Remember when everyone was complaining about voters having no real substantive choice among candidates for office? We were faced with a problem of deciding between Tweedledum and Tweedledee, two characters from Lewis Carroll’s Through the Looking Glass (1871). I’ll post John Tenniel’s illustration. No one could tell them apart and they became a common refrain of those complaining about how all politicians moved toward similar positions to appeal to the most voters.

These days seem to be gone, at least for now. The differences among the GOP Candidates for the Republican Presidential nomination are ‘huge’, to quote Donald Trump, and the differences between the Republicans and Democrats, even more so. Of course, Bernie Sanders, Martin O’Malley, and Hillary Clinton are also very different in personality, career paths, and policy positions. Across Europe, you can see the same pattern, with populist canidates from the left and right emerging as serious contenders for seats, such as between Nicolas Sarkozy and Marine Le Pen in the 2015 regional elections.

Many are worried about the rise of populist candidates, such as Donald Trump, but isn’t this what we asked for in complaining about lookalike candidates? If we trust democratic processes, might we assume this will begin to engage more people into learning about the candidates and voting in elections? Do we trust democracy?

Perhaps the viewing records for the US primary debates are symptomatic of greater voter engagement. And this makes the debates and all other aspects of the electoral process ever more critical to the future of governance in the United States and abroad. May the debates focus on generating real debates among the candidates, and not a set of serial interviews and gotcha moments, as I and Tracy Westen have been discussing in previous blogs, such as in our low grading of the Fox News-Facebook debate.