6th District

I don't know if I moderated or liberalized the debate in Asheboro tonight, but at least I can say I didn't 'conserve' it.

I've been worrying about controlling the chaos as moderator of the 6th District debate tomorrow night, so here are some groundrules I'm proposing after a night's research.

They're based on the usual "Presidential Debate" procedures established in 1988 when the League of Women Voters revived national political debating. No debate this year has really followed any standard format, mainly because they started out with large numbers of candidates which diminished through the process, so the time for responses has grown proportionately.

Any one is welcome to give me feed back here- these Ground Rules aren't carved in stone, and I haven't emailed them to the candidates or journalists yet (read it here first!)

At least one thing I saw from last night's Blue NC Democratic gubernatorial candidate 'debate' is that these innertube-type debates are really self-generating and self-replicating. It happens in real time, in black and white (or whatever the electronic equivalent is), and then traditional media types (tip o' the hat to Laura Leslie and Ryan Beckwith) come out of the lurkosphere to participate, elaborate and pontificate. Does that have a bigger impact than a "live" debate, even one where the questioners are newspaper reporters, but their employers don't deem the event sufficiently newsworthy for next-day coverage?