The second pair of Democratic debates materialized this week and one thing became crystal clear. At least half and maybe more of the candidates are wasting our time and theirs. There were four candidates on the first night’s stage with some possible chance of winning, maybe not even that many. The largest possible group would include Sanders, Warren, Buttigieg and Klobuchar. The rest are just throwing away money.
Warren and Sanders won the first night because they, as much as possible, didn’t take the moderators bait and stuck to their own plans. Mayor Pete may have had the best night and to many he would make the best president but it still isn’t clear if America has evolved enough to accept a gay president. In any case he would make a hell of a Secretary of State.
I found two significant problems with the debate that had nothing to do with the candidates. The first was the format. CNN took an inordinate amount of time putzing around before the debate started and therefore limited the candidates to time that was not adequate to frame a realistic proposal. One minute to state a position isn’t always enough, especially with a complicated plan. A minute and a half or two should have been allotted as well as more time for rebuttal.
An even bigger problem was the choice of questions by asked by the moderators, Jake Tapper, Don Lemmon and Dana Bash, especially Bash. Understanding that this is a debate between Democrats to see whose plan is better than the others, Bash asked some of the most pathetically, picky questions imaginable and never touched on what the real fight will eventually be about. By doing this she never opened the debate to the differences between the Dems on the panel and the man they will ultimately oppose, Donald Trump. It was like throwing up a wall behind which the Fat Liar could hide.
The difference between Medicare for all and a process by which Medicare is supplied to those who need it while others who already have private health care can keep it is insignificant because of how things it will ultimately play out if the Dems win the Presidency and both house of congress.
Arguing about whose proposed legislation allows how many insurance plans to continue is stupid. All anyone has to do is make Medicare available to all and capitalism itself will kill private medical insurance simply because it won’t be able to compete.
Add the current 20-40% profit margins to the private costs plus the added costs to hospitals and doctors for all the bureaucracy and compute all the deductibles and care refusals from the private plans and it’s a no brainer. In two years private healthcare just won’t exist so what the hell are these people arguing about?
Trump wants to kill healthcare completely. Why should he care who lives and dies, it doesn’t effect his bottom line. That’s the only argument that should be going on about healthcare. The rest is a waste of time.
But back to the candidates: Warren, Bernie, Pete and Amy established that they not only knew what they were talking about but that they have some kind of constituency. The rest for various reasons did not. Delaney struck me as a guy who would never see that he was wrong about anything. We already have a guy like that in the White House. We don’t need another one. Hickenlooper was so muddled he didn’t look like he was there. He didn’t seem able to put his thoughts in any reasonable order. Bullock appears to be a nice guy with a good record as governor of Montana. Maybe he should keep up the good work there. Ryan is a hard working earnest guy who is doing a nice job in Ohio, a place where we need all the help we can get. Stick to it Tim!
Beto appears to have gone nowhere but down since he entered the race. Maybe it’s because his material sounds like someone else wrote it, maybe his delivery is so over-sincere you can’t buy it. Then there’s Williamson. She’s easily the best speaker. That’s probably because she talks for a living, telling people who want someone to blame it all on that if they listen to her their lives will turn out okay. That doesn’t qualify her to be a president. Her speeches, especially the opening statement and closing goodbye are too polished. They ring of insincerity. It’s only when she answers a question that I believe her.
None of them actually have enough backing to continue except possibly Williamson and hers is as a motivational speaker not a presidential candidate.
So what happened on the second night of the debates? I think the most apt description would be self- immolation. Assisted by more idiotic questions from the trio of clowns who ran this thing the Democrats in contention forgot why they were there and engaged in a pier six brawl that did little but help Donald Trump design a new series of ads for his campaign.
Who won? Warren and Sanders! No they weren’t there and that’s why they won. They were not part of this debacle. Aside from that, Corey Booker probably came out the best because he remembered that they were all running against Trump. Kamila Harris put a gun to her own head and pulled the trigger. One would think she would have been satisfied by her last attack on Biden but she doubled down with disastrous results. She looked like a demented harridan who, most of the time made no sense.
There was a concentrated attack on Biden by Harris, DeBlasio, Gillibrand, Yang and Bennett but the latter quartet didn’t matter. They aren’t going anywhere anyway. None of them will or should be in the next debate. DeBlasio brags about being the mayor of the largest city in the nation but fails to mention what a terrible job he is doing with disasters in housing, transportation, education and just about everything else. The city is burning and DeBlasio is off campaigning for a better job than the one at which he is failing. Gillibrand is just wrong about most things and too ineffectual to close on the things she’s right about. Yang is a one trick pony and his trick is simply an appeal to people who want someone else to support them. There are many ways to infuse money into a community besides just giving it away and all of them are better for society in general. Bennett, a smart guy is just too boring a speaker to get it across. None should be wasting their time or ours on the pursuit of the presidency.
Interesting enough, I thought Tulsi Gabbard gave one of the best performances, but again, to what end? She’s intelligent, beautiful and an accomplished speaker, as well as a vet but she’s nuts as is evidenced by her position on Assad and has almost zero profile.
That leaves Julian Castro and Jay Inslee. Both did an acceptable job but neither has the kind of backing that would indicate a serious challenge. Inslee would make a hell of a Head of the EPA. Do they go on? Not my call, but they’re both smart and could maybe add to another debate.
No I didn’t forget Joe Biden. He did better than last time but still not great. We’ll find out at the next poll whether or not that made any difference to the voters. Joe is still the frontrunner until he isn’t.
Here’s the problem from where I stand. The Democrats went to a great deal of trouble to set up these TV shows for one reason only. They needed a showcase in which to offset the fact that Trump has the bully pulpit. They needed a chance to speak to the American people and tell them what Trump and his underlings were doing to subvert democracy and destroy the country. It seems that CNN in the personages of their trio of moderators, didn’t get the message. Instead, they seem to have set out to create an exciting TV game show, something to rival The Bachelor, in which the contestants each try to eviscerate the rest of the field and to that end they devised a series of idiotic questions, most of which had no relevance to anything, but functioned to set the contestants off against each other instead of sending them after the real enemy, Trump. Sure they could ignore the bait as Booker did for the most part and try to bring the discussion back to “us against Trump,” but many of the candidates, realizing that they have almost no real shot, took the bloody meat in their paws and dove at what they perceived as their only chance to stand out. Attack the leader.
What that sad tactic did was to also create an attack on the man who is probably the most popular Democrat alive, Barak Obama. This seemed especially true when that attack came against Obamacare, which may be the most important piece of legislation since LBJ passed the Civil Rights Act. Let’s hope the Democrats have learned a lesson. CNN is gone from the debate scene, hopefully never to return and maybe in the September debates the questioners will concentrate on who has the best plan to scuttle Trump’s ship of state.