Published: Salon (January 19, 2016)
The most important moment of Sunday night’s Democratic presidential debate involved not what was said, but what moderator Lester Holt made sure his audience would never get to hear. After permitting Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders to offer lengthy replies to a question on the drug epidemic, he cut off Martin O’Malley and moved to a commercial break despite the former Maryland governor repeatedly requesting “just 10 seconds” in which to offer his own thoughts.
On the Republican side, this has been most evident in the presence of so-called undercard debates, in which GOP candidates with low poll numbers are forced to compete separately from the rest of the race. Although somewhat justified by the massive size of the Republican field (which started out with 17 candidates), by relegating its participants to a status of automatic inferiority right from the get-go, the undercard debates have implicitly mocked the notion that the party is even humoring their candidacies. “They’re not candidates for president anymore. They’re barely even men,” observed Jason Linkins of The Huffington Post. “They’re more like the angry, tortured darkseekers from the movie ‘I Am Legend,’ eternally scheming from their shadowy lair to lure other human beings into their grasp, ensuring that none outside of their cursed domain might live.”
By contrast, instead of having two events on each debate night, the Democratic establishment has only scheduled six primary debates in total – and, as many critics have pointed out, aired them at times that seemed to all-but-guarantee low ratings. By limiting their voters’ exposure to all their options, the party has in effect given a huge boost to whichever candidate is perceived as the frontrunner – in this case, Hillary Clinton. “Look, there was a clear intent to bury these debates to the benefit of Clinton,” remarked a Democratic campaign official to Politico, in reference to DNC Chairwoman Debbie Wasserman-Schultz’s well-known support for Clinton’s presidential ambitions. “And it is doing a disservice to the Democratic Party. The GOP is blowing out numbers – and we are protecting Hillary Clinton.”
Of course, because the Democrats only have three candidates running right now (they started out with six, but three dropped out), one might assume that each would receive considerable attention simply by virtue of the small size of the field. To an extent this has been the case with Sanders, who as a staunchly left-wing alternative to Clinton has managed to break fundraising records and emerge as her chief rival in the polls for the nomination. At the same time, Sanders only received this boost because his grassroots campaign forced his poll numbers up and thus compelled the media to take him seriously. Since O’Malley has not benefited from a similar grassroots boom, he has been left in the proverbial dust by the Beltway class. Indeed, the fact that he is widely regarded as irrelevant has become the central feature of his public image, with “Saturday Night Live” lampooning the casual way he is routinely dismissed as a serious contender.
It’s worth noting that, though certainly not perfect, O’Malley deserves better treatment than this. As I’ve discussed before, O’Malley has a decent record as governor of Maryland, from legalizing same-sex marriage and abolishing the death penalty to raising the minimum wage and extending in-state tuition breaks to undocumented immigrants. Just as importantly, he lacks many of the electability concerns that beset Clinton (who has been a polarizing and scandal-plagued figure since her days as First Lady) and Sanders (who could be painted as a radical in the general election). In an election year that could see the Democratic nominee facing off against Donald Trump or Ted Cruz, any politically viable option with a progressive record at the very least warrants serious consideration.