AT CNN, a double standard for Democrat, Republican debates:

Before the Republican presidential debate at the Reagan Library Sept. 16, CNN promised to stage what it called "actual debating."

"Is one of the goals for you … to spur more actual debating?" CNN's Brian Stelter asked debate moderator Jake Tapper a few days before the event.... Tapper said ... "[W]hat the team and I have been doing is trying to craft questions that, in most cases, pit candidates against the other, specific candidates on the stage, on issues where they disagree, whether it's policy or politics or leadership. Let's actually have them discuss and debate."

That was then. Now, another CNN anchor, Anderson Cooper, will be moderating a debate, this time among Democrats, and he says there will be none of that raucous "actual debating" this time around.

"I'm always uncomfortable with that notion of setting people up in order to kind of promote some sort of a faceoff," Cooper told Stelter Sunday. "I think these are all serious people. This is a serious debate. They want to talk about the issues."

Leave the slugfest to the Republicans. The Democratic debate will be a serious discussion of the issues.

The Republicans got hardball; the Democrats, slow-pitch softball.