I mean… for anything but the primaries (so basically candidate selection), there is zero benefit to publicizing that. NOBODY will benefit from “Yes, I agree that UBI and climate change are essential to focus on but we need to get this bill through before all of our airports collapse. We’ll focus on that later” being a public discussion.
Also… if people ARE interested in those discussions? Work with your local party. You would be shocked at how many fairly low level organizers end up getting on the various calls related to defining a platform.
Like, the internet loves to paint the DNC as this evil shadow organization (mostly for reasons dating back to 2015/16…). And there is definitely a lot of politicking between the politicians (gasp!). But if you put in the time you would be shocked how much of a voice “community organizers” have if they have even basic social skills.
I don’t know the details for how far ahead all the rules were decided. I would have assumed months but clearly not.
A BIG news story yesterday was that republicans were angry that there would be live fact checking during the debate. So CNN got rid of that literally the afternoon of the debate. That makes a massive difference because it means that Biden now needed to actively refute the increasingly blatant lies in addition to getting his talking points across.
And the format always went against Biden. His stutter and aphasia do not mix well with short 3 minute responses. With proper debate prep and a focus on talking points, he is mostly good. We had a few moments but even when he was at his most feeble sounding he was fine. But once he had to respond to things like “you are a manchurian candidate” and “you are basically a Palestinian but a bad one”? Then it becomes “okay, call this prick the c-word. Now I need to also cite this fact that is part of my border security answer. And then I need to talk about… jesus christ are we actually talking about global warming right now?”
And that fucked Biden. Because that is not something a POTUS needs to be able to handle. If Kim Jong Un started talking like that during a meeting… we might literally invade North Korea. Almost all meaningful conversation between world leaders is basically heavily scripted speeches or closed door conversations where people acknowledge others are human.
But also? CNN didn’t even follow their own format. They repeatedly unmuted candidates (mostly trump but a few times Biden) so they could get a juicy comeback in.