate 2 will be something like "[Sanders/Biden] says something surprisingly negative about [Biden/Sanders].  Harris was also around."  Warren will almost certainly get positive coverage, while one or more of Biden and Sanders will start to be branded as "negative" - this isn't a bad look for Liz.

I agree.   Having a debate basically to herself is likely a good outcome for Warren.  It also helps that it's the 1st debate.  If the debate order were reversed, there would be a stronger case that it was a bad outcome for Warren, given the massive dropoff in viewership that would be likely with Biden vs. Sanders vs. Buttigieg vs. Harris going down on the 1st night.  As it stands now, it's basically going to be a Warren campaign infomercial* followed by a battle royale between everyone else with a serious chance at winning. 

*On the off chance Warren gets completely upstaged by one of the 1-2%ers, that would be very bad for her.  But if she can't lap that field, she was never going to win the nomination anyway.

I mostly agree, but there's also going to be very high expectations for her, whereas it's going to be hard for anyone to dominate if the moderators feel obliged to give each of 10 candidates equal speaking time. I feel a certain type of good debator (and that likely includes Warren) excels in a 1-on-1 situation where they have time to go more into depth in their ideas, whereas it's tougher to try and condense everything into a 2-minute soundbyte. But we'll see.

[Holy Unifying Centrist]

I've listened to enough Jay Inslee interviews to know that he's unlikely to impress. Look at him here, or here, or here.

YMMV, I guess, but he's just not good on television. I don't like judging the candidates this way, but the emphasis on these stupid spectacles forces the conversation.

I mostly agree with your assessment, but most of the other candidates in the orange debate are either fairly well known, or complete jokes, so I think he has a decent chance of being the person that "breaks out" the most

[NYSforKennedy2024]

As for who will be the breakout -

Personal Bias - Kirsten Gillibrand

Actual Prediction - Julian Castro. People are highly underrating him, but he's gaining a very steady following, at least online.

Who will collapse -

Biden. It's not even a question at this point. I expect him to get ganged up on. Beto too, if Warren attacks him.

I'm honestly more excited for night 1 than I am night 2. Both are great lineups in their own respects, but I think night 1 has a huge chance of seeing someone break out and become a star.

[Saint Milei]

Excluding Warren, which one of the candidates from Night 1 has the best chance of breaking out?

Castro.

[Mr. Smith]

Excluding Warren, which one of the candidates from Night 1 has the best chance of breaking out?

Beto. By virtue of being the least fixed, which also means he could seriously fall.

The rest are either uncharismatic, or locked in too talking points.

[henster]

I'm going to be cynical but Tulsi and Gillibrand probably benefit in someway by just being the most telegenic people in their groups.

[Gustaf]

I kind of like Nate Silver's point that debates are likely to pull races to where they "should" be. One thing to consider there is that on average people who have managed to succeed, say by becoming senators of large states like Gillibrand and Harris are probably more likely to do well than some House Rep.

[SInNYC]

Put me on the side of this is good for Warren. She doesn't really have anybody who will be going after her in the first debate, and the 1 or 2 who break out will likely do it by just sounding good on stage.

It seems to me that Sanders is hurt the most, since Hickenlooper will likely go after him perhaps with some tacit tagteaming by Buttigieg and Biden, and a headline of the debate may be 'Democrats argue against socialism'. Meanwhile, Sanders can't really go after Biden since that will just help Warren.

[Shadows]

It is not a great pairing for Bernie but I would prefer him in any line up with Biden because people like Hickenlooper don't matter. Sanders will get to contrast himself with Biden & pitch himself as a strong GE candidate. Ofcourse Sanders won't go after Biden.

Warren will do fine & will likely dominate the 1st night & make no gaffes that she could have made possibly. But it is better to be in the main debate because from the 3rd debate, all these clowns will drop out. You will have Sanders Biden Warren Harris Pete Beto Booker & perhaps Yang or Castro or Gillibrand or Klobuchar. It is better to have practised for the 3rd debate.

[The Mikado]

I kind of like Nate Silver's point that debates are likely to pull races to where they "should" be. One thing to consider there is that on average people who have managed to succeed, say by becoming senators of large states like Gillibrand and Harris are probably more likely to do well than some House Rep.

Gillibrand was originally appointed to her Senate seat and the only time she ever ran statewide was her reelection bid against some GOP nobody, but point taken in general.

[💥💥 brandon bro (he/him/his)]

Interesting that there happens to be three women in each debate. Makes me think it isn't so random.

I just flipped a coin 6 times in a row.  Result:

tails-tails-heads-head-heads-tails

Exactly 3 heads and 3 tails.  I guess the coin flipping must not have been random.

Good point but the comparison to a coin flip is not quite accurate because the probability of selecting a female for the debate is not 50-50 and individuals are not sampled with replacement. Here's some R code to estimate the likelihood that there would be 3 female candidates in the first debate (and consequently 3 in the second).

Code:

# TRUE = female, FALSE = male
# There are 6 female candidates and 14 male candidates
fem <- rep(c(TRUE, FALSE), times = c(6, 14))

# Set seed for reproducibility
set.seed(69)

# Initialize a vector for number of female candidates in 1000 simulated debates
debates <- 1:1000

# Simulate 1000 debates by drawing 10 individuals out of the `fem` vector 
for (i in 1:1000) debates[i] <- sum(sample(x = fem, size = 10, replace = FALSE))

# What is the probability of drawing each number of female candidates for the first debate?
(table(debates) / length(debates))

debates
    0     1     2     3     4     5     6 
0.009 0.058 0.236 0.383 0.240 0.065 0.009 

So 3 females in each debate is the most likely outcome in a totally random selection and would occur in roughly 38% of random selections.

Thank you for listening to my TED talk.

(there is a way to determine this exact probability by hand but I am lazy and hung over)

[Arturo Belano]

Despite the "kiddie table" label, Warren seems best poised to benefit from the first debate since viewership is still likely to be high Apart from that, I think Beto would benefit the most. I want to say Castro and Gabbard because they're both youthful minorities, but both have zero charisma.

As for the second, I believe that Sanders, Yang, and Harris will do best. Hickenlooper and Bennet are irrelevant but they'll bring attention to Sanders and his progressive chops. Williamson also has some meme appeal.

[Gustaf]

I kind of like Nate Silver's point that debates are likely to pull races to where they "should" be. One thing to consider there is that on average people who have managed to succeed, say by becoming senators of large states like Gillibrand and Harris are probably more likely to do well than some House Rep.

Gillibrand was originally appointed to her Senate seat and the only time she ever ran statewide was her reelection bid against some GOP nobody, but point taken in general.

Fair enough, but I don't only mean in terms of winning elections. Even appointments require some people to evaluate you positively, etc. While there can of course be exceptions to this, in some sense if, say, Moulton looked better in debates than Warren you'd expect him to be senator of MA and not her. And if Swalwell was a better debater than Harris maybe he'd be senator of CA. And so on. And yes I know Moulton didn't even make it in.

[Progressive Pessimist]

I'm going to be cynical but Tulsi and Gillibrand probably benefit in someway by just being the most telegenic people in their groups.

I don't know, this is arguably the prettiest primary in the history of this country, relatively speaking of course.

[The Mikado]

I'm going to be cynical but Tulsi and Gillibrand probably benefit in someway by just being the most telegenic people in their groups.

I don't know, this is arguably the prettiest primary in the history of this country, relatively speaking of course.

This is pretty much inarguably true. And yet the top three candidates are senior citizens. At least since 1960, America doesn't vote sex appeal.

Arguably, Beto's looks are used against him. He's getting this weird male version of "ditzy" applied to him.

[AN63093]

I don't think this is as bad for Warren as a lot of you seem to think, mainly for the reason that it isn't about who watches the debates (I imagine not that many people will and many of the ones who do are political junkies for whom the debates will mean less) as much as what the news media spins afterwards. And Warren seems guaranteed to get attention from her debate.

Yes.  I mean, the headlines for Debate 1 will be something like: "Warren says big policy words.  [Booker/Castro/Klobuchar] surprises."  Whereas the headlines for Debate 2 will be something like "[Sanders/Biden] says something surprisingly negative about [Biden/Sanders].  Harris was also around."  Warren will almost certainly get positive coverage, while one or more of Biden and Sanders will start to be branded as "negative" - this isn't a bad look for Liz.

I agree.   Having a debate basically to herself is likely a good outcome for Warren.  It also helps that it's the 1st debate.  If the debate order were reversed, there would be a stronger case that it was a bad outcome for Warren, given the massive dropoff in viewership that would be likely with Biden vs. Sanders vs. Buttigieg vs. Harris going down on the 1st night.  As it stands now, it's basically going to be a Warren campaign infomercial* followed by a battle royale between everyone else with a serious chance at winning. 

*On the off chance Warren gets completely upstaged by one of the 1-2%ers, that would be very bad for her.  But if she can't lap that field, she was never going to win the nomination anyway.

[Andrew]

Sirius/XM Channel 118 is just an audio feed of MSNBC, so if you have that, that'd work.

Alternatively, if you don't have it & don't wanna pay for it, you could just start a free trial right before the debates & cancel before the trial ends.

The MSNBC audio feed is free on TuneIn.