somebody is on and who else they share the stage with, how critical that can be. >> very critical. let's just look at what happened in the first debate in miami. kamala harris totally transformed the position that she was holding in this race in that one debate performance -- >> because she was with joe biden. >> she took on vice president joe biden. and recall getting to why we're sort of doing it this way as well, anderson. in the first debates, you had four of the top five candidates on one stage and you had elizabeth warren alone as a top five candidate on the other stage. so she had a night to herself in terms of top tier on the stage. that's not going to happen this time around because of the way that we're doing the three separate draws to try and ensure that as equally as possible in terms of where they stand with democratic voters right now across the country, they are evenly divided across these two nights. >> and it's not just who is on stage together that's going to be completely random. it's also what night they happen to be on. >> exactly. >> david, the stakes obviously for a lot of these candidates are critical. for some this could be their last debate. >> it could be because the qualifications get much more stringent in september.