Considering that the Democratic National Committee has not allowed any of their primary debates to take place on Fox News in many a moon, their announcement this week that they would follow the same pattern in 2020 strikes us as being less about a policy change and more about taking an unnecessary and unprovoked shot at the conservative cable news network.
DNC Chairman Tom Perez has said that he made the decision based on a recent story by Jane Mayer of The New Yorker, in which it was reported that Donald Trump “may” have been tipped off about a question that Megyn Kelly asked him in the first Republican primary debate of the last election cycle.
“We win by expanding our electorate and reaching all voters,” Perez tweeted. “That’s why we’ve been engaged with media outlets about debates over last few months. But recent reporting has made it clear that we cannot rely on Fox to host a fair and neutral debate. Just to be clear, Fox News will not serve as a media partner for the 2020 Democratic primary debates.”
This is an example of confused thinking, at best, on Perez’s part. For one thing, how is the Democratic Party going to expand its electorate if it deliberately goes out of its way to avoid appearing on the cable network that draws more viewers than all the other left-leaning news channels? Second, even if the story about Fox News tipping off Trump is true – and there is significant reason to doubt that it is – why would that matter in a Democratic primary? We notice that CNN will still be allowed to air debates even though they were caught red-handed giving questions to Hillary Clinton in the 2016 primaries. Seems like that would be a bigger cause for concern than anything that may or may not have happened in the GOP debates.
But to engage in that kind of analysis is to pretend like Perez and the DNC ever had the slightest intention of letting Fox News host one of their primary debates. It would be to pretend like Perez and the DNC have any hope or intention of reaching out to Republicans. It has been clear for two years now that the Democratic Party’s strategy is to drag voters to the left in an attempt to pick up the millions of self-identified socialists who stayed home last time. We’re not sure that’s a wise course of action, but hey, who are we to discourage them?
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