Sally Kohn

Opinion contributor

Obviously, I watched. Like every other American with a conscience — a demographic I pray is growing, not shrinking — I want to carefully consider my other options for the presidency alongside the context of what is clearly at stake.

And while I’m obviously a political nerd, I’m not alone: The most recent Democratic debate, hosted by Univision and ABC News, drew over 14 million viewers, and the other Democratic debates have fared well, too. Polling evidence suggests that Democratic voters are engaged just as much if not more in this election than in previous cycles. In other words, whatever you think of the vetting process for the debate or the overall state of the Democratic Party or the crisis facing our democracy as a whole, at least within the bubble of this small window on the primary process so far, we, the people, seem to be paying attention.

Faster, dumber, meaner

What are we getting in return? More of the faster, dumber, meaner media that got us into this crisis in the first place. If we’re going to fix what ails our democracy, we need to fix the Democratic primary debates.

In the run-up to 2016, Sen. Bernie Sanders and former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton kept their debates fairly civil and focused on policy issues. And the debate hosts, being serious people used to discussing serious issues in serious ways, went along with that — asking substantive questions to elicit meaningful differences on policy.

That was also the news media’s main approach to the Republican primaries, at first. But then Donald Trump changed the game. He batted away policy questions with personal smears, and the resulting dust-ups not only trended on Twitter but also fell like catnip at the feet of a news media desperate to prove its enduring relevance and all too aware that pettiness generates more clicks than policy. By the end of the primary process, cable networks were streaming footage of empty stages awaiting Trump’s presence, even on primary nights where he mostly lost. Because, for the news media, Trump meant winning ratings either way.

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Which is how we had a dynamic where, for instance, Clinton’s email scandals received far more coverage in mainstream news outlets online than all of Trump’s scandals combined, and more than twice as much coverage as her policy positions. Coverage about Clinton was disproportionately focused on said “scandals” as compared with Trump, whose media coverage was predominantly focused on his policy proposals.

And over the course of the campaign, another study found, Clinton was covered more negatively than Trump. As one serial sexual harasser masquerading as a (now former) TV network executive once famously suggested, maybe Trump was bad for America but he was damn good for the media. And in turn, it appears, the media was damn good to Trump.

Fast-forward and we can see the same media institutions still high off not only Trump’s campaign performance but also every single one of his attention-grabbing tweets, clearly looking for a fix from the Democratic primary contest — and contorting the debates to try to create one.

For instance: "Who on this stage is making promises just to get elected?" CNN's Jake Tapper asked Sen. Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota in the second Democratic debate, throwing her own words back at her.

Staying with Klobuchar, ABC News' George Stephanopoulos in the third debate asked, “Who represents the extreme on this stage?” Klobuchar tried to redirect the question without smearing her fellow Democrats. But Stephanopoulos interrupted her and pressed, “Which ones?”

These kinds of prods pockmarked the debates, with the candidates thankfully largely refusing to take the bait and even criticizing the networks or the media writ large for their attempt to turn substantive disagreements into snipe-y mudslinging. Perhaps following Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren’s profound gravitational pull, the Democratic candidates have managed to keep the primary focused on policy. And they’ve consistently emphasized that their agreements far outweigh their disagreements. The candidates, like the voters, want party unity and civility — the media a food fight.

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There’s an old saying that when you wrestle with a pig, sooner or later you realize the pig likes it. It’s impossible to know who the bigger swine is in our current climate — Donald Trump or the news media. Perhaps the pig tail is wagging the pig. But on the other side stand the American people desperate for clear-eyed leadership and serious, meaningful change and a fleet of Democratic candidates ready to give it to them. Here’s a crazy idea: Why don’t we make the debates about that?

The news media can do better

In particular, there are three things the next debates should do differently.

►Don’t mistake conflict for contrast. Yes, we want to hear how the candidates’ views differ. That’s not the same thing as candidates attacking each other. Ask questions that get into the nuances of policy disagreements, versus trying to goad the candidates into needling each other as entertainment. That might actually lead to the kinds of discussions that not only inform voters but also go down in the history books as shoring up and smartening up our democracy. Even if they don’t trend on Twitter.

As a corollary, stop that stupid rule where if one candidate name-checks another, the named candidate gets to respond. Again, this only seems designed literally to incentivize personal attacks.

►Focus on more than a couple of issues. Yes, health care and immigration are vital, and polls show they’re at the top of voters' minds. But that’s not all voters care about, nor are they the only issues on which a potential president must lead — and where it’s important to elucidate the differences among these primary contenders. Affordable housing, foreign aid, abortion rights, the creeping privatization of public education, strengthening our social safety net, tax policy, monopoly power, and technology and privacy rights — voters also care about these issues. Ask about them, alongside questions about impeachment.

►Give the contenders more time to speak. The Wrap's J. Clara Chan asked debate coaches how they would improve the debates, and their number one demand was to lengthen response times. Short response times facilitate quippy, soundbite-y answers. Although I realize nuance is dead and the news media helped kill it, it would be nice to actually give people arguing that they are knowledgeable and thoughtful enough to be the leader of the free world more than a few seconds to demonstrate that.

We can do better. Our country can do better. And yes, the news media can do better. This is a fight for the future of our democracy, not a game of limbo. We need to stop lowering the bar.

Sally Kohn is author of "The Opposite Of Hate: A Field Guide To Repairing Our Humanity." You can find her online at sallykohn.com and on Twitter: @SallyKohn