I'm an uncommitted voter. While I intend to vote resolutely against whomever the GOP puts up among their Clique of 17 in the fall of 2016, I have not yet chosen a candidate to support in the Democratic primaries. I don't find it easy, because as I've written before, I find the current crop of candidates rather weak and uninspiring, and not at all representative of the diverse electorate that supports Democrats in general elections. The field lacks a single person of color, and the average age of the candidates is fifteen years older than the oldest successful non-incumbent president the Democrats have ever elected since the Civil War. Only one candidate to represent Obama's generation, and none to speak for the generation younger than his.

For this reason especially, the televised debates are extremely important to me. I simply have no idea how a Clinton or Sanders or O'Malley will perform on a national stage against GOP candidates, especially given the advanced ages of the frontrunners.

How will Sanders field questions about his age, his lack of experience representing urban or diverse populations, or his commitment to poorly-understood ideas like democratic socialism? How will he field foreign policy questions, which he rarely does in his stump speeches? What's his stance on ISIS, on China currency manipulation, on Israel-Palestine, on Putin? How will Clinton field inquiries into emailgate, Benghazi, Bosnia snipergate, the Clinton Foundation? Where exactly will she come down on issues like the Keystone XL pipeline, TPP, Glass-Steagall, Social Security expansion, prison privatization, police and sentencing reform, etc? How will O'Malley answer for the legacy of his "broken windows" policing strategy in Baltimore, and how will he respond to charges he had weak Maryland coattails in 2014? How will those questions be answered, and if answered poorly, how will the candidates improve in subsequent performances?

Knowing how little we see of each candidate in standard debate formats, the more debates the better. Six is not nearly enough to hear out such a large range of issues. Hillary Clinton clearly understands that, as we can see from her history above, but it's not clear why the DNC and her supporters in these parts do not agree with her. The disjunction between what Hillary clearly believes and what her supporters tend to say in diaries on Daily Kos when the current DNC debate schedule is discussed (4 debates before Iowa, two more after that) is so severe, I'm consistently left with the impression that Clinton supporters are tremendously concerned about Clinton's performance in a national media context.

The lack of confidence in Clinton by her most faithful advocates makes me more concerned each day that maybe she's not ready to deal with what the GOP may throw at her in a debate. Clinton's supporters do not seem to want to get her in practice and in fighting shape for a national campaign. They want less than a quarter of the debates that Clinton asked for herself in her last election. They want to minimize her free airtime, even if it means more cost-inefficiency for general election supporters, who will need to contribute more to compensate in paid media, and even if it means ceding the national stage to the GOP as they hold debate after debate with no Democratic rejoinder.

But as Hillary Clinton has forcefully argued, more debates can only help:

* for party-building in the states

* for national media exposure

* for policy and platform refinement

* to energize base voters

* to bring in new voters into the process

* to prepare for gotchas and strengthen debating chops

Debates are free media. The media landscape is much different than it was in 2000-2008. It's harder to own the cycle. There are hundreds of channels, and media is consumed in a time-shifted way. People do not turn to one of four or five channels any more to get the news, so it's harder to build consensus or influence large swaths of the population consistently.

Moreover, the conservative media infrastructure is stronger in 2015, and the progressive media network weaker, than in 2008. MSNBC is recalibrating, and moving away from progressive commentary. Jon Stewart has retired, and Colbert has moved on. Huffington Post and New York Times are more consistently critical of Hillary Clinton and the Democratic Party. CNN regularly vies for the Fox audience. The media buffer that gave some support to Obama in 2008 is barely there for the Democratic nominee in 2016.

For all these reasons, maximizing the number of Democratic primary debates is the best and most cost-efficient way to give voice to Democratic ideas, and to attempt to bring the media political discussion in balance.

Right now, the GOP is dominating the media, and that gives them every opportunity to move the Overton Window further and further to the right, where now even forced deportation, elimination of Planned Parenthood, war with Iran, and privatization of Social Security and Medicare are becoming centrist ideas. They are becoming GOP orthodoxy. And even if they don't become a reality in the near-near-term, it shrinks the range of progressive ideas that the public will accept longer-term because progressives are no longer participating in shaping the national debate.

Don't think Democrats are not in part responsible for this. Every time you hear someone say "How many debates do we f***ing need?" or "Big crowds don't make a difference.", you should know that that person is actively working against Democratic victory in 2016. They may not think that they are. They may think they are tactically helping their chosen primary candidate in some small bore way, but they are missing the big picture, and they are hurting the progressive movement, and they are hurting Democrats overall.

I believe this, because I worked tirelessly for a victorious national campaign. I worked as a precinct captain for Barack Obama's primary campaign in 2007, and worked as a district data manager for his general election campaign in 2008. I walked precincts, I phonebanked, I supervised voter targeting and analyzed voter responses. Week over week, it was abundantly clear: Debates do matter. Continual public engagement matters. Owning daily and weekly media cycles matters. Mass spectacle and large crowds matter, especially to gain the attention of passive voters, who want to support a winner, and who want to know and feel the enthusiasm of other national voters.

In many ways, it's unsurprising that the current head of the DNC, Debbie Wasserman Schultz, has failed to learn this, and has chosen a strategy that minimizes Democratic chances of victory in 2016. This is the person who presided over the party's miserable drubbing in 2014, where many competitive candidates ran against Barack Obama's achievements, and shied away from promoting progressive ideals. It's been well-reported how much the Obama administration dislikes her stewardship of the party. And for good reason. Wasserman Schultz was the virtual architect of a base-suppression strategy in 2014 that worked like a charm, and her reputation was so much in tatters after the fact that she hid from the media for 75 days before making an appearance.

It's not the first time she's worked to elect Republicans. I remember with real bitterness how she refused to endorse or campaign for three excellent Democratic House candidates in 2008 in Florida because of her chummy relationships with their incumbent GOP rivals. And this was when Wasserman Schultz was "working" for the Red-to-Blue campaign!

All three Democrats would end up losing. Luckily Joe Garcia would eventually be elected in the presidential cycle of 2012, but Wasserman Schultz would also retain the DNC Chair for the mid-terms, and Garcia would lose again, and again very narrowly, despite being part of Wasserman Schultz's and Steve Israel's 2014 "Frontline" program to protect vulnerable Democratic incumbents. The Dems lost 13 House seats in an election where they were previously expected that summer to hold serve in November.

Wasserman Schultz's record of failure couldn't be clearer. If she's advocating for something, you can be fairly sure it comes at a dear cost to Democrats. From a strategic perspective, any Democrat who aligns themselves with Wasserman Schultz and the DNC's debate schedule at this point is actively working against Democratic victory. Hillary Clinton knew that in 2008. Will Democrats listen to her in 2015?