Well, here we are again. Sorry for the time delay, but I was tied up yesterday on personal business. But nothing in the intervening 24 hours has done anything to change my initial perceptions of what we saw Thursday night, especially where the peripheral characters are concerned.
Thursday night fulfilled the promise that the DNC had held out for both nights. The exchanges were more frequent, and sharper, with more crossover between candidates, on what some felt was a slightly more personal level. Also, the attacks on Trump were more frequent and pointed. Granted, the top of the lineup was in play in a way that it wasn’t on Wednesday night, but also, the candidates had the benefit of a “walk through” viewing from watching Wednesday night, and had a better feel for how much they could “play the refs” For what it’s worth ($0.02), here’s my candidate by candidate take.
Joe Biden didn’t tank on Thursday night, Biden was Biden. It was actually a tale of two debates for Joe. Biden came out trashing Trump from moment one, which was exactly what both he and the base wanted, and it worked. Biden paid lip service to the issues of the day, but with a lack of depth that is going to haunt him down the road against competitors with fleshed out plans. But bashing Trump was the plan, and that worked.
Up until the “Kamala moment.” Biden had to know that the civil rights qissue was coming, but he was completely unprepared for it to come from Harris, and worse that she would seque into the issue of busing, which froze him like a deer in the headlights. The worst part of his response is that it is drawing subconscious comparisons to Trump himself, two old, entitled white dudes who are never wrong about anything. Biden is right, he can’t be expected to apologize for every decision over 40 years through the prism of 2019, but he is going to have to learn to be surgical in admitting that looking through that prism, some of his positions then fall flat now.
Like Biden, Bernie was Bernie, but the problem is that being Bernie just isn’t good enough anymore. In 2016, Sanders had two major advantages that he lacks today. One, he was running against one opponent, instead of 22. And two, his ideas were so radical that he could swing ceaselessly back to them ad hammer them home, basically because neither the moderators or Hillary Clinton tethered him back to the issue at hand. That’s not working anymore, the novelty has worn off in four years, especially since Bernie was so successful with them that he mainstreamed them into the party vocabulary.
The fact of the matter is that the majority of the Democratic base is still over 40 years old, and socialism still carries negative connotations. Other candidates are co-opting Sanders’ most popular ideas, but framing them in a way that removes the socialist connotation. That hurts, but what hurts worse is the fact that they are taking the ideas, and then hammering him over the socialism alone. But to my mind, his biggest failing was being Bernie, he was a one trick pony. It’s hard to turn matters of environment and social justice back around to the “top one tenth of one percent,” but that was what Sanders trued repeatedly to do.
Mayor Pete bought himself some time, and some cred, and he did it in one sentence. When asked about the longer term racial problems in South Bend, Buttigieg simply stated, “Because I failed to get it done.” People who are not Trumpaholics are still willing to, if not forgive, at least understand someones failings, as long as they are willing to admit them, and promise to do better, which is exactly what Buttigieg did.
Mayor Pete is simply the smartest guy in the room, and he shows it without rubbing anybody’s nose in it. His prep work is consummate, his response to every question and rebuttal flowed naturally, and was rich in both content and detail. And being that smart, he is off of the campaign trail this weekend, working on his issues in South Bend. He took part in a march this morning, the day the shooting victim is being buried, and spoke to what seemed to be a generally positive response. Fixing his problem with African Americans in South Bend will go a long way towards giving him a leg up with them nationally.
Kamala Harris was to night two what Elizabeth Warren was to night one, but better. On a stage laden with many more top tier contenders, she stole the show and made it her own. Her eloquent and heartfelt take down of Joe Biden did so much more than just create that cherished “moment” that all candidates strive for, it created a hashtag, That little girl was me. Harris can use that simple phrase on mailers, e-mails, even bloody bumper stickers, and every time anybody sees it, it will mentally evoke that head snapping moment that put Joe Biden in a cervical collar for a month.
Most importantly, Kamala Harris put a serious dent in the thing that makes Joe Biden the so far hands down front runner, his electability. On national television, Harris dismantled and scattered to the four winds a 78 year old, self entitled white guy, Name one reason why she couldn’t do it to a 73 year old, strutting poltroon without either the intelligence, nor the political chops of Joe Biden.
What can I say about John Hickenlooper? He’s measured, well spoken, presentable, and obviously qualified. And he has one helluva point, as Governor of Colorado, he has actually enacted a number of things that the other candidates are just talking about. Hickenlooper’s problem is that he just seems to lack that presence, or charisma that commands attention on the stage. Name me one time on Thursday night when his personal passion or conviction shone through like a beacon in the darkness. I didn’t see it, His voice never overflowed with passion, his body language or arm movements never indicated any level of excitement or enthusiasm. Having been elected Governor of Colorado, he must have what it takes, but I sure as hell didn’t see it, and if he can’t produce it, he’s sunk.
Ditto goes for Michael Bennet. Maybe it’s something in that Rocky Mountain water, but he too lacked any apparent passion or charisma. I remember back when he first announced, MSNBC had to really scour the vault of his time in the Senate for the sole example they could find of Michael Bennet being notable on the floor of the senate, when he excoriated the GOP for their lack of progress on disaster aid. He was riveting to watch, pacing the floor, his voice quivering with emotion. He needs to bring that to the stage, and pronto, if he’s going to have any chance.
I just don’t get it with Kirsten Gillibrand. She should be mid to upper level of the second tier, threatening to break through, and it just isn’t happening. Gillibrand checks off all of the boxes, she did have that little problem with flip-flopping on the second amendment, but she seems to have dealt with that nicely and it hasn’t been an issue in the campaign. Gillibrand is passionate about the women’s issues she confronts, and has been a leading advocate in the senate for years on them.
And she just can’t break through. It’s not from a lack of effort. She interrupted early and often Thursday night, and her passion was evident in her voice and body language, but looking back on the debate now, 48 hours later, you struggle to remember any one of her moments that stuck in your mind. My only explanation is that Gillibrand, like Klobuchar, is being overshadowed by the two more dominant women in the race, Warren and Harris.
Let’s not forget our couture candidate, Andrew Yang. Yang immediately separated himself from the rest of the stage by walking out sans neckwear, a cute move that got him face time, and his name mentioned before the debate even started. And Yang’s campaign centerpiece should resonate. Shit, who wouldn’t like to be handed a grand every month? Hell, I’m down like LeRoy Brown with that one! But while you and I may grasp the basics of his theory of “trickle up economics,” to most people, it comes off as being just a little too good to be true. I think that Yang was hoping that his “freedom dividend” would be 2020’s “Medicare-for-all,” and it just isn’t panning out that way.
Eric Swalwell tried, he really did. Personally, I really like Eric Swalwell, when you see him on camera on CNN or MSNBC ralking about hearings and stuff, he comes across as a steely eyed hard ass. But standing on that stage Thursday night, he came across like nothing other than the kid brother hanging around with his big brother and his friends. He’s actually a year older than Mayor Pete, yet on stage, he came across as ten years younger.
Swalwell gave it his best shot, Like Harris, he tried evoking a personal moment involving Biden, but when he spoke of seeing Biden speak of “passing the torch of leadership” when he was still a child, it evoked the perfect response from Biden. An honest, good natured grin, visually saying, “Here Eric. Here’s a buck, go get some candy and leave us alone.” I thought Swalwell scored beautifully when he spoke of parents memorizing what their children were wearing when sending them off to school in the morning, just in case they needed to remember to identify the body later that day. But I just don’t see Swalwell being able to break through and be taken seriously.
* S-i-g-h * Marianne Williamson. Three simple words, What. The. Fuck! Apparently Williamson has crafted a successful career and a comfortable nest egg by using spirituality and positive thinking to make others happier, more productive people. Then why was she the single most unrelentingly negative person I have ever seen in my life on stage Thursday night?!?
Marianne Williamson was the Tim Ryan of Thursday night, her only purpose on stage seemed to be to shit all over every other candidate. Time and again, when given the unfortunate chance to speak, she castigated the rest of the stage for being dumb shits, focusing on secondary problems instead of confronting the underlying, major issue. And then, after fatuously naming the underlying critical issue that all of the other fools were missing, she failed to provide a single solution to a fucking one of them! Adios Marianne, and don’t let the knob hit you on the ass.
So, there you have it, my work here is done. That’s the recap for both nights of the opening rond of debate, and now I’m going to do soe serious ass tantric chanting, to clear my mind for late July. And just for what it’s worth, here’s how I predict the standings after a couple of rounds of post debate polling come out.
1. Biden 2. Warren 3-4. Sanders 3=4 Harris 5. Buttigieg 6. Booker 7. Castro 8 O’Rourke And a toss up from there.
Cross posted on Politizoom.com
Kamala Harris’ playing of the race card on Joe Biden was both disgusting and disgraceful.
…and the “that little girl was me” t-shirts ready to go the next morning tells me all I need to know about her sincerity.
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/kamala-harris-debate-joe-biden-t-shirts-that-little-girl-was-me-racial-segregation/
Oh no…she “played a race card.” Well, we only need 15,305,402,112 more deals of that card before we get anywhere close to things being equitable between blacks and whites in America, so there you go. (Also, what do we call the card played when someone dismisses an entire point by saying someone else played the race card? Do you call that the race card card, or is there another name for it?)
Of COURSE Senator Harris has her attack ready to go, and of COURSE they’re going to capitalize on its success. That’s politics…don’t like it? There’s a wide variety of reality cooking shows on television.
And her attack is legitimate. For decades, white politicians worked with segregationists and racists, often brokering deals that minorities paid a price for. Likewise, for decades male politicians have brokered deals that women have paid a price for. People who have been in politics for decades and who participated in those deals…men like Biden and Sanders…those deals don’t make them bad people, and those deals don’t make them racist or sexist. But they do speak to the fact that these men governed in another era, one that we’ve left behind…and should leave behind.
This is one of the reasons, I believe, that the framers gave legislators short-ish terms. I think they understood that you want people to go to Washington and fight for their ideals, then after a time hand things off to a new generation. I know Biden has evolved on bussing…Harris knows it, and was clear about that. But her point was that maybe it’s time for power to go to those who grew up in a more modern era, where stances like Biden’s have never been part of our platform.
I like Joe Biden. I’d be proud of him as my president, but at the same time I think it’s time for a new generation to take power in Washington.
You can make your point without being a condescending prick….or can you?
Murfster’s tone always makes me write sarcastically and flippantly as well.
However, it might be noted that never once did I resort to ad hominem name-calling. I didn’t even use a single pejorative to describe your position, let alone you as a person. But you felt compelled to resort to a pee-pee slur. Hmm.
If you don’t want to feel condescended to, give people a reason to respect you.
So no is your answer.
And here’s the part of our internet day where the person with big words and slurs isn’t big enough to just say “you’re right, I shouldn’t call people pricks, I apologize.”
I’m sorry if you found my tone offensive. I thought your attack on Harris was overly harsh, without much substance or merit, and overly cynical. You could have made that point in a more elevated manner, but chose not to, then when I gave you a verbal eye roll you decided to resort to male anatomy references.
You seem to feel that you deserve better treatment than you’re willing to offer others, and we have to ask why that is? I’d like to think you’re capable of criticizing my response to your post with more substance than pulling out a wang reference. Nobody likes a guy who has wangs coming out of his mouth all the time.
Sure, I’;; take the hit, on MY color soul, the stains don’t show anyway…lol
I don’ t see a single attack on you in there. He’s simply responding to what you posted, and you responded with an ad hominem.
Joe has a history that he doesn’t like having to talk about. And when he talks about how busing should be a “local issue” – that’s how it became a FEDERAL issue: the local authorities were *just fine* with separate and unequal.
PJ, I’m a lifelong Chicagoan, and I’m old enough to remember the “Willis Wagons,” mobile home style trailers that were brought into school properties, put on blocks, and turned into classrooms to increase the capacity of schools in order to avoid desegregating, all while suburban schools twenty minutes away sat there with half empty classrooms…One nice thing about being an old fart, I’m old enough ro have actual first hand knowledge of some of the ancient history around Biden people are starting to bring up…Hell, I watched the Anita Hill hearing too… 🙂
The Willis Wagons were in the playground of my old grade school a decade after I graduated when redlining and blockbusting had flipped the neighborhood’s racial profile. And it wasn’t even suburban schools. I don’t think they could legally take kids to the suburbs. It was busing kids from Woodlawn or Englewood to Gage Park which was all white at the time. I will never forget seeing on TV the white women with giant blonde beehives (what my mother called “anti-busing hairdos”), their faces contorted with hate, greeting a busload of black first graders by screaming that they were bringing VD to the neighborhood.
“States’ rights” was the worst possible answer. It was always the go-to justification for segregation, racism and Jim Crow. I guess I am just not getting why Biden can’t simply say “Those were very different times & that’s how it looked then. Maybe I was wrong; a lot of us were.”
Please explain…Harris never called Biden a racist, in fac the opposite…But Biden said what he said, and voted how he voted, and she asked him to justify them…The part about glorifying segregationists was nothing new or shocking, nor was she the first to complain…Cory Booker asked for an apology over that, and following Biden’s speech to the SC Democratic convention, Al Sharpton did everything but jam the words “I’m sorry” into his mouth with a shovel in an interview, but Biden refused to budge…If we can take Trump to the woodshed for calling neo Nazi racists “very fine people,” then Biden can explain why he says the same thing about their grandfathers…
I think his demand that Booker apologize to Him for calling him out pushed his position a little closer to being racism, which initially it wasn’t. That was a blunderous move.
Unfortunately, that whole line of attack — the false labeling of her remarks as “playing the race card” and ripping her for the trivial sin of capitalizing on a good moment, as many others have done, most prominently Elizabeth Warren — is predominately being spread around by the right, and we shouldn’t join in.
And 538 has their morning consult polling posted now, and we see in the data that Murfster’s take is pretty consistent with the electorate’s.
Biden really bled support, he polled first choice of 41.5% of likely Dem voters before the debates and exited the second debate at 31.5%. Yikes. He can get some of that back, but nobody wants to see those numbers after a debate.
Sanders went from 14.4% to 17.3%…a small bump that holds him in second for now. Im surprised he didn’t bleed a few supporters, but I think Warren’s numbers tell us a bit about what’s happening. She polled 12.6% before the first debate, 18% after the first, and 14.4% after the second night. I think she and Bernie share some flippers. And if not Warren and Bernie, then at the very least we seem to be seeing a lot of voters swing to the candidate of hour. Nothing wrong with that…it tells us we’re having a healthy primary.
Harris, as we might expect, got the biggest boost, going from 7.9% to 16.6% and landing solidly in third place.
In tier 2…I’m rounding…Mayor Peter around 5%, a 1-2 point drop for him, Booker at 3%, Castro and Beto at 2%.
A race is shaping up, folks! We have four in the lead, with 75-80% of the support. Their objective will now be to steal support from the other four, while grabbing the crumbs when candidates drop. Those tier 2 candidates need to do something to climb in polls by the end of the year, but any could make it up to the top tier. The lowest tier…I don’t know…that’s a rough place to be.
thanks for that info!!! Can you send me a link to where to find that, I’d love to have it!!! Yeah, I figured Biden to bleed 8-10 points, but never moved him from first because his lead was so large…Like you I’m kinda surprised that Bernie didn’t drop some too, but I’m thinking he was buoyed by votes leaving one old far to another old fart on the way downhill…Harris did about what I expected,and Buttigieg fared a bit better than I thought…I thought that Cory would have bounced a little higher, but I’m really surprised at Julian Castro’s numbers, the only reason I can find for him not getting ANY bounce for tromping Beto is that people think he’s such a long shot that he can’t attract any support downward to where he is…
Castro just hasn’t getting the media blow job that Buttigieg has. He’s already backgrounded for being Hispanic, but they have really minimized him to the point of rendering him invisible. It’s sad because he really is well-qualified.
I don’t get it with Gillibrand either. She’s among the most qualified candidates and she’s still my #1. Her record on advocating for women is beyond stellar. And no, she didn’t “flip flop” on guns: she changed her position over a VERY long time frame (ten years) as people in general were moving on the issue: the public to the left, the NRA to the far far far far right. Not only did her position change a long time ago, but she’s openly said she was wrong, and that time and real-world incidents have changed her thinking. I’m tired of people thinking it’s an asset to take a position and never change. And by contrast, Bernie Fucking Sanders launched his career on the back of the NRA and the response from him has been to act like it never happened. He’s never recanted.
I love Eric Swalwell — I think he’s one of our most promising young congresspeople — but I have no idea why he’s running now. It’s way too soon for him. But I disagree with you vis a vis Buttigieg and if it’s too soon for Swalwell, it’s even more laughably soon for him. Swalwell is 100 times more qualified to be president than Buttigieg, and I’m tired of Buttigieg being credited with being “smarter” than anyone in the field. He’s average in this group.
But what really bothers me is his total lack of readiness for the job, which is increasingly reading to me as arrogance. Yes, he scripts lovely answers and delivers them smoothly. But to me, there’s a lack of depth and sincerity, and there’s no way to judge what, if anything, he REALLY supports because he has no record to offer a clue. If he weren’t charming and glib, and the media and way too many Democrats enthralled with his story, his campaign would be dismissed as shallow. Also — and I don’t know why this isn’t pointed out more — but at a time when many Democrats are concerned with ending up with a candidate too “centrist” or “moderate,” Buttigieg sends out flashing red warning lights to me. His words aside, his background suggests to me that in practice, that is exactly who and what he would be. He has zero progressive credentials. He failed to “get it done” because he didn’t really care and it wasn’t in his experience or priorities.
It’s disappointing to me that a lot of Democrats have fallen so hard for Buttigieg’s empty charm while awesomely qualified candidates like Gillibrand are being overlooked or even demonized for ridiculous things (“Al Franken!!!!”) If you compare his mediocre record as South Bend mayor with Castro’s education-focused agenda as mayor of a city 25 times larger, it’s really shocking to me that Butttigieg has traction and Castro doesn’t. I think Democrats need to do some soul searching.
Great writing and content aside, what’s with all the typos? I’m a proofreader and am seeing way too many in the latest articles. Maybe in a rush?