But the disparity in viewership is also a function of scheduling, and was thus predictable and obviously intended. When the Democratic debates were set up, party leaders assumed that Hillary Clinton would be their best candidate, put their chips on her and sought to make sure that some upstart didn’t upset their plans or complicate things to a point where Clinton would stagger into the general election all banged up.

Bernie Sanders complained. Martin O’Malley cried foul. So did one of the vice chairwomen of the Democratic National Committee, Tulsi Gabbard, who made a lot of public noise about the paucity of debates and the unwillingness of the head of the D.N.C., Debbie Wasserman Schultz, to abide such dissent. It was an ugly sideshow for a few days, then it blew over.

But we shouldn’t be so quick to forgive and forget how the Democratic Party has behaved.

It prides itself on being the true champion of democracy, more vigilant than the Republican Party about the disenfranchisement of voters, more invested in — and industrious about — making sure that as many people as possible are drawn into the process.

Then shouldn’t it want its candidates on vivid, continuous display? Shouldn’t it connect them with the largest audience that it can?

I’m surprised that I haven’t heard more griping about this. What I’ve heard instead is the concern that if Clinton indeed gets the nomination, she’ll enter the general election less battle-tested than she’d be if she were facing stiffer primary competition and enduring a greater number of higher-stakes debates.

Maybe. But a politician who’s been through Whitewater, Travelgate, impeachment, an emotional 2008 campaign against Barack Obama and several Benghazi inquisitions doesn’t strike me as someone who needs more battle experience or someone who’s going to be surprised, cowed or disoriented by anything that a Republican nominee throws at her.

Clinton is more than adequately steeled. The real danger for her is that she’s become all armor.

And a real vulnerability is that she’s seen by voters as entrenched political royalty and thus distant — too distant — from those “everyday Americans” she talked about so much at the start of her campaign.