During those debates, which will be carried by NBC, casual viewers are almost certain to encounter some presidential hopeful whom they haven’t seen before. Like author Marianne Williamson or entrepreneur Andrew Yang. The DNC email, which was obtained by Playboy, said that candidates will be “randomly divided.”

The system is obviously a result of the primary campaign four years ago, in which the DNC was accused of tilting the election for Hillary Clinton. But the new party seemed destined for the firepit of the pundits from the moment the DNC tapped Tom Perez to lead them into the Trump era after a divisive election. Perez was criticized for choosing to hold the party’s convention in Milwaukee and more recently for his lottery that will determine the debate stages.

But if he’s been panned by the media, Perez still enjoys support from multiple DNC members who spoke to Playboy over the past week. As superdelegates, those members are hugely important to the Democratic primary process.

The debate forum will be the first real test of the new rules that Perez has instituted in the party. One DNC member, who is more aligned with the newer, progressive branch called the debate rules “the best we can come up with as of now” but seemed worried about the lottery going afoul, adding “you still run the risk of having all the big names on the same stage.” The member explained “if the right people aren’t on the stage together, wanting to have a follow-up response is limited. Somebody could distance themselves from an issue they shouldn’t be allowed to distance themselves from.”

And there are several larger issues with the debates; forums that have shifted and melted like polluted glaciers in the past few years. These footnotes of the campaign are a relatively new phenomenon, the first presidential debate—or at least the first one in the method that we recognize today—featured Nixon and Kennedy in 1960 and was held in CBS’ studios. That black-and-white moment in history was seen by nearly 70 million people.

Only recently have the parties managed to wrestle the control of the debate forums back from the outlets that televise these polished confrontations. Former White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer notes in an April Wall Street Journal column, “before the 2016 cycle, neither party had a voice in when or where the debates took place, or who hosted them.”

Spicer went on to criticize the DNC’s new format, writing that the Democrats are unlikely to achieve the same success” as the Republicans in 2016 — but the success of the Republicans is President Donald J. Trump, who was the foe of nearly every other candidate sweating before a debate stage microphone. Democrats are unlikely to aim to nominate their party’s villain.

Spicer, who was a leading figure for years in the Republican National Committee also criticized the Democrats for announcing that they won’t hold any debates on Fox News, calling it “the biggest threat to the DNC’s plan.” He suggested that candidates might begin taking invitations from “countless left-wing groups [that] will seize the opening to host debates on their particular cause.” That was an issue that the progressive DNC member who spoke to Playboy also mentioned, saying, “these national debates run by the party, because they’re so large, they allow the candidates to come away as so clean.” Organizations with large and passionate supporters, like the Sunrise Movement or Planned Parenthood could court candidates into debates centering around their issues.

The Sunrise Movement, which successfully made the Green New Deal a talking point in the Democratic party, confirmed that they are interested in the debate stage and the policies it highlights. A spokesperson for the organization told me that they are planning a “large mobilization” at the second Democratic primary debate in Detroit. They said they’ll be bringing upwards of 10,000 people and erecting a stage, inviting candidates to speak only if they sign a pledge to reject campaign money from fossil fuel companies and lobbyists.

Christine Pelosi, a member of the DNC executive committee and daughter of the Speaker of the House, told Playboy, “I’ve been among the people very, very concerned about making sure that we have not only the appearance but the reality of fairness when it comes to the debate.” She added, “We’ve been talking about [the debates] a great deal, as you might imagine, because our constituents who elect us are worried that we don’t have a thumb on the scale and Tom Perez, to his credit, has been very good about having that conversation.”

She said that there was not a discussion of the decision to not allow Fox News to air a debate. However, Pelosi added “we have a coalition of people who are very concerned about the fact that this network constantly attacks Democrats, constantly lies about Democrats and constantly hurts people by lifting up falsehoods about them. That is not a group that we can trust with editorial control over shaping our entire debate and shaping all of our candidates—they’re going to try to make us look lilliputian compared to Trump, they’re going to infantilize the group, they’re going to radicalize the group and that’s not really fair—so if you don’t trust somebody, you don’t trust somebody, and it almost doesn’t matter why.”

The loudest voice in that coalition is Media Matters, the nonprofit organization that has led a blitz of campaigns to convince advertisers to boycott Fox News. The group’s president, Angelo Carusone, explained to Playboy, “in terms of the media partnerships, there is in this moment — when Fox is trying to sell their advertisements for 2020—there is no reason to give Fox News the support that it desperately needs. I can make a strong case that there is never a time to form a partnership with Fox News,” he added, “there’s a material difference between these media partnerships and Democrats appearing on Fox News … no matter how you interact with Fox News, the one thing that no one, especially a Democratic hopeful, should do is to defend the [Fox] news division as somehow legitimate.”

But not all DNC members were pleased with the decision to skip the network, one told Playboy “we have to reach out to Republicans, we can’t think that America is moderate or right or left, we are a mix, and until we start to have conversations that are broad, we’re going to miss the message and that’s what upsets me with the DNC.” And not all candidates are bowing to the boycott-Fox News narrative. Already, Pete Buttigieg and Bernie Sanders have done successful Town Halls on the network while Elizabeth Warren refused to negotiate a Town Hall with Fox News.

With the debate stage looming closer and closer, several campaigns are reportedly putting their hopefuls through debate prep—in politics, this is termed fittingly as “murder boards.” But these candidates don’t know who will appear beside them under the Miami lights. They don’t know what long-shot candidate may try to roll a grenade across the stage with some outrageous pledge or accusation. And so they must try to hold the center while the Democratic National Committee tries to successfully bottleneck the entire field—nearly as populated as a football field in play—into one candidate strong enough to bring down Donald Trump.