Democratic Primary Presidential Debate #5 - Better Than Expected
I don’t care for commentary and reporting that presents debates as a horse race.
That said, there was a winner in the fifth Democratic Debate, broadcast from Atlanta on Wednesday, namely the four women who moderated the forum.
Rachel Maddow, Andrea Mitchell, Ashley Parker and Kristen Welker did a bang up job, given the constraints of having ten candidates on the stage. The questioning was brisk, topics that hadn’t been discussed in previous debates were introduced, and the time management was well done.
Child care, paid family leave, farming, health care, abortion, housing prices, climate change, war, terrorism, race, political experience, and even the plight of the Palestinians were brought up.
Yes, I know some things --gun violence & immigration come to mind-- didn’t get the time they deserve, but I was grateful we didn't have to spend 120 minutes on Medicare for All vs. Medicare for Those Who Want It. After watching 11 hours of impeachment hearings on Wednesday, I wasn’t sure I could watch the debate. Now I’m glad I did.
Here’s the thing: it doesn’t really make sense to get granular about promises politicians make in these debates. There is historically a 100% chance that none of what’s proposed will happen in the way it’s discussed during campaigns.
Depending on who gets elected to the legislative branches and executive of government in 2020, some action on healthcare will happen. If it’s Donald Trump at the top of the executive branch, that something will be millions losing coverage. If it’s Bernie Sanders (and several others) at the top, expanded Medicare is more likely.
Side Notes- It’s time for MSNBC’s Chris Matthews to retire. Arguing with a straight face that Bernie Sanders is being too strong by saying our system of politics is corrupt shows Matthews is out of touch. And the New York Times crew’s disappointment with the debate because it was “boring” is exactly what’s wrong with the mainstream media.
There are two things I look at in forums/debates/interviews with political candidates:
The general direction they advocate for the office they seek
The probability they can pull off 50% of their vision.
I took the Washington Post quiz on how my personal political priorities match up with the various Democratic candidates, and I’m mostly closely aligned with Sens. Sanders and Warren. (You should take the quiz, it’s fun.)
From my days living in Washington DC (Nixon, Ford, Carter, Reagan), I can say that who the elected executives hire is as important as what they advocate. As we used to say in the old days, check their Rolodex before hiring them. Try thinking about that when you’re watching the next debate.
If you’re looking for fact-checks for the fifth debate, PolitiFact has you covered.
I do have some impressions of candidate performances to share from the Atlanta forum. These are culled from various media accounts (see links for details) and do not necessarily reflect my biases--which are mentioned above.
I’ll do them alphabetically.
Joe Biden had a rough night. Two gaffs and an unfortunate choice of words stick in my mind.
When asked about the Me Too movement, former Vice President Joe Biden said that Americans just have to keep “punching at it, and punching at it, and punching at it” to change the culture of violence against women. “I come out of the black community,” Mr. Biden said, perplexingly, at a later point. And at least one of his flubs prompted incredulous cross talk from others on the stage, when he suggested that only one black woman had been elected to the Senate. Ms. Harris, who was standing two lecterns over, is the second.
He first brushed off Buttigieg’s attempts to cater to black voters by noting he’s “been one since I turned 18,” and didn’t “need a focus group” to tell him what black voters think and value — a nice move that subtly undermined the implicit premise behind the question that there’s a monolithic “black vote” to be won en masse.
But then he turned to Joe Biden, and turned an electability question about race into a concrete policy disagreement, noting Joe Biden’s opposition to nationwide marijuana legalization, underlining how devastating marijuana criminalization has been to black men and black communities, and pushing Biden into an embarrassing, fumbling answer in which he claimed the support of the “the only African American woman who’s been elected to the Senate” — to which Harris simply replied, “No, the other one is here.”
To break into Biden’s base of black support, Booker needed to draw out clear policy differences with Biden and also to challenge Biden’s claims to respect and revere the black community. He didn’t even need to do the latter himself — he just put an obstacle in front of Biden and just watched as Biden tripped over it.
Pete Buttigieg didn’t lose momentum.
The South Bend, Indiana, mayor is having a moment. He’s skyrocketed to the top of the RealClearPolitics average of the polls in Iowa, the first state to vote in the primaries. He’s also creeping up in New Hampshire. At Wednesday’s debate, Buttigieg had one goal: keep that momentum going.
He succeeded. Throughout the debate, Buttigieg avoided attacks from his high-polling opponents on the debate stage, while using his time to push his message as an outsider and a more moderate candidate who could unite the country.
Tulsi Gabbard should quit and work for Fox News.
In a withering response to Rep. Tulsi Gabbard’s defense of characterizing former presidential nominee Hillary Clinton’s leadership as the “personification of the rot that has sickened the Democratic Party,” Sen. Kamala Harris ran through a laundry list of Gabbard’s perceived offenses against both party and country, characterizing the Hawaii congresswoman as an opportunist who has cozied up to white nationalists, dictators, and perhaps most damningly, President Donald Trump…
...In an apparent confirmation of Harris’ accusation, an official Trump campaign account pushed out a clip of Gabbard’s remarks on Twitter with an emoji denoting that it was “100 percent” accurate.
https://twitter.com/MollyJongFast/status/1197542244720492545?s=20
Amy Klobuchar became a “can do” voice for moderates.
The Minnesota senator has been desperately searching for a moment over the first four debates -- and she might just have found one Wednesday night. Klobuchar was one of the few people on stage to take on South Bend Mayor Pete Buttigieg and her point about a woman -- still -- not being elected president was strong: "If you think a woman can't beat Donald Trump, Nancy Pelosi does it every day," she said. Klobuchar's biggest issue is that the pragmatic center lane has been dominated by Buttigieg and former Vice President Joe Biden. Her performance on Wednesday night might just change that.
NOTE: It’s also worth noting that the usual sexist trolls spent much of the evening making fun of Sen. Klochubar’s hair and a perception that she was nervous.
Kamala Harris had a (much needed) good night.
Kamala Harris didn’t mince words as she went on the attack over Donald Trump’s policy in North Korea following reports that Kim Jong Un has no interest in another summit with the president.
“Donald Trump got punked,” Harris said. “He has traded a photo-op for nothing.”
Would she make additional concessions to bring North Korea back to the negotiating table? No, Harris responded.
NOTE: See Tulsi Gabbard commentary, above.
Bernie Sanders made some good trouble.
Sanders seized every opportunity to outline foreign-policy alternatives in the fifth round of Democratic debating. Joining several of the candidates in calling out President’s Trump’s approach to Saudi Arabia, he declared that “Saudi Arabia is not a reliable ally.” Sanders argued that the United States must promote negotiations between the Saudis and the Iranians, telling both “we are sick and tired of us spending huge amounts of money and human resources because of your conflicts.”
That in itself was a strong statement, but the senator did not stop there.
“The same thing goes with Israel and the Palestinians,” said Sanders. “It is no longer good enough for us to be pro-Israel, I am pro-Israel, but we must treat the Palestinians with the dignity they deserve.”
Quick, name something the billionaire said in the debate. Right. Same. And that's the problem. Steyer and his campaign had to be thrilled that Biden somewhat inexplicably picked a fight with him about his involvement in the coal industry, but that fight sort of fizzled before it ever really got started. Steyer isn't going anywhere -- he's got lots of money and is willing to spend it -- but he really needs to find a way to make an impression. And he didn't do it Wednesday night.
Elizabeth Warren connected the impeachment hearing with business as usual.
What’s interesting here isn’t the direct answer to the question of how she’d approach the Senate. It’s the way that Warren links the Ukraine scandal to institutionalized corruption and the influence of big money, the central themes of her campaign.
Sondland was obviously knee-deep in the scandal. Warren’s point is that someone who was a career diplomat, and not a rich guy qualified primarily by virtue of his donations to the Trump inaugural committee, maybe wouldn’t have gone along with it for as long as he did.
Pay for play in the electoral system led to corruption once the candidate was in the Oval Office: a perfect example of Warren’s campaign message about the harm done to democracy by inequality.
Andrew Yang had the best quip of the night, and perhaps the best closing:
Yang was asked what he would say in his first call as U.S. president to Russian president Vladimir Putin.
"Sorry I beat your guy," Yang said.
“And second, I would say the days of meddling in American elections are over, and we will take any undermining of our democratic processes as an act of hostility and aggression,” he said.
***
Yang used his closing statement to deliver a stark warning about the vanishing American dream, which he said his parents once chased. Instead of building on the success of his parent’s generation, today’s leaders are leaving young people an intolerable future, he said.
“Our kids are not all right,” Yang said. “They’re not all right because we’re leaving them a future that is far darker than the lives that we have led as their parents.”
He warned that the United States is not prepared for what he described as the “greatest economic transformation in our country’s history.” Trump, he suggested, was a symptom of the dislocation that comes with that transformation.
Julián Castro’s voice was missed. But that didn’t stop him.
Julián Castro may not have made the cut for Thursday's Democratic debate, but he ended up having quite a good night.
Castro had his best fundraising night of the month, beating what he got following the two previous debates — which included him.
Castro also turned his absence from the stage into a starring role for himself on social media...
..."Last night, during a debate he didn't participate in, @JulianCastro was a top #15 trending story, he out fundraised two previous debates, and the issues he has led on like housing, immigration, and criminal justice were topics of the night," said campaign spokesman Sawyer Hackett. "He may not have been on stage, but his leadership was and with the renewed outpouring of support, he will be in December."
One final thought…
https://twitter.com/AsteadWesley/status/1197375150515208193?s=20
Hey folks! Be sure to like/follow Words & Deeds on Facebook. If you’d like to have each post emailed to you check out the simple subscription form on the right side of the front page.
Email me at WritetoDougPorter@Gmail.com