Donald Trump skipped every GOP primary debate, but he is urging Joe Biden to debate him while ignoring similar calls from ex-U.N. ambassador Nikki Haley.
"Well, if I were him I’d want to debate me too. He’s got nothing else to do.”
Don't forget. Back in 2016, before the Conventions, Trump challenged Bernie Sanders to a debate. Bernie jumped on the idea, and Trump ran away from his own challenge.
The worst thing for Republican voter turnout is hearing a Bernie Sanders speech. The dude shows up in a coal miner town hall and convinces them all to vote blue.
It's a shame it didn't happen...maybe, just maybe, if Bernie had trounced Trump in a debate, there wouldn't have been that whole Bernie is unelectable/would lose to Trump idea floating so strongly, and it might've given him a better chance in the primary either time.
It wouldn't have mattered. The "unelectable" narrative was coming from the DNC leadership. Bernie was polling just fine until everyone started saying he couldn't win.
I remember all the networks showing the number of delegates he and Hillary had, and they showed all the super delegates going to Hillary. Not only had they never shown votes like that before, but the super delegates hadn't even voted at that point. It was all just based off the assumption that they would all vote for Hillary. Thumb on the scale.
Hillary had bought their support from the beginning. She learned from 2008 that she couldn't compete in an open field, so she wrangled all challengers before the primaries started. Sanders was the only one who couldn't be bought.
That's the whole point of super delegates. The consequence in 2016 being that Hillary only needed about 30% in a given primary to "win" that state.
EDIT: Curious about the downvote. Superdelegates made up a large enough share of delegate that to win a majority of delegates for a given state she only needed about 30% of the primary vote plus the superdelegates. Do the math yourself if you'd like to confirm. Hell, I'm from a state where Clinton only got about 35% of the vote in the primary, which meant she only got one more delegate than Sanders, who had closer to 51%.
There may have been a time in this country where candidate A would have this plan for healthcare, candidate B would have that plan for healthcare, candidate A calls for more trade with Europe, candidate B favors trade with Asia etc. and issues are discussed.
These days, there's one political party and one doomsday cult. I don't think it's worth the bandwidth to broadcast.