Protecting the Queen

Limit the number of debates, and schedule them when nobody will be watching.

There was much discussion over the number of Democratic debates that would be held in this cycle, with Martin O’Malley and Senator Bernie Sanders pushing for more opportunities to face off publicly with Hillary Clinton. They ultimately settled on six, of which two were scheduled [by the DNC] for Saturday evenings and one for a Sunday.

[...]

As in the previous Democratic debate, which was held at the same time as an important college football game, the candidates will clash on Saturday night with the New York Jets and the Dallas Cowboys.

[...]

A spokeswoman for [Democratic Presidential hopeful Martin] O’Malley’s campaign said that avoiding prime-time debate slots was a way for the Democratic Party to “protect” Mrs. Clinton, and that it had given Mr. Trump and the Republicans [whose debates are held on weeknights] a better platform to express their views.

[...]

“We’re playing the hand we were dealt,” said Michael Briggs, a spokesman for Mr. Sanders. “I guess Christmas Eve was booked.”

  NYT

UPDATE:

Late Thursday night, the DNC took the drastic step of cutting off the Sanders campaign’s access to its comprehensive 50-state voter file that lists voter patterns and preferences, effectively shutting down the campaign’s voter outreach operations just over a month before the critical Iowa caucus and a little over 50 days before the New Hampshire primary.

The punishment came about as the result of a 30-minute glitch in NGP VAN — the vendor that handles the DNC’s voter data — in which internal models for each Democratic presidential campaign were briefly available to other competing campaigns while NGP VAN was applying a patch to the software. Michael Briggs, a communications aide for the Sanders campaign, said this isn’t the first time they’ve reported security bugs in the DNC’s voter file.

[...]

The DNC has vowed to not grant the Sanders campaign access to the voter file until it has proved that it destroyed all of the Clinton campaign data it inadvertently accessed as a result of the glitch. However, as Reddit user bastion_of_press pointed out, the Sanders campaign cannot prove it destroyed something it doesn’t have, meaning the ban on accessing critical voter information could be indefinite.

  US Uncut

Other outlets simply posed this as a case of Sanders' campaign doing something unethical, if not illegal. Some Sanders people were fired. Apparently, neither Clinton or OMalley campaigns looked at the others. ??

The Clinton campaign had no comment.

But, there's a debate coming up.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

UPDATE 12/19/15:  Bernie sues the DNC.  He'll lose.

UPDATE:  Hey, I was wrong.  The suit didn't even make it to court:

Bernie Sanders’ presidential campaign has regained access to the Democratic party’s master voter file after a day of conflict and litigation between the insurgent Vermont senator and the Democratic National Committee (DNC).

Just hours after Sanders filed a lawsuit against the DNC, the national party agreed to restore the Sanders’ campaign access to a crucial voter database.

  Guardian