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A forum is a good vehicle for the exchange of ideas, information and producing unified policy approach but unlike these made for TV spectacles (which are anything but actual debates) it doesn't draw eyeballs.
If you want to sell somebody on something (in this case the serious of the climate crisis) you first need to get their attention. That's what TV "debates" do, they draw an audience.
Anyone who was around for the original Kennedy/Nixon debate later learned the difference, people who listened on radio were certain Nixon had won whereas the TV audience found Kennedy more convincing.
Bernie ought to debate on radio, Elizabeth on TV, I'd be OK with either as nominee.
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The fundamental question is who are you selling to and who is the audience that would be buying. Are you expecting that Republicans will watch that debate and be converted?
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Dems, Indies and disaffected Republicans.
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rjmacs wrote:
The climate is an issue where the closer you get to the details, the worse an electoral issue it is. Keep it general - we're fighting on the right side.
Yep. It's going to take a lot of money and some noticeable changes in life style to get CO2 emissions down enough to make a significant difference. IOW, it's going to require sacrifices that a lot of people - voters - will be reluctant to make.
The problem is that the vastness of the problem of climate change isn't obvious if you don't follow the science. Tough job to both sell the science and sell the sacrifices of money and life-style changes. Of course, the Democratic primary voters are probably mostly sold on the science, but I suspect even many of them will be reluctant to buy into the scale of the sacrifices that would be required. In the general election nationalistic impulses get in the way of a message of international cooperation as is needed to effectively deal with climate change. Maybe some candidate like Buttigieg can make the science and sacrifice cases and convince enough people that international cooperation is very much in our nation's best interest, but I think it is going to be really challenging.
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You don't need to get into the weeds to convince the electorate that it's a true crisis and Republican policies are not only not addressing it but are adding to the problem. If you can get them to see the problem it's only a short hop for them to see which party is not doing anything about it.
Sell the problem and then go big time negative about Republican actions and policy that only add to the problem.
It's a sad but true fact of campaign life that negatives motivate voters, make them care about the climate crisis and then put the onus, where it belongs, on the GOP.
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All of the Democratic candidates AGREE on Climate Change. What's to debate? Some Green New Fantasy vs what can actually happen?
They all (Including Maryanne) would be reasonable regarding climate. Waste of debate energy since we currently have minimal powers.
We won that last election btw. It was stolen.
