In this tight contest, presidential debate moderators are fair game

MEDIA BIAS CLAIM Donald Trump had alleged that moderators are unfair and called CNN ‘Clinton News Network’

non-profit privately funded organisation, announced the moderators in early September after checking with, and with the concurrence of, the two campaigns as is the tradition.

Fox’s Megan Kelly, who has had a running battle with Trump, was dropped because the nominee’s campaign didn’t expect her to be fair. And the Clinton campaign pushed back on anyone and everyone from the right-leaning Fox. They may have agreed eventually to Fox’s Chris Wallace, however, because he is a registered Democrat, something he has attributed to staying in Democratic-dominated Washington . He is scheduled to moderate the last debate.

All of this, and other more intrusive details of the moderators may be on the table in a race as tight as this — Clinton and Trump are separated only by 2.1 points in the RealClearPolitics average of polls, in favour of the Democrat. And FiveThirtyEight, which predicts outcome using a complex formula based on weighted aggregation of polls, predicts a Clinton win by a slim margin of 3.6 points at 51.8% to Trump’s 48.2%.

The debates will matter, and a lot. And moderators will be fair game. They will be targeted not only by the Trump campaign, which may have been seen as the pushier and whinier of the two. The Clinton campaign was outraged with TV host Matt Lauer’s failure to fact-check Trump on Iraq during back-to-back townhall style interviews.