One night only! Lineup announced for third 2020 Democratic debate in Houston, Texas

This morn­ing, ABC News (the Demo­c­ra­t­ic Nation­al Com­mit­tee’s media part­ner for the third offi­cial­ly-sanc­tioned can­di­dates debate) con­firmed that just ten can­di­dates had qual­i­fied for the stage in Hous­ton, which means that that the debate will only take place on one night instead of two like in the last rounds.

The debate is set for Thurs­day, Sep­tem­ber 12th, 2019 from 5 PM to 8 PM Pacif­ic. Texas South­ern Uni­ver­si­ty is the host venue.

The qual­i­fy­ing can­di­dates are:

• For­mer Vice Pres­i­dent Joe Biden
• New Jer­sey U.S. Sen­a­tor Cory Booker
• South Bend, Indi­ana May­or Pete Buttigieg
• For­mer Hous­ing and Urban Devel­op­ment Sec­re­tary Julián Castro
• Cal­i­for­nia U.S. Sen­a­tor Kamala Harris
• Min­neso­ta U.S. Sen­a­tor Amy Klobuchar
• For­mer Texas U.S. Rep­re­sen­ta­tive Beto O’Rourke
• Ver­mont U.S. Sen­a­tor Bernie Sanders
• Mass­a­chu­setts U.S. Sen­a­tor Eliz­a­beth Warren
• Entre­pre­neur Andrew Yang

The can­di­dates who did­n’t make it, but pre­vi­ous­ly qual­i­fied are:

• Mon­tana Gov­er­nor Steve Bullock
• Ohio U.S. Rep­re­sen­ta­tive Tim Ryan
• Hawaii U.S. Rep­re­sen­ta­tive Tul­si Gabbard
• Author Mar­i­anne Williamson
• For­mer U.S. Rep­re­sen­ta­tive John Delaney
• Col­orado U.S. Sen­a­tor Michael Bennet
• New York May­or Bill de Blasio

For­mer can­di­dates who exit­ed the race in advance of not qual­i­fy­ing are:

• Wash­ing­ton Gov­er­nor Jay Inslee
• New York U.S. Sen­a­tor Kirsten Gillibrand
• Mass­a­chu­setts U.S. Rep­re­sen­ta­tive Seth Moul­ton (nev­er qualified)
• For­mer Col­orado Gov­er­nor John Hickenlooper
• Cal­i­for­nia U.S. Rep­re­sen­ta­tive Eric Swalwell

Bil­lion­aire and late entrant Tom Stey­er, mean­while, also did­n’t make the cut, although he may qual­i­fy for the next debate in October.

Although there’s no sec­ond night this time, the first and only night will be a long one, as ABC is plan­ning a three hour debate last­ing from 5 to 8 PM Pacific.

There will be four mod­er­a­tors, in keep­ing with the recent trend of hav­ing a large num­ber of tele­vi­sion per­son­al­i­ties share mod­er­a­tion duties:

• George Stephanopou­los, Chief Anchor, ABC News
• David Muir, Anchor of World News Tonight
• Lin­sey Davis, ABC News Correspondent
• Jorge Ramos of Univision

Addi­tion­al­ly, ABC plans to have pret­ty much all of its star pun­dits and reporters in Hous­ton dur­ing the week of the debate. The ABC pun­dit ros­ter (which is very heavy on neolib­er­als) includes buck­rak­er Cok­ie Roberts and pub­lic opin­ion ana­lyst Nate Sil­ver plus Hei­di Heitkamp, Rahm Emanuel, and Chris Christie.

There will be a one-hour “preshow” start­ing at 4 PM on the day of the debate and there will be post-debate cov­er­age and analy­sis after it is over for any­one who wants to be glued to their tele­vi­sion set for more than three hours.

With regards to for­mat, ABC says there will be open­ing state­ments but no clos­ing state­ments. The net­work did not reveal its plans for address­ing often neglect­ed top­ics like the cli­mate cri­sis or afford­able housing.

You’ve got lots of options for tun­ing in:

The ABC News Demo­c­ra­t­ic Debate will air live nation­al­ly on the ABC Tele­vi­sion Net­work and Uni­vi­sion (with a Span­ish trans­la­tion) and local­ly on KTRK-TV. ABC News will livestream the debate on ABC News Live – the network’s ²⁴⁄₇ break­ing news and live events stream­ing chan­nel – on Roku, Hulu, AppleTV, Ama­zon Fire TV, YouTube, Apple News, Face­book, Twit­ter, and the ABC News, Good Morn­ing Amer­i­ca and FiveThir­tyEight web­sites and mobile phone apps. Uni­vi­sion News will also livestream the debate on all of its dig­i­tal plat­forms includ­ing Face­book, YouTube and Periscope.

NPI will bring you live analy­sis and reac­tion on debate night from 5 PM to 8 PM Pacif­ic. Join us — at least dur­ing the com­mer­cial breaks! — if you’d like to see the debate bro­ken down from a lin­guis­tics and fram­ing perspective.

POSTSCRIPT: ABC News has released the podi­um order for the debate. Here are some impres­sions from our Pres­i­den­tial Elec­toral Ana­lyst, Ruairi Vaughan.

Joe Biden is sand­wiched by War­ren and Sanders

War­ren and Sanders got a real boost by work­ing togeth­er in the last debate against neolib­er­al can­di­dates, they are like­ly to bring that team­work to bear against Biden, who they both need to knock down in the polls.

Biden has not faced War­ren in a debate so far — they’ve been on stage dif­fer­ent nights. Biden could be at a real dis­ad­van­tage if he isn’t pre­pared to take her on, and his team will have a hard time work­ing out how to deal with her.

Few­er neolib­er­als in this debate

The only oth­er open­ly par­tial pro­gres­sive can­di­date besides Biden is Amy Klobuchar. In the last debate, she did­n’t have the fight­ing spir­it of a Delaney or a Bul­lock (she opt­ed for a more con­cil­ia­to­ry tone), so it seems unlike­ly she would rush to Biden’s aid when he gets crit­i­cized, at least not in a com­bat­ive way.

Tex­ans together

Beto O’Rourke and Cas­tro will be next to each oth­er – can we expect anoth­er show­down in Span­ish, like in the first debate?

The high­est-polling can­di­dates are also the oldest

ABC has put the old­est can­di­dates at the cen­ter of the stage (because they are the high­est polling can­di­dates). This could cre­ate a strange pile-on against the cen­ter dynam­ic if the can­di­dates are asked about age… Biden, War­ren and Sanders might even have the oppor­tu­ni­ty to call out ageism together.

Will Kamala Har­ris rebound?

Kamala Har­ris got high marks for her first debate per­for­mance in June, but in July, she came across much more uneven. She faced the full wrath of Biden, plus attacks from neolib­er­al can­di­dates, plus an unex­pect­ed swipe from Tul­si Gabbard.

This time, Biden will like­ly have his hands full tus­sling with War­ren and Sanders, there aren’t any oth­er com­bat­ive neolib­er­als, and Gab­bard isn’t in this debate.

That could cre­ate a favor­able dynam­ic for Harris.