Some Democratic hopefuls have become frustrated with the party’s procedures as the cutoff point for the Democratic presidential primary debates approaches, Fox News reports.
The Democratic National Committee recently announced rules that make qualifying for the third and fourth rounds of the debates more difficult. Now, candidates must either win one percent in three polls that are recognized by the panel, or have at least 65,000 unique donors and at least 200 unique donors in a minimum of 20 states.
“No, I’m not going to make the first debate, but I knew that, getting in so late. But I think that’s OK,” Rep. Seth Moulton, D-Mass., said in an interview last week. “This first debate’s going to have 20 people. Folks are barely going to get a chance to speak.”
Some of the candidates who have qualified were more positive about the criteria helping to narrow the competition.
“I think that for voters…it’s hard to make a decision when you have so many people in it,” Sen. Amy Klobuchar, D-Minn., told Fox News on Monday. “I think it is important as we get closer and closer to Iowa and New Hampshire and South Carolina and Nevada, that people are able to choose and listen to the candidates and see them debate each other, not just on consecutive nights.”
"If you can't run an effective grassroots campaign in the year 2020, in today's era, you're not going to be able to win the presidency," DNC Chair Tom Perez told CBS News last week. "And what our dual threshold has done is to give additional opportunity to the candidates."
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