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SAN FRANCISCO – The National Democratic Committee on Saturday canceled the pressure of climate activists and some members of national parties who want a primary debate in the presidential election of 2020 exclusively devoted to the climate crisis.
At its summer meeting in San Francisco, the party's national committee voted 222-137 against a resolution that would have actually overturned the rules of debate established by President Tom Perez and released the presidential candidates for their allow to participate in a debate only on the climate.
This decision has drawn criticism from the Sunrise Movement and other activists who say the party leadership ignores the priorities of young voters.
"The Democratic Party needs the energy and motivation of young people to win in 2020," said Evan Weber, political director of the Sunrise Movement. "The energy around this issue has been incredibly clear, but Tom Perez continues to film the party in the foot by rejecting that energy and pushing it away."
Perez said throughout the main campaign that he opposed the fact that official party debates revolve around one and the same subject. Perez said this week in San Francisco that he wanted the widest possible audience for primetime debates, with voters being able to see candidates addressing a full range of issues.
And he had banned candidates from participating in any non-partisan event in which candidates would appear on the same stage at the same time. An influential party committee had voted Thursday to "encourage" candidates to ignore this rule. The vote of the entire party committee on Saturday canceled that wording.
Perez encouraged candidates to participate in forums on specific topics that do not involve multiple candidates on the same stage. CNN, for example, has scheduled a climate forum in September, with at least 10 candidates expected to appear individually and discuss in-depth climate policy. Powerful organizations such as the National Education Association and the AFL-CIO have already organized such events focused on their political priorities.
Perez collaborators also noted this week that he has received requests from different interest groups for in-depth debates on civil rights, firearms, poverty, and issues affecting older Americans.
This week's discussions came after the Washington government, Jay Inslee, who had ended his candidacy for the presidency, wanting it to be based on a commitment to do some action for climate is the top priority of the country. Inslee has been able to attract more than 130,000 individual donors, which the DNC has set as a qualifying criterion for the stage of the September debate. But Inslee was timid about the additional requirement to reach 2% support in at least four national polls or at the beginning of state polls designated by reputable pollsters.
Inslee had repeatedly called on Perez to devote a debate sponsored by the DNC to climate action.
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