CNN is sponsoring the first Democratic presidential debate. It will be held in Las Vegas on October 13, Tuesday evening. Here are the rules on who may participate. They include being at least 1% in polls. Thanks to PoliticalWire for the link.

Given that both the Republican and Democratic presidential debates sponsored by CNN have a 1% poll requirement, the Commission on Presidential Debates’ poll requirement of 15% seems more and more to be deviant and far too harsh.

Jonathan Bernstein, a Bloomberg View columnist and author, has written two pieces this year defending debates that include only the Republican and Democratic nominees. Here is his latest column, “Leave the Debates Alone.” His article says that when others are invited into the debates, the results are undesirable. He then links to an article about the 1998 Minnesota gubernatorial election, in which Reform Party nominee Jesse Ventura was included in all the debates and won the election. To see that, use the link that is in his paragraph that starts, “In addition, multiparty, first-past-the-elections tend to be unstable.”

Bernstein also links to his June 2015 article called, “Debates Aren’t Broken So Don’t Fix Them.” That piece has a link to yet another article (written in 2012) which claims that debates don’t affect the outcome of the election.

Bernstein says nothing about the presidential primary presidential debates, which have had multiple candidates and have attracted very big audiences. He says nothing about the fact that the general election presidential debates, with only the Democrat and Republican included in all elections for the last 19 years, have had declining viewership over the last decade. He says nothing about public opinion polls which say that the public wants inclusive debates. Finally, he does not acknowledge that the general election debates are financed with corporate donations.