Quick Takes (v38): What I Don't Want to Hear

It's going to be difficult for the debate moderators - Lester Holt, Chuck Todd, Rachel Maddow, Savannah Guthrie and Jose Diaz-Balart - to maintain control over the candidates and get anything accomplished tonight and tomorrow, that much I know.

What's also going to be difficult for them is to maintain control over themselves, and keep focused on things that are important.

These things, in my mind, are NOT important, and I'm hoping that we will not hear any questions related to these issues:

• Elizabeth Warren's DNA
• Beto O'Rourke's childhood writings
• Amy Klobuchar's meanness
• Kamala Harris' father
• Pete Buttigieg's husband
• Cory Booker's girlfriend
• Joe Biden's son
• Bernie Sanders' wife's money

This is not a big version of Meet the Press, it should be an issues-related 'debate'  or conversation, not a personality-based series of interviews.   

Any questions of that nature will clearly show that the press has learned nothing from 2016 - and they honestly had a lot to learn, according to a study on how the press covered the candidates. For example:

Here's another interesting finding, that goes to what was reported. For Trump, a mere 12% of his coverage was about the issues, with 43% of the coverage being negative (particularly after the Muslim ban comments). For Clinton, more than double the amount of coverage was issues-related (still a meager 28%) but the negative coverage was an overwhelming 84%.

Fingers are crossed for tonight - if they bite on the Warren DNA test or anything related to her long-since-addressed family history of Native American ancestry, which is really the most obvious one of the list above to get a hit, we'll know they have learned nothing.