Can Debates Shake Up the Democratic Race?

Peter Hamby: “The first chapter of the Democratic race for president has been defined by its steadiness. A handful of scandals once billed as potentially devastating—shoulder touching! Tupac! Standing on tables!—revealed themselves as little more than Twitter ephemera. The two most famous candidates, Joe Biden and Bernie Sanders, unsurprisingly remain atop most of the polls. The two candidates who have managed to climb up the ladder, Elizabeth Warren and Pete Buttigieg, have done so by defining a clear rationale for running and pounding their message daily, with a relentless media and travel schedule.”

“The race, though, has remained mostly static, helmed by a pair of durable white-haired front-runners, a platoon of credible second-tier candidates, and a roster of one-percenters who look like they wandered off the set of Frasier.”

“Yes, it’s early. But there’s another article of faith inside the campaigns and network greenrooms: that the first primary debates will shake up the race, ushering in a kinetic new phase of candidate-on-candidate warfare, finally bringing some drama and conflict to a race that’s mostly lacked the kind of fireworks the media craves.”