Joe Biden, Elizabeth Warren To Take Center Stage At Next Debate

The 10 top contenders for the Democrats' POTUS nomination met up in Texas last night, but eyes were mainly on two - a lot of eyes Shutterstock

Joe Biden and Elizabeth Warren will be at the center of the stage at the next Democratic presidential debate, which will feature 10 other candidates. It will take place on October 15 and will be the fourth debate round of the season.

CNN, which is hosting the next event along with The New York Times, announced the podium order. As expected, 12 candidates have been invited to participate, including Biden, Warren, Bernie Sanders, Pete Buttigieg, Kamala Harris, Andrew Yang, Cory Booker, Beto O’Rourke, Tom Steyer, Amy Klobuchar, Tulsi Gabbard and Julian Castro. Sanders’ campaign announced on Wednesday that he was cancelling events “until further notice” after he had two stents inserted in a heart procedure.

Steyer and Gabbard did not make the third Democratic debate in September, but reached the qualifying threshold by this deadline, which was on Tuesday. This will be Steyer’s first debate appearance, after he entered the presidential race relatively late compared to other candidates.

The debate will take place at Otterbein University in Westerville, Ohio, a suburb of Columbus. CNN’s Erin Burnett and Anderson Cooper will moderate along with Marc Lacey, the national editor of The New York Times.

Even though there will be more candidates on stage this time around, it’s likely to shrink for the next one, to be held in November. The Democratic National Committee raised the qualifying threshold to require candidates to reach at least 3% in four qualifying polls and obtain at least 165,000 individual donors.