Matt Bai is a politics columnist for Yahoo! News and a former chief political writer for New York Times Magazine. His column about the upcoming presidential primary debates says, “Polls have no business in the debate process.”

All of the recent controversy around the Republican presidential debates will be useful in opening up the general election presidential debates. If a consensus seems to be building that it is wrong to exclude Republicans who are at least at 1% in polls, there is no logic that says 15% in the polls is a proper cutoff for general election debates.