If you've been following the political process recently, you may have noticed that while their are six Democratic candidates, only five have been invited to participate in tonight's Democratic Party presidential debate.CNN has invited Hillary Clinton, Bernie Sanders, Martin O'Malley, Jim Webb, and Lincoln Chafee to debate the issues important to Democrats -- but Harvard Law Professor, and legitimate presidential candidate, Lawrence Lessig was not invited.
Why wasn't he invited? CNN will tell you its because he does very poorly in the polls. So what? O'Malley, Webb, and Chafee also do very poorly in the polls (sometimes failing to get even 1%), and yet they were invited. And Lessig has raised a million dollars for his campaign -- significantly more than either Webb or Chafee.
I can understand why CNN (and Fox) limited the number of candidates on the big stage for the Republican debate. Putting all 17 on the stage at the same time would have made the debate too ridiculous -- giving no candidate enough time to explain his position. They limited the number to 10 (11 in the CNN debate), but made up for it by holding a second debate for those left out of the big debate.
But that's not happening here. There are only six Democratic candidates, and there's no justifiable reason for leaving out any of the six. If CNN could handle 11 Republican candidates on the stage, then they certainly should be able to handle six Democrats debating. That is just fair (especially since there is not a second debate being held).
Evidently fairness is not important to CNN. Instead, they see themselves as some kind of gatekeeper, whose duty is to tell the American public who is a serious candidate and who is not. And in doing that, they have abandoned their own mission and subverted the job of the party members. It is up to Democrats to decide who is a viable candidate -- not CNN. It is CNN's job just to provide the information voters need to make an informed vote -- and leaving a candidate out of the debate is failing to do that job.
There's no other way to say it -- CNN was wrong to not invite Professor Lessig to debate.
(The caricature of Lawrence Lessig above is by DonkeyHotey.)
