CBS Democratic debate: news and updates

Democrats are holding a primary debate tonight, much to the annoyance of political journalists everywhere whose Saturday nights are being ruined. Most galling off all, this appears to be a deliberate tactic to minimize viewership taken by the Democratic National Committee as a favor to Hillary Clinton, who wanted to minimize the number of debates. If that’s right, though, the party has done its frontrunner no favors. It makes sense for Clinton to want to have fewer debates rather than more, but as long as Democrats are going to debate, she should want said debates to be seen by as many people as possible.

The problem, most likely, is the calendar was set months ago, before the first Democratic debate reminded everyone of how friendly the debate format is to Clinton’s political skills.

The Democratic debate on Saturday drew just 8.5 million viewers — by far the lowest of the six primary debates thus far. To put this into perspective: During the same time slot as the debate, about the same number of people watched either the Baylor-Oklahoma football game on ABC or the Oregon-Stanford game on Fox.

We knew this weekend debate wouldn’t garner a wide viewership; Saturday debates typically don’t. The Democratic National Committee has been accused of purposely scheduling debates on days people wouldn’t watch. But DNC spokesperson Eric Walker told me, “During the height of the Clinton-Obama primary in 2008, the highest-rated debate was 10.7 million, so 8.5 million is a strong showing historically for a presidential primary, and very strong for a Saturday night.”

During the Democratic presidential debate on Saturday night, CBS moderator John Dickerson brought up the recent terrorist attacks in Paris and then asked Bernie Sanders if he still believes climate change is our greatest national security threat. (Sanders had said as much in a previous debate.)

Sanders didn’t back down:

One of the biggest challenges of preparing for a nationally televised political debate is the uncertainty. You cannot know what questions you will be asked, so you must prepare for dozens of possible questions on a range of topics and keep it all together in your head and ready to access at a moment’s notice.

The Democratic candidates did not have this problem when they walked onto the stage for the CBS presidential debate on Saturday. Shortly after terrorists launched a series of devastating attacks in Paris on Friday night, CBS announced that the entire debate — later whittled down to the first 30 minutes — would focus on the attacks and related policy issues.

At the second Democratic presidential debate, Bernie Sanders repeated a talking point about guns and “shouting” that helped spark a controversy over sexism. And he said it in a way that sounded like a joking, self-conscious reference to the earlier incident.

“People all over this country — not you, Secretary Clinton — are shouting at each other” over guns, Sanders said.

Two things are true about Hillary Clinton on financial regulation:

Understanding those two points helps make sense of a fairly confusing, but important, exchange at the second Democratic debate — an exchange in which both Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders played into their critics’ hands.

One of the most revealing exchanges in Saturday’s Democratic debate came when moderator John Dickerson pressed Bernie Sanders on what, exactly, he meant by that “political revolution” he always talks about. With such widespread GOP control of statehouses, Dickerson asked, wasn’t there actually “a conservative revolution going on in America right now?”

So Sanders explained exactly what he meant. Here’s what he said:

The horrific attacks in Paris will loom large over tonight’s Democratic debate, which is scheduled for 9 pm Eastern and will take place as planned. (It will be livestreamed on CBS.com for free).

After news of the attacks broke last night, the CBS News team decided to heavily rework its planned questions so they’d be directly related, the New York Times’ Emily Steel reports. “There is no question that the emphasis changes dramatically,” CBS News executive editor Steve Capus told Steel.

The second Democratic debate will air at 9 pm Eastern tonight on CBS. If you don’t have a TV, you can still tune in — CBS will post an online live stream available at this link.

This year’s Democratic debate schedule is quite sparse — this is the second of a mere six debates the party has approved. Furthermore, three of those debates are scheduled for the weekend (including, of course, this one). Vox’s Alvin Chang crunched the numbers and found that weekend debates, which tend to get lower ratings, are highly unusual. So it sure looks to many like the Democratic National Committee has limited both the number and the potential viewership of debates in an attempt to safeguard frontrunner Hillary Clinton’s lead.