File under: You can’t always get what you want.
Eight in 10 Democratic primary voters say in a USA TODAY/Suffolk University poll they would like to see a series of Democratic debates during the 2024 campaign. That includes an overwhelming 72% of those supporting President Joe Biden.
But the odds of that actually happening are as close to zero as you can get in politics. Biden has expressed no interest in participating and the Democratic National Committee says it won’t sponsor any.
History is on their side. “As you know, no incumbent R [Republican] or D [Democrat] have done debates,” Kevin Munoz, a spokesperson for the Biden campaign, said in an email. Incumbents generally see no advantage to risking a misstep or to giving their challenger such a significant platform.
In 1980, for instance, President Jimmy Carter didn’t debate Massachusetts Sen. Ted Kennedy.
Now Kennedy’s nephew, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., is mounting a challenge to Biden that has considerably lower prospects of success.
Biden’s claim to the nomination hasn’t been seriously threatened, but the findings underscore his need to consolidate and energize the Democratic base. In the poll, 58% of Democrats support Biden for the nomination while 15% back Kennedy and 6% back Marianne Williamson; 21% are undecided.
There could be at least a bit of a political downside to ducking debates.
“The decision not to debate is ignoring the 82% of women, 84% of union households, 86% of independents, and 90% of young voters who are not only planning to vote in their state’s Democratic primary or caucus next year but also would like to see a series of Democratic primary debates,” noted David Paleologos, director of Suffolk’s Political Research Center.
The poll of 293 registered voters who plan to vote in Democratic primaries and caucuses, taken Monday through Friday, has a margin of error of plus or minus 5.7 percentage points.
Kennedy, the son of Robert F. Kennedy Sr. and an anti-vaccination activist, has said it’s “unfortunate” that no debates seem to be on the horizon.
Williamson, the author of self-help books who ran for the nomination in 2020, accused the DNC of “rigging” the election. “Candidate suppression is a form of voter suppression, and the party that purports to be the champion of democracy should not be so wary of it in our own house,” she said in an op-ed published in Newsweek.
In the last election, with no Democratic incumbent in office, Biden participated in 11 DNC-sanctioned debates during the primaries.
