According to this article in The Hill 26 of the 43 members of the Congressional Black Caucus have written the Democratic Presidential candidates, with the main targets being Senators Clinton, Obama (a member of the CBC) and former Senator John Edwards to ask them to reconsider having a debate on Fox News.

Black Caucus leaders sent the letter to the entire field of Democratic presidential candidates, but the primary targets were Obama, Clinton and Edwards.

The caucus has 43 members from 22 states, who together represent about 40 million Americans, an official with the group said. Seventeen members of the Black Caucus represent districts that are less than 50 percent African-American, said caucus Chairwoman Carolyn Cheeks Kilpatrick (D-Mich.), who argued that the issues at the debate will also be of interest to other minority constituencies, such as Hispanics.

“It’s not just a black thing,” Kilpatrick said.

Thompson said presidential debates often ignore issues that are important to minority voters.

“Nobody is talking about the disproportionate statistics that we have in this country as it relates to minority population,” Thompson said. “You can look at healthcare, you can look at education, you can look at employment, you can look at housing, you can look at lending. All those [statistics] show a very bad picture for many constituents we represent.

“So we think Democratic and Republican candidates alike should have an opportunity to say what they plan to [do to] level the playing field,” he added.

By framing their decision to skip the debate as a missed opportunity to communicate to an important Democratic constituency, caucus leaders are ratcheting up the political pressure on the Democratic front-runners.

When the CBC was looking for a network to work with them on a debate Fox News was the only one to respond.

I think after seeing how Fox News performed last week in the Republican debate as opposed to how NBC performed for the Democratic debate and the first Republican debate should calm the fears of the candidates as far as being fair. They will do follow-up questions and demand answers to their questions if someone strays away from the topic, based on last week’s performance, but they won’t be asking silly questions of the candidates.

Let’s see how this plays out, especially with Barack Obama. If he says yes then Senator Clinton and former Senator Edwards will have to join in and since they’re going to get some tough questions down the road (we hope) they might as well start now and state their positions.

Here’s one more interesting quote from the piece:

Left-leaning columnist E.J. Dionne wrote last month that Democrats were well within their rights.

“Tell me again: Why do Democrats have an obligation to participate in debates on Fox?” Dionne wrote. “I am an avid reader of conservative magazines such as National Review and the Weekly Standard. But if these two publications teamed up to sponsor a Democratic debate, would anyone accuse Edwards, Obama and Clinton of ‘blacklisting’ if the candidates said, ‘no thanks’?”

I think last week’s performance by the Fox News crew of Brit Hume, Wendell Goler and Chris Wallace did an outstanding job of being prepared and of handling the debate.

If you’re going to play baseball you can’t have softballs lobbed at you all the time.

Written by ~J~

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