best nominee to take on trump it with their debate rules. i m going about my campaign on the ground that s why i m in new hampshire. i got this late. it s not lost on voters, the veteran and won from the state where trump won. neil: and i think you said wilson, i apologize for that. and i wonder what you think about the choosing process and criteria, i don t know what it will be in future debates, what do you think about how they go about this? well, again, i m not bothering to worry about this, neil. we ve hit the polling criteria in several polls and some reason the ndnc decided not to count and half the candidates on the state didn t meet the donor criteria. the reality is when you re counting donors as opposed to voters on the ground, i don t
well, i believe governor bullock missed the bar for this one by one respondent. if he had gotten one more response in his camp in his poll he would have made this debate, so, you know, there s ways to get in and their challenge is the way it is for many of the candidates who find themselves in the second tier, third tier, however many tiers we re putting in the race. the bottom tier will be really hard to break out and gain traction. and some unintended consequences. debate rules, trying to be more transparent and now you have some people left out. fun to watch. thanks for joining us here on inside politics. see you back here on sunday. al alex marquardt in today for brianna keilar after a quick break. that s right, t-mobile will match your discount. cake in the conference room! showing em you re ready to be your own boss.
i m running for those people. i don t understand why one of the criteria is this money donor standard. it seems to me the half of the american people that have having a hard time affording basic necessities, it doesn t seem like they re probably contributing a lot of money to political campaigns, so why is their voice not relevant in the debate? arthel: let s bring in our political panel, mandy gunesecara, former administration official, an antoine searight, and the founder and ceo of blueprint strategy. antoine, i m going to start with you. mandy, i m going to get your reaction in a second. antoine, overall, do those democratic candidates who are upset about the new debate rules have a valid argument? no. welcome to the big leagues. we know what it s going to take to take on donald trump and the republicans next year and what the dnc has done to this point,
according to the new york times on the list. this is when he ran for president. watch this. do you want a place where we need to be in terms of our national strategy, a focus, the greatest threat that we have right now is resolving our relationship with china. you are over your time. you let a lot of people go over their time. you agreed to these debate rules. china, you do not own the south china sea. martha: what about the possibility of democrat jim webb? i think it is a possibility. i understand that vice-president pence reached out to him and looked at his views on various things and think he could identify where president trump is moving. we for major competition with china politically, economically and military.
one big thing is fight club, the new debate rules. so, for the age of trump, a new play book for how democratic candidates can survive in debates. ron klain, who has been debate coach going back to president bill clinton in 1982, every democratic debate since then, he s done an occasional series of survival guides for candidates and has updated it for the trump era. so how to deal with a trump wanna be, how to deal with a trumpian tantrum. how to deal with realtime fact checking and some of the advice that he has here is to keep a smile because more the other candidate moves into tantrum mode the better you ll look. mike, i don t know if you saw the movie, the first rule of fight club is don t talk about fight club. you totally blew that. let me ask you this quickly, should we expect in the age of trump debates, political