CNN Debate Sets Record for Democrats But Trails GOP Audience

“AVOID MISTAKES THAT COULD DOMINATE HEADLINES”, it declared across the screen, inadvertently raising the question of whether candidates ever actually try to make mistakes that could dominate headlines. Jim Webb, former Maryland Gov. Martin O’Malley and former Rhode Island Gov. Lincoln Chafee looked to distinguish themselves from each other and the two Democratic front runners.

Now, Vice President Joe Biden has not entered the presidential race and it isn’t exactly known if he even will. If he should decide to join the race and take place in the debate though, a podium would be placed on stage for him. As the media-sponsored parties have raged on in Las Vegas (who says journalists don’t know how to have fun?), CNN has been slowly releasing stories created to reassure potential debate viewers that what they’re about to see will be a debate on policy, and boring policy at that. The occasionally incisive was often drowned out by the obvious and pedestrian, even talk of drinking games to get one through the event. Democrats want to focus on issues and have strong incentives to play nice.

The CNN Democratic Debate airs live October 13 beginning at 8:30pm ET on CNN.

This is not overly surprising as Bernie Sanders has been gaining on Clinton and lessening her lead for a little over a month now. When she “lets that story out”, he said, she “moves the country”.

There are just under 20 Republicans running for President.

In recent weeks Clinton has unveiled positions that are largely in sync with the Democratic base in a number of areas including the environment, trade, and regulating Wall Street.

Editor’s note: It is tough to convey the experience of VR without simply showing you VR, but it is also physically impossible for us to show you what you’d see if you were wearing VR goggles.

Case in point, Sanders said her name only once during a 25-minute interview with NBC’s Chuck Todd, portions of which were shown on Sunday’s “Meet the Press”. Broadcasts of Democratic debates on ABC in 2008 and 2007, respectively, snared about 10.7 million viewers and 9.4 million viewers, according to Nielsen data. They will unlikely risk turning off those voters by going too negative too fast.

Sanders laid down a sweet Bern in support of Hillary.

For some context, in the last few years, about 22 million people view the nightly newscast of one of the three major networks. “It was a miracle”, said Tad Devine, a senior adviser to the campaign.

While CNN and the other networks are unlikely to get the hint and offer the public a higher quality of reporting, here’s to hoping that they’ll spare us future digital offenses as the political season continues to heat up.