July Democratic presidential debate lineup set; Montana’s Steve Bullock makes the cut

Today, the Demo­c­ra­t­ic Nation­al Com­mit­tee announced the names of the can­di­dates that had qual­i­fied for the sec­ond round of Demo­c­ra­t­ic debates, to be held in Detroit lat­er this month. In a sim­i­lar for­mat to the last round of debat­ing, twen­ty can­di­dates will face off over the course of two nights.

The cri­te­ria to enter this round of debates are the same as those for the first round: a can­di­date must either poll above 1% in three or more DNC-approved polls or have at least 65,000 unique donors to their campaign.

The can­di­dates are, in alpha­bet­i­cal order:

• Sen­a­tor Michael Ben­net of Colorado
• For­mer Vice Pres­i­dent Joe Biden
• Sen­a­tor Cory Book­er of New Jersey
• Mon­tana Gov­er­nor Steve Bullock,
• South Bend May­or Pete Buttigieg
• For­mer HUD Sec­re­tary Julián Castro
• New York May­or Bill de Blasio
• For­mer U.S. Rep­re­sen­ta­tive John Delaney
• U.S. Rep­re­sen­ta­tive Tul­si Gab­bard of Hawaii
• Sen­a­tor Kirsten Gilli­brand of New York
• Sen­a­tor Kamala Har­ris of California
• For­mer Gov­er­nor John Hick­en­loop­er of Colorado
• Gov­er­nor Jay Inslee of Washington
• Sen­a­tor Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota
• For­mer U.S. Rep­re­sen­ta­tive Beto O’Rourke of Texas
• U.S. Rep­re­sen­ta­tive Tim Ryan of Ohio
• Sen­a­tor Bernie Sanders of Vermont
• Sen­a­tor Eliz­a­beth War­ren of Massachusetts
• Mar­i­anne Williamson
• Andrew Yang

The line­up is almost exact­ly the same as the first debate, with the sin­gle change being that Cal­i­for­nia Rep­re­sen­ta­tive Eric Swal­well recent­ly dropped out of the race. He will be replaced on the stage by Montana’s gov­er­nor, Steve Bullock.

Bul­lock nar­row­ly missed out on qual­i­fy­ing for the first debates (much to his campaign’s out­rage), and he will be hop­ing to use this debate to point out that he was re-elect­ed as a Demo­c­ra­t­ic gov­er­nor on the same day that Don­ald Trump won his state by twen­ty points, argu­ing that he can woo at least some of the Trump vot­ers back to the Demo­c­ra­t­ic column.

Sev­er­al Demo­c­ra­t­ic can­di­dates will not make it to the debates in Detroit. Rep­re­sen­ta­tive Seth Moul­ton and Wayne Mes­sam, the may­or of Mira­mar, Flori­da, have both been cam­paign­ing for months, but have failed entire­ly to make any impact in the polls. Alaska’s for­mer sen­a­tor, Mike Grav­el, has report­ed­ly qual­i­fied for the debate based on the DNC’s donor thresh­old, but failed to make the twen­ty-per­son cut off, as the DNC pri­or­i­tizes polling results over donor requirements.

Two can­di­dates have entered the race since the first debate – for­mer U.S. Rep­re­sen­ta­tive Joe Ses­tak of Penn­syl­va­nia and Cal­i­for­nia bil­lion­aire Tom Stey­er – but they will not be on stage. They ave not had enough time to raise either the funds or the polling sup­port required to be includ­ed in the debate.

CNN is set to host the sec­ond round of debates.

Instead of try­ing to orga­nize which can­di­dates will debate each oth­er on which nights based on polling, the net­work will hold a mul­ti-stage live draw on Thurs­day night to deter­mine the sched­ule for candidates.

The July debate is almost cer­tain­ly the last time that view­ers will watch so many can­di­dates debate each oth­er at once for the 2020 cycle; the qual­i­fy­ing thresh­olds for the third debate – set to be held in mid-Sep­tem­ber – are sig­nif­i­cant­ly high­er.

To make the third debate this autumn, a can­di­date must poll at 2% and have over 130,000 unique donors. To date, only five Democ­rats have met this thresh­old: Joe Biden, Bernie Sanders, Kamala Har­ris, Eliz­a­beth War­ren and Pete Buttigieg.