In the beginning of this presidential nominee campaign, there were a lot of candidates and a lot of different opinions represented. No, it wasn't just Mike Gravel representing the fringe, the voters were represented in things like the CNN/Youtube debate and the ABC/Facebook debate. But now that the Republicans have all but selected their nominee and the Democrats are down to two (from what, 18?) my question for the campaigns and the media is: where did the voters go?
Way back in July, there was the CNN/Youtube debate. What made this debate GREAT was that actual people, rather than political media hosts, were asking the questions. It really got a lot of real concerns into the debate and it forced the candidates to really acknowledge real voter concerns.
But now that the Democratic debates are down to just the two top candidates, the voters seem to be missing. In the two most recent debates, in Ohio and Texas, it wasn't regular people or audience members asking the questions, it was Jorge Ramos and Campbell Brown in Texas and Brian Williams and Tim Russert in Ohio. There weren't any average people asking the questions.
So does it matter? I think so. In the early debates, there were a lot of questions regarding policy and how candidates would handle different events that could happen while they were in the White House. But at these recent events, the questions started focusing on how the campaigns were going and how the media was covering the campaigns. These debates did not focus as much on policy.
It seems that as we get closer to having nominees for the general election, the voters are being left out of the debate, and the voters are losing out. I don't care about how Saturday Night Live showed this campaign, but I do care about how the candidates are going to help students. Maybe the voters should get back into the debate so we can actual challenge the nominees on policy and substance, not just trivia.