We shouldn’t be sur­prised that our pres­i­den­tial debates seem aimed less at inform­ing the pub­lic than at boost­ing net­work rat­ings and keep­ing the world safe from so-called rad­i­cal ideas, giv­en that the par­ties and major net­works dic­tate the terms — the for­mat, the ques­tions, the audi­ence, who’s in and who’s out. And all are drenched in cor­po­rate dol­lars. The Demo­c­ra­t­ic Par­ty, reliant on big-mon­ey donors, has lit­tle inter­est in bol­ster­ing the left-wing poli­cies of pro­gres­sive can­di­dates. And the net­works rely on adver­tis­ers; as Sen. Bernie Sanders (Vt.) point­ed out in the sec­ond debate, the health­care indus­try ran adver­tise­ments dur­ing com­mer­cial breaks. The mil­lion­aire cable news hosts — as much as they might protest that they’re nobody’s pup­pet — know which ques­tions will please their cor­po­rate own­ers and spon­sors and which won’t.

We should also have single-issue debates on healthcare, gun control, women’s rights and more

Analy­ses I did for Fair­ness and Accu­ra­cy in Report­ing show that the pol­i­cy ques­tions both NBC and CNN asked, espe­cial­ly on health­care and the econ­o­my, leaned heav­i­ly on indus­try talk­ing points and assump­tions. For instance, NBC men­tioned ​“free col­lege” in four ques­tions, but focused entire­ly on whether the pro­gram would cost too much or be ​“actu­al­ly achiev­able” rather than, say, the prob­lem of stu­dent debt or socioe­co­nom­ic dis­par­i­ties in access to high­er education.

Oth­er mod­els are avail­able. The League of Women Vot­ers used to spon­sor gen­er­al elec­tion debates, and typ­i­cal­ly tapped more sober print jour­nal­ists, who lack the same pres­sure to gen­er­ate rat­ings, to lead the ques­tion­ing. But the Repub­li­can and Demo­c­ra­t­ic par­ties effec­tive­ly mus­cled out the League in 1988, form­ing the sup­pos­ed­ly non­par­ti­san (but actu­al­ly bipar­ti­san) Com­mis­sion on Pres­i­den­tial Debates, which demand­ed full con­trol over choos­ing ques­tion­ers, the audi­ence, press access and more. The League minced no words upon its withdrawal:

The demands of the two cam­paign orga­ni­za­tions [the DNC and RNC] would per­pe­trate a fraud on the Amer­i­can vot­er. … It has become clear to us that the can­di­dates’ orga­ni­za­tions aim to add debates to their list of cam­paign-trail cha­rades devoid of sub­stance, spon­tane­ity and answers to tough ques­tions. … The League has no inten­tion of becom­ing an acces­so­ry to the hood­wink­ing of the Amer­i­can public.

In the pri­maries, the par­ties and their media accom­plices try to win­now the field as quick­ly as pos­si­ble. This year, Demo­c­ra­t­ic can­di­dates are already being knocked out of the debates for low polling num­bers or fundrais­ing dol­lars — near­ly five months before the Iowa cau­cus­es. But ear­ly on, most can­di­dates are large­ly unknown and expect­ed to have low poll num­bers; the whole point of the ear­ly pri­ma­ry debates ought to be to help peo­ple get to know the can­di­dates and their ideas.

Which brings us to the next prob­lem. With 30-and 60-sec­ond time lim­its, what can we expect beyond glossy talk­ing points? Take the cli­mate cri­sis. In the first debate, Sen. Kamala Har­ris (Calif.) was asked to explain, in 60 sec­onds, her plan for cli­mate change. Gov. Jay Inslee (Wash.), the can­di­date with the most devel­oped plan thus far, has around 200 pages out­lin­ing his pro­pos­als. Though Inslee has since dropped out, Bernie Sanders released in August a 13,000-word cli­mate plan, and sev­er­al of Warren’s famous plans tack­le dif­fer­ent aspects of the cri­sis. Six­ty sec­onds is absurd and insulting.

Those in con­trol might argue that we can’t have it both ways, keep­ing an expan­sive field of can­di­dates and giv­ing them all ade­quate time to dis­cuss those com­pli­cat­ed issues. But there is an obvi­ous — and easy — solu­tion. Envi­ron­men­tal activists, led by the Sun­rise Move­ment, have been call­ing for a sin­gle-issue cli­mate debate, but the DNC under Tom Perez vot­ed down a pro­posed cli­mate debate in August. In 2015, the Black Lives Mat­ter move­ment called for a BLM-themed debate, which the DNC like­wise rebuffed. We should also have sin­gle-issue debates on health­care, gun con­trol, women’s rights and more.

CNN recent­ly agreed to host a town hall on cli­mate, and NBC will be host­ing a mul­ti-day cli­mate forum, but it’s not enough. Town halls and forums don’t get the same audi­ence that debates get, though they will give Perez a way to claim the DNC is doing enough on cli­mate — even while we suf­fer debates like the one July 30, in which the CNN hosts asked more non-pol­i­cy ques­tions (e.g., are the can­di­dates ​“mov­ing too far to the left”?) than cli­mate questions.

What it comes down to is this: We’ll nev­er get thought­ful, sub­stan­tive pol­i­cy dis­cus­sions while the debates are con­trolled by orga­ni­za­tions depen­dent on big mon­ey. We need to give the debates to the League of Women Vot­ers or to anoth­er inde­pen­dent orga­ni­za­tion ded­i­cat­ed to democ­ra­cy rather than dollars.