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Here is why Pres. debates are so very very bad....it's who controls them
......the Commission on Presidential Debates, which runs them, is a private organization controlled by elites from the two major parties whose goal is to protect their standard-bearers.
And under the guidance of the commission, presidential debates have become echo chambers for the two major party candidates to repeat familiar talking points and lob rehearsed one-liners, rarely deviating from their scripts.
Each cycle, the CPD decides not just the time and location of the debates, but the format and who will ask the questions. Meanwhile, the Republican and Democratic campaigns also negotiate a joint “Memorandum of Understanding” laying out a host of details about how the candidates are to be treated. Although the CPD claims that the MOUs are not binding on the organization, the contracts themselves specify that if the commission does not abide by them, the campaigns reserve the right to seek an alternative sponsor.
Snip:
Run by Party Elites and Lobbyists, Sponsored by Corporations
In 1988, the CPD wrested the stewardship of general election presidential debates away from the fiercely independent League of Women Voters (LWV), which had run the events from 1976 to 1984.
The CPD is nominally a nonpartisan organization, but its co-chairmen, Frank Fahrenkopf, Jr., and Michael McCurry, are senior Republican and Democratic Party figures, both of whom leveraged their time in politics to later work for corporate interests.
https://theintercept.com/2016/08/16/why-the-presidential-debates-will-suck-even-though-they-dont-have-to/
And under the guidance of the commission, presidential debates have become echo chambers for the two major party candidates to repeat familiar talking points and lob rehearsed one-liners, rarely deviating from their scripts.
Each cycle, the CPD decides not just the time and location of the debates, but the format and who will ask the questions. Meanwhile, the Republican and Democratic campaigns also negotiate a joint “Memorandum of Understanding” laying out a host of details about how the candidates are to be treated. Although the CPD claims that the MOUs are not binding on the organization, the contracts themselves specify that if the commission does not abide by them, the campaigns reserve the right to seek an alternative sponsor.
Snip:
Run by Party Elites and Lobbyists, Sponsored by Corporations
In 1988, the CPD wrested the stewardship of general election presidential debates away from the fiercely independent League of Women Voters (LWV), which had run the events from 1976 to 1984.
The CPD is nominally a nonpartisan organization, but its co-chairmen, Frank Fahrenkopf, Jr., and Michael McCurry, are senior Republican and Democratic Party figures, both of whom leveraged their time in politics to later work for corporate interests.
I have been wondering what happened ....interesting to know, now.
3 replies
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