Rep. Tulsi Gabbard (D-HI) asked fellow presidential candidates Joe Biden and Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) Friday to help her get on the Arizona debate stage.
Gabbard’s request comes after the Democratic National Committee’s (DNC) updated qualifications barred her from participating in the upcoming event in Phoenix, according to the Hill:
.@JoeBiden @BernieSanders I’m sure you would agree that our Democratic nominee should be a person who will stand up for what is right. So I ask that you have the courage to do that now in the face of the DNC's effort to keep me from participating in the debates. #LetTulsiDebate
— Tulsi Gabbard 🌺 (@TulsiGabbard) March 7, 2020
“To keep me off the stage, the DNC again arbitrarily changed the debate qualifications,” Gabbard wrote in a subsequent tweet.
“Previously they changed the qualifications in the OPPOSITE direction so Bloomberg could debate. I ask that you stand w/ me against the DNC’s transparent effort to exclude me from the debates,” she stated.
To take part in the event scheduled for March 15, candidates must have at least 20 percent of the delegates awarded up to that point, according to Breitbart News.
The report continued:
The previous debate requirement allowed a candidate to participate if he or she had a single pledged delegate. If the DNC stuck to the previous rules, Gabbard, who did not qualify for any of the debates ahead of the caucuses in Iowa and Nevada or the primaries in New Hampshire and South Carolina, would have been able to participate.
The Democrat presidential candidate currently has two delegates, both from the U.S. territory of American Samoa, where she was born, according to KYMA.
Friday, the hashtag #LetTulsiDebate trended on Twitter throughout the evening, Fox News reported.
“Gabbard has not appeared on at a Democratic debate since November. She was also snubbed by CNN’s town hall series despite the liberal network inviting former Massachusetts Gov. Deval Patrick, whose polling was lower than hers,” the article said.
Following Gabbard’s request, Twitter users voiced their displeasure with the DNC’s decision to update the debate qualifications.
“I don’t particularly like your politics – but I suspect Senile Joe and Comrade Sanders are deathly afraid that you’d be seen as a much more viable candidate than them if you were up there on the stage with them,” one person wrote.
“Tulsi, you qualified, you deserve to be on that stage. I hate that the elite of the Democratic Party keeps doing this to you,” another commented.
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