Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Rodham Clinton, accompanied by New Hampshire Gov. Maggie Hassan, talks with students during a campaign stop at the University of New Hampshire, Friday, Sept. 18, 2015, in Durham, N.H. (AP Photo/Jim Cole)

The first Democratic presidential debate is less than a month away, and while it is attracting some interest from those anticipating a showdown between Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders, the debate about the debate schedule is currently garnering more buzz than the event itself.

The Democratic National Committee (DNC) has scheduled six debates between now and March, similar to the amount of official debates held in previous election cycles. What is new and controversial in the eyes of some is that candidates are not being allowed to participate in unsanctioned debates.

DNC spokeswoman Holly Shulman told Sinclair there will be many additional forums where candidates can make their case to voters, but Chairwoman Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz has rejected calls to schedule more debates.

Former Maryland Governor Martin O'Malley has led an aggressive charge demanding additional debates over the last month. Appearing on NBC's "Late Night with Seth Myers" Tuesday, O'Malley called the schedule "ludicrous" and accused the DNC of "party malpractice."

He reiterated that point on Thom Hartmann's radio show Friday, saying, "It's party malpractice in my opinion and I have expressed that with the party chair, who I respect. But I think there's an instinct within the establishment of political parties, there's a tendency to calcify and to kind of circle the wagon, to fall back on old relationships instead of appreciating the truth that the American people are always looking for new leadership to move us forward."

O'Malley and his campaign staff have also tweeted numerous comments making the case for more debates.

Sanders has endorsed the idea of scheduling additional debates, and Clinton has signaled that she would be willing to attend if they are added. A protest led by an organization called AllowDebate was held outside the DNC offices in Washington Wednesday.

"We are thrilled the candidates are so eager to participate in our debates," Shulman said Friday. "We believe that six debates will give plenty of opportunity for the candidates to be seen side-by-side."

Republican candidates attended the second of 11 debates planned in their race on Wednesday, drawing nearly 23 million viewers, a record for CNN. Without a wildcard candidate on the Democratic side to match the fascination with GOP front-runner Donald Trump, experts doubt ratings for their October 13 debate, which will also air on CNN, will be nearly as high.

They do, however, say there is a significant level of curiosity surrounding the Democratic race, and they question whether this schedule will be enough to satiate it.

"It's a very short season, just in terms of the calendar, and it's a very sparse season...and it may not be enough to give voters a chance to check everybody out," said Alan Schroeder, a journalism professor at Northeastern University and author of "Presidential Debates: 50 Years of High-Risk TV."

Clinton does not need to worry about name recognition, but her opponents--particularly O'Malley, Lincoln Chafee, and Jim Webb--may be counting on the national audience to introduce themselves to voters.

"Six debates will be plenty for Hillary Clinton and it might even be sufficient for Bernie Sanders, but a candidate like Martin O'Malley wants as much exposure as he can possibly get," said John Carroll, a professor of mass communication at Boston University.

For O'Malley, Webb, Chafee, and, if he qualifies, Lawrence Lessig, there is an opportunity for a breakout performance in the first debate--as Carly Fiorina had in the first Republican undercard debate--but such a development is rare.

"I think a strong performance could help, but unless they had a lot of media attention in the wake of the debates, it probably wouldn't matter all that much," Carroll said, noting that for Fiorina, "the real rocket fuel for her has been the media coverage."

"If there is hope, I think they would take solace to look at [Fiorina]," Aaron Kall, director of debate at the University of Michigan, said.

"An individual debate probably doesn't change an election," Schroeder said, but "debates have a cumulative effect." If a candidate does well in several debates, they can change minds--another downside of the slim Democratic debate schedule.

According to Arnie Arnesen, a political commentator and radio host on the Pacifica Network based in New Hampshire, there is more at stake for the lower-tier candidates than just their standing in the primaries. Vice presidents are often chosen from among those who lost out on the nomination.

"Let's not forget that people are looking for someone not just for the presidency, but also the person who will be one heartbeat from the presidency," she said.

The highest stakes, however, are for Clinton and Sanders. Support for Clinton and voters' opinions of her have been eroding amid controversy over her use of a private email server while she was secretary of state. Sanders has overtaken her in Iowa and New Hampshire in some polls, but Clinton still leads significantly in national polls.

The debates will provide Clinton with a high-profile opportunity to address questions about the emails and they will introduce Sanders to a much wider audience than he has seen so far.

"Hillary Clinton now needs this debate more than Martin O'Malley, Bernie Sanders, and Jim Webb...She needs America to focus on more than just emails," Arnesen said.

Questions about the emails are inevitable, though, and experts say Clinton has still not nailed an effective way of answering them.

"She needs to handle questions about the emails in some other way than she's handled them so far," Carroll said, "because she has been less than convincing and at times self-sabotaging in how she's approached it up to now."

Clinton recently apologized for using the private server, and Kall suggested she needs to continue acknowledging the mistake rather than providing excuses and explanations.

Arnesen said Clinton will have to contend with her own previous statements on the subject, and debate moderators may call her out on the apparent inconsistencies.

"She's going to have to figure out the email...I don't know what she's going to say. I don't know what rabbit she's going to pull out."

However, Schroeder noted that Clinton does know such questions are coming and she will be prepared to answer for any controversies that have put her in the headlines in the past.

"I expect she'll be very well prepped on all of that," he said of the email issue. "Exactly how she goes about defending herself remains to be seen."

Schroeder predicted that challenges about Clinton's email use are more likely to come from the debate moderators than from her fellow candidates, based on their hesitation to attack her so far.

Going negative against the only female candidate on stage can be risky, experts say, but if the other candidates try it, they need to make sure they do it well.

"The worst thing they could do is go after Hillary Clinton and then get sort of flicked away by her," Carroll said. The potential benefit of a well-placed attack does not outweigh that danger, and it may be seen more as an act of desperation than strength.

"Ask Senator Rick Lazio," Carroll said of the opponent Clinton defeated to win her New York Senate seat. "How'd that work out for him?"

Experts point to Clinton's debate with Lazio in 2000 when she was running for the Senate as a perfect example of the challenge of taking on Clinton without appearing sexist. The Washington Post labeled him walking across the stage and urging her to sign a campaign finance pledge as one of the worst debate moments of all time.

Even when prodded by interviewers, Sanders has generally avoided personal criticisms of Clinton, and that will likely continue on the debate stage. Sanders' objective will be to expand his appeal beyond the progressive base that passionately supports him now, and that could be a tricky tightrope walk.

"I don't know if he can appeal to a broader constituency," Carroll said, "because to do that in many ways he would have to modify some of the things that he's been promoting in his campaign so far, and the risk there is that he loses the true believers."

"You wonder if there's sort of a natural ceiling for Sanders that he's really not going to be able to break through," Carroll said, and the debates will be the first true test of that.

"I think that is his challenge," Schroeder said, "that obviously he has a great depth of support among those who support him, but now he has to take that depth and turn it into breadth."

Arnesen said Sanders has a direct and clear style that appears to be what voters want at the moment.

"People like people who are going to answer questions...It's an opportunity for Bernie, assuming Hillary can't find her voice."

Unlike Barack Obama when Clinton debated him in 2008, Sanders has a long history of dealing with progressive issues and he will be prepared to talk about specifics.

These are reasons why Clinton might be reluctant to participate in additional debates, but experts also see an upside in the fact that she will have to debate the Republican candidate next fall if she is nominated and the primary debates are good practice.

"One school of thought would be the more debates she does, the better she'll be at it," Carroll said, "and she is not a natural debater. She's too programmed, she's too dry, she's too forced."

"The more practice she gets, the better it would serve her in the general election when she's on the big stage."

There is another way of looking at it, though.

"At the same time, the downside is the more time you're exposed on a big stage under the bright lights, there's more chance you'll commit an error," Kall said. If she remains the front-runner, additional debates could hurt her.

Schroeder had a more positive assessment of Clinton's ability, calling her a "very good debater."

"I don't think that Hillary necessarily puts herself in danger at any point that she debates," he said.

That is particularly true if the audience is small, and given that most of the scheduled debates will occur on weekends or around holiday, it very well could be.

"You can't bury these more" than the DNC has, Carroll said.

"They've constructed this in a way that could cause the least possible damage to Hillary Clinton's campaign," he alleged.

The DNC did not respond to a request for comment about alleged favoritism toward Clinton.

"I think the audience is going to be extremely limited to the sort of hardcore primary voters who really represent only a small percentage of the overall voting population," Carroll said.

People may tune in for the first debate out of curiosity, though, and how it plays out could determine the level of interest in the rest.

"If there were fireworks at the first debate, then that would increase the audience for the second...If they're low key affairs, I think they're probably going to be eminently ignorable."

Schroeder suggested the excitement surrounding Donald Trump and the Republican race could benefit the Democrats, even though they are starting their debate process late.

"I think people have gotten interested in the election because of the Republicans. Some of that may spill over to the Democrats."

Arnesen believes there is a lot of interest in seeing Sanders, who has gotten much less national media coverage than Clinton. There are also many Republicans who will tune in for the first debate to see how Clinton handles herself and size her up in case she does become the nominee.

Also, unlike the main Republican debates, with nearly a dozen candidates on stage, the smaller field of Democratic contenders means there will be more time for them to flesh out their policies and personalities.

To people like Ben Doernberg, founder of AllowDebate, that is exactly why there should be more debates.

"There's certain benefits in terms of understanding the candidates" that only comes from seeing them on stage together interacting, he said.

"There's a reason the candidates are pushing for more debates," Doernberg said.

Experts agree that forums are an insufficient replacement for debates.

"It's of course the only time that the candidates are literally on stage together, so it's the one chance for voters to comparison shop," Schroeder said.

"Forums are great," Kall said. "They're just not a substitute for debates....Debate and interactions and contrasting doesn't occur between the candidates [at forums]."

Forums can devolve into stump speeches and talking points, while debates can force the candidates to dig deeper and go off script.

Doernberg places the blame for the sparse debate schedule on DNC Chairwoman Wasserman Schultz, noting that several party leaders and two DNC vice chairs have come out in support of additional debates.

"I think it's very clear that the driving force behind the DNC chair's debate schedule is not, how can we put the views of the Democratic Party and Democratic candidates in front of as many viewers as possible," he said.

"At least on this issue, she is absolutely running the DNC like a dictatorship."

The DNC did not respond to that characterization.

Doernberg also questioned whether the debates will generate big enough audiences on the dates chosen.

"I think there certainly won't be as much interest if they're on the Saturday before Christmas...That's absolutely giving up an opportunity to define what are the issues at stake in the election."

DNC spokeswoman Shulman said the six debates provide the candidates ample time "to advocate for the policies Democrats know will move America forward and strengthen the middle class - like equal pay legislation, raising the minimum wage, and making sure health care is accessible and affordable."

The DNC has also argued that the schedule is designed to allow candidates to maximize their time on the campaign trail meeting voters.

"Everyone who has worked in an early state knows that debates are just a small piece of the equation--and that candidates need to be in living rooms as well as on stage. This schedule makes that possible," Shulman said.

Doernberg dismissed that reasoning, particularly given the record ratings of the GOP debates.

"The idea that shaking hands one-on-one is a substitute for debates with tens of millions of viewers is just ridiculous," he said.

House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi told the Los Angeles Times Friday that she would also like to see more debates.

"Hillary does well--I think they all do well on them--and we should have more debates," she said, but she expressed doubt that more would be added.

Experts say it would make sense to revisit the issue if Vice President Joe Biden joins the race in the coming weeks, but they are otherwise skeptical that the DNC will change its position.

The first Democratic debate will take place October 13 in Las Vegas, moderated by Anderson Cooper. Additional debates are scheduled for November 14, December 19, and January 17. Two other debates will be held in February or March but dates have not been set.

Meanwhile, for O'Malley, the fight for more opportunities to debate his opponents continues.



