How to Fix the Democratic Presidential Debates: Don't have any. Seriously.

Jeff Greenfield:

As the 2020 campaign beckons, the Democrats are facing the improbable probability that more than two dozen candidates will be pursuing the presidency. Imposing a rational structure for TV debates with such a large field will be not just improbable but impossible.

Well, with one exception: The only way to do this fairly is to get rid of all the debates. That’s right: No debates! Let’s cancel political Christmas, at least for all of next year.

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No matter how the field is divided, the prospect of any meaningful exchange of ideas among even seven or eight participants is nonexistent. My memory of the 2016 GOP debates is an endless clamor for the chance to offer a 30-second response to a one-minute answer to a question more or less forgotten by the time the last debater got a chance to speak.

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If voters want to get a sense of what a candidate believes, or what the nature of a president might be, there are any number of formats—town hall meetings, half-hour speeches, give-and-takes with voters on a single subject—where the signal-to-noise ratio is a lot higher than debates where dueling one-liners determine the victor.