Over 300 Georgetown students packed the Healey Family Student Center Great Room on Oct. 13 to watch Democratic presidential candidates meet on the debate stage for the first time of the 2016 election season. Georgetown’s Institute of Politics and Public Service (IPPS) hosted its second “Not Your Average Debate Watch Party” for the debate after its first on Sept. 16 for the Republican debate watch party.
President of the Georgetown College Democrats Matt Gregory (SFS ’17) introduced IPPS Executive Director Mo Elleithee (SFS ’94) as host for the night before the debate began. Elleithee started the conversation about the debate and asked students to shout out on which issues they believed the candidates would focus. Georgetown students gave all types of responses, ranging from women’s rights, student debt, climate change, money in politics, wealth inequality, and Hillary Clinton’s emails. However, Elleithee told the crowd that “the issues [the crowd] talked about are all the proof points to get to a fundamental thing”.
“Tonight, for the first time most Americans are going to finally hear them talk about [the issues]. For every single one of the five of them this is their big coming out party, this is their big introduction to the American people,” he said. Elleithee said that the candidates’ fundamental goal for this debate “is going be to use this as an opportunity to connect with people and say ‘let me tell you why I am your champion.’”
Throughout the debate, Elleithee asked students to shout and clap for whom they supported and who they thought was winning the debate throughout the night. Hillary and Bernie supporters along with undecideds, Independents, and Republicans alike voiced their positions. When asking for Bernie supporters before the debate Elleithee knew the response would be loud saying, “Bernie Sanders supporters, I’m going to plug my ears.” After the first hour of debate Elleithee checked in again and offered his insight, “I thought Hillary came strong out of the box, not afraid to mix it up, which I think caught a lot of people off guard; the contrast with Bernie on the capitalism question, and how about that gun exchange?”
IPPS provided commentary throughout the debate. PHOTO: Justin Plumb/Georgetown Voice
The IPPS also teamed up with the Brigade App to “flash poll” members of the audience. Students could open the Brigade App on their phones on their computers and answer questions to gauge the audience’s views and reactions to the debate. Students could login and see a quote from the debate and could answer whether they agreed or disagreed with the candidate. In real time students could vote and immediately see what the rest of the room was thinking as well.
Before the debate, representatives from the Georgetown for Bernie group passed out flyers to audience members that argued that there were too few Democratic debates. When the event began, one member of the group asked Elleithee about the issue. Elleithee did mention that he was in meetings with the DNC about the decision to limit the number of Democratic debates to six and could not speak about the details but did explain the rationale.
“There were 24 debates in the 2008 Democratic Primary, and that was too many,” he said. “When there are 28 debates, what happens? Candidates actually don’t have as much time to campaign because the debates take up a lot of time, they can’t get out in the field, they can’t do the town halls, and they can’t go knocking on doors.”
During the second break in debate, Elleithee checked in, via Skype, with current IPPS Fellow and CNN Senior Political Correspondent Brianna Keilar who was reporting at the debate. She showed students the debate stage, then took students back the CNN workspace. There she chatted with Donna Brazile, Vice Chairwoman of the Democratic National Committee. Brazile directly talked to audience members at the HFSC about the debate, “Go Hoyas!” she said. “I love Bernie Sanders’s comment about Hillary Clinton’s emails, he used the d-word, and it wasn’t diva,” she said, evoking laughter from the audience in the HFSC.
On Twitter, using the hashtag, #GUDebate many expressed their views on the debate and their satisfaction with IPPS’s event. One attendee, Kayla Auletto, said on Twitter, “What other debate watch party is skyping with [Brianna Keilar] and [Donna Brazile] right now? So cool.”
Check out a selection of tweets with #GUDebate below.
Editor’s note: This article has been updated to reflect a more accurate estimation of the attendance numbers at the debate.
