More on the Nevada Debate Crowd

[obamian]

The school of UNLV President Emerita Carol Harter who is a Co-Chair of Hillary Clinton's campaign in Nevada and a member of her Nevada Women's Leadership Council hosted a clearly biased debate.

This was a debate officially sanctioned by the DNC, not an interest group. The Democratic Party should not allow any debate where the audience overwhelming favors one candidate.

Here's some more information on that debate:

"I want to comment on a couple of issues relating to the Debate because I feel it is important to speak out about it. I have had some inside information about how this debate was conducted and I think that CNN and those who organized this debate have a responsiblity to answer for the way it was conducted. You may have noticed that there was an obvious audience bias in favor of Sen. Hillary Clinton and often times a audience bias against Sen. Edwards and Sen. Obama. It was clear when Clinton gave her answers the audience was sreaming and clapping, but on several occasions Barack Obama, John Edwards and Dennis Kucinich were actually booed and interupted by protesters. There is actually a logical reason for this kind of not-so-subtle bias in the audience and in the moderators, and I have some inside information about what occured just in the last 24 hours that changed the dynamics of this debate.

I was really shocked to see that the audience was yelling and booing and clapping and that the CNN Moderators did not try to prevent it in any way. I think it was very unfair to the candidates to allow people to disrupt the Debate and to allow people to show approval and disapproval of the candidates. This format was specifically designed to not allow candidates to answer the questions fully and without interruption. The CNN Moderators did not stop protesters from interupting Sen. Obama, and did not allow several of the candidates to fully answer the question after being interupted by the protesters.

This kind of format used by CNN is not only not fair to the Candidates, it is not fair to the voters who are watching the debate looking for answers without "editorial comment" by the audience through their booing, clapping or protesting.

In additon to the way the Debate was conducted, CNN was not fair in some of the questions it asked of some of the candidates. The moderators made several statements about the candidates positions which were not accurate. These questions often misrepresented the candidates positions, and I felt that it was not an accurate discription and could bias the viewers and audience in favor of or against a candidate based solely on the way the question was asked. One of the Moderators claimed that Obama said that Clinton could not win in a general election, which was not in fact accurate. I don't feel that serves the process well when the questions start out with inaccuracies.

So that brings me to my point of writing this. I used to live in Nevada and I have connections to some people in Nevada who told me some interesting information about the audience at the Debate. It is a little odd that Yesterday November 14th, CNN's Website said the following:

"It will be at the Thomas and Mack Center on the campus of the University of Nevada, Las Vegas. That's where CNN and the Nevada Democratic Party will host a presidential debate at 5 p.m. (8 p.m. ET)."

Anyone who has been to the Thomas and Mack Center was probably wondering why the audience seemed so small. So where was the debate actually held you ask? It was Held at the Cox Pavilion, which is also on the Campus of UNLV. For those who don't know, the Thomas and Mack Center is an arena, it holds at least 20,000 people. The Cox Pavilion holds about 2,000 people. So in one day we went from being able to hold 20,000 people, to less than 10% of that. hmm.. Well you might say, they may not have had enough people, or they wouldn't have been able to keep the debate secure, afterall Sen. Obama and Sen. Clinton are under secret service protection, and an arena like Thomas and Mack wouldn't be secure. Well...... I actually know a little something about this, because I was in Las Vegas in July of 2004. What was going on in July of 2004 you ask? Well Sen. John Kerry was running for President, and I just happened to be at the Thomas and Mack Center back in July of 2004 when Sen. John Kerry visited Las Vegas. There was no issue with security even though as the Democratic Nominee, John Kerry was under Secret Service Protection. We simply moved through metal detectors, and the whole Thomas and Mack Center was PACKED. It was not an issue of security, because there are very easy ways of dealing with that issue.

So then, who cares about them moving it to the Cox Pavilion? Well, HERE is the BIG Problem. I have learned from my friends who are well connected to Nevada Democratic Politics that in fact the audience was actually pre-screened.

There were only 2000 available tickets. 1000 of those tickets were given to the Nevada State Democratic Party, of which I was a member in 2005 and 2006. The other 1000 tickets were given to UNLV. Now here is where it gets interesting. The 1000 tickets given to the NSDP were given to people who were in high ranking positions, of which several of my friends are involved with the NSDP. Those friends were able to go to the Debate at Cox Pavilion. Some of my other friends who are not as involved in the Nevada State Democratic Party were excluded. So you have the State Party who pre-selected who they wanted to go. Many of the people in the NSDP are very sympathetic to Sen. Clinton. It's no secret, its just a fact of the State Party. According to my sources, not only did they pre-select who went to the Debate, they actually based it on the percentage of the various minorities in the state. So 15% of the people had to be Hispanic, 10% had to be African-American, and there were various other groups which were required to be selected by the Nevada State Democratic Party. Now I am not charging that their intentions were not good, I think we need to have minorites at the debate. What I am opposed to is pre-selecting the audience, and those who are pre-selecting the audience at the debate are overwhelmingly in favor of Sen. Clinton. I think it was clear when you watched the debate that there was a VERY PRO-HILLARY CLINTON audience. Clinton was applauded many times, but Obama was booed several times. It was not because Obama was a giving wrong answers, it was because the Pro-Hillary Clinton supporters pre-selected by the Nevada State Democratic Party were being rude and disrespectful of not only Obama, but John Edwards and Dennis Kucinich. You could see it very clearly during the debate.

So what happened to the UNLV tickets? Didn't they go to students? Not exactly. About 100 or so tickets did go to the students, and they held a lottery which selected certain students for the Debate. The other 900 or so tickets actually went to UNLV staff and professors and their family members. I am not joking, this is what I have been told by a very reliable source in Las Vegas.

So you have only well connected members of the Nevada State Democratic Party and the Staff at UNLV, and about 100 actual students at UNLV who were in the audience. So, please explain this to me like I am stupid. Why, one day before the debate, did CNN and the Nevada State Democratic Party change the location of the Debate from the Huge Thomas and Mack Center to the Cox Pavilion which is about 10 times smaller, and why did they gave the tickets to only the well connected Democrats in the Nevada State Democratic Party, and to the Staff of UNLV, with the remaining 100 being selected by a "lottery"? Is that really an accurate representation of Las Vegas or Nevada? Why were regular Nevada Democrats not allowed to come and watch this debate? Why did the moderators of the debate allow interuptions of the candidates with booing and yelling and then not allow them to answer fully after being so rudely interupted? What am I missing?

I don't understand why this was done, but it was wrong, and I think this was a ploy by CNN, the Clinton Campaign and her deep connections with the top echelons of the Nevada State Democratic Party, to try to make Clinton look good while booing and interupting Obama, Edwards, Kucinich and the others as well. It was not fair, and as a Democrat I am very disappointed that this was done. Many of my Democratic friends in Nevada were excluded from being part of the audience despite having been hard working members of the Democratic party. "

http://my.barackobama.com/page/community/post/elicorp/CxRb