The Democratic Presidential Candidate Forum Showed One Big Thing: There is a Better Way to Debate

When Rachel Maddow sat down with the Democratic Presidential Candidates on Friday night, something very interesting happened; we got substantive responses from Presidential candidates. The format for the show was really interesting to take in from a viewer's standpoint. One after the other, each candidate sat down for about half an hour and supplied responses of value that voters could take in and process. It was the first time I've ever watched a Presidential candidate question/answer session and found myself wanting more.

They could form sentences and paragraphs. They were rebutted and challenged by Rachel on many issues. Sure there were still a lot of soft balls being thrown out as well (she is liberal after all). But each candidate looked comfortable for the most part. And you could see body language changing when they were rebutted. You could see them fidget and watch as they had to think on their feet. The picture was a close-up of each candidate with each of them in their own spotlight and not desperately scrounging for TV time.

It was honestly refreshing. Sure I'm a little biased in my review from my side of the aisle. But I'm fairly positive the Republican Candidates would prefer the opportunity to provide responses of value as opposed to the short 30 seconds to 1 minute responses of "Me Me Me." They could collect their thoughts, react and respond instead of all the obvious limitations when there are 8-10 candidates on the stage.

The thing is, when it comes to the Primaries, a lot of answers are very similar. These are people from the same party after all. How you differentiate yourself from your counterparts is when you are challenged and how you handle that questioning. How you react to criticism from the media in front of a National TV audience can set you apart. I’m just not seeing that in the current debate formats. When there are several people on stage, it just doesn't work.

Now is the forum format perfect? No. It didn't exactly get into policy and how they would enact the things they are campaigning on. But it was much better than the current 'debate' format. A format where favorites are given their time and the lesser-known candidates just want to get a word in.

It was a far cry from what CNBC put out about a week ago with the Republican candidates. It honestly had me asking why Fox News couldn't put something like this together. I hope the RNC was watching. This is what the voters need to see from your candidates. We want our candidates to be challenged but to also have a chance to answer the questions. We want to be able to decide instead of being told what to decide.

#JimmyD