Left-wing figures across the board demanded the remaining presidential debates be canceled because the entire spectacle, they say, was “stupid” and future debates would serve as a “danger to public safety and a direct threat to Black life.”
Former MSNBC host Melissa Harris-Perry, for example, stated the debates should be dropped because they are “now a danger to public safety and a direct threat to Black life”:
“Cancel the other debates. This is stupid. Trump is only there to grunt, scratch and howl,” Walter Shaub, a former government ethics official, said:
Larry Sabato, Director at the UVA Center for Politics, added that they should nix the remaining contests because “it is impossible to have an orderly, productive exchange with Donald Trump”:
The Atlantic’s David Graham wrote a piece devoted to the idea in which he concluded, “If the CPD really wishes to benefit the American electorate, it should cancel the rest of the debate season.”
Similarly, on Wednesday morning, Morning Joe host Mika Brzezinski penned an oped calling for the end of the debates.
“We are better than this. This should not happen again. It was an attack on our values, and that attack was allowed to go on for 90 minutes. Shame,” she wrote. “My take? There should be no more debates this election cycle.”
“If there cannot be a debate based on dignity, there should be no debate,” she continued, ultimately concluding that “debates be damned.”
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However, others, such as Rep. Ted Lieu (D-CA), veered from his party’s collective call, contending that it is “critical for those who don’t follow politics to be exposed to who @realDonaldTrump is unfiltered and unhinged”:
Others have pointed out that the next debate, taking place Thursday, October 15, at the Adrienne Arsht Center for the Performing Arts, in Miami, Florida, will be a town hall format, which could bring a semblance of greater civility, given the presence of voters posing questions.