Democrat Debates Round 2 – Night of the Boring Liberals

Like it or not, we have entered the 2020 election season. This week the Democrats Nomination Reality Show was in Detroit for 2 more debates. There are more people running than the cast of Glee.

My first observation is that these debates are too darn long. It should be 2 hours max. Second, anyone who starts a sentence with “let me tell you about…” followed by some sob story to make their point should be zapped.

It is interesting that both debates spent lots of time on topics like health care, gun control and climate change and little on foreign policy and the economy. It demonstrates how out of touch the left is with the majority of the electorate. Their message is pessimistic and uninspiring. They should just start each debate with a group singalong of “In the year 2525”.

Anyway, here are some brief highlights I thought were significant.

Night 1:

Bernie Sanders being totally schooled on health care by John Delaney:

DELANEY: I’ve done the math, it doesn’t add up.

SANDERS: Maybe you did that and made money off of healthcare, but our job is to run a nonprofit healthcare system. Furthermore — furthermore, when we say $500 billion a year by ending all of the incredible complexities that are driving every American crazy trying to deal with the health insurance companies —

TAPPER: Thank you Senator.

SANDERS: Hospitals will be better off than they are today.

TAPPER: Congressman Delaney, I want to let you have a chance to respond.

DELANEY: Listen, his math is wrong. That’s all I’m saying — that his math is wrong, it’s been well-documented that if all the bills were paid at Medicare rate, which is specifically — I think it’s in section 1,200 of their bill, then many hospitals in this country would close. I’ve been going around rural America, and I ask rural hospital administrators one question, “If all your bills were paid at the Medicare rate last year, what would happen?” And they all look at me and say, “We would close.”
But the question is, why do we have to be so extreme? Why can’t we just give everyone health care as a right, and allow them to have choice? I’m starting to think this is not about health care. This is an anti-private-sector… strategy

It was funny to watch Dana Bash move out of this subject as quickly as possible to save Bernie.

Marianne Williamson had this to say on the Flint water crisis:

My response on the Flint water crisis is that Flint is just the tip of the iceberg. I was recently in Denmark, South Carolina where it is — there is a lot of talk about it being the next Flint.

We have communities, particularly communities of color and disadvantaged communities all over this country who are suffering from environmental injustice. I assure you, I lived Grosse Pointe — what happened in Flint would not have happened in Grosse Pointe.

So I was curious about the towns she mentioned. Her residence, Grosse Pointe, has a Republican mayor (and no problems). Denmark, SC has a Democrat mayor. And he has blocked efforts to have the water tested. Now isn’t that interesting. Oh and did I mention he is black? Careful there Marianne, you’re dangerously close to that racism line from the leftist playbook.

You know what we didn’t hear about? Robert Mueller or Russian Collusion. After two years of assuring us that the walls were closing in on Trump or that evidence of collusion was just around the corner, it turns out there was nothing.

Overall I think Williamson won the debate. She is an effective speaker, doesn’t yell like Bernie, and has the ability to condense thoughts into soundbites. She correctly identifies many of the issues we have (esp social ones) but fails to mention that most of them were caused by Democrats. Gee I wonder why. She should use The Age of Aquarius as her theme song.

Warren did pretty well too. She is feisty and knows her stuff (meaning the leftist talking points). Must be her Native-American heritage. And she knows how to get things done. I know this because she said so – many many times.

Another winner was John Delaney (who looks like Johnny from Airplane!). If the Dems were smart they’d promote Delaney. He is a moderate that doesn’t seem scary. But no doubt he’ll be gone soon. Too bad. And I seriously doubt he’ll be spending any weekends at Bernie’s.

The big loser in my opinion was Sanders. He came across like an angry man and as mentioned above, was pretty much destroyed on his signature issue by Delaney. I think the magic is over for Ol’ Bernie.

Special award to Beto for poise. He was relaxed. I mean really relaxed. He just made me want to stand up and stretch.

Then it was onto night 2 and the so-called top tier.

Joe Biden took so much incoming fire I almost felt sorry for him. Although he did get a “malarkey” in. Cory Booker just destroyed him on Criminal Justice Reform:

Mr. Vice President, there’s a saying in my community, you’re dipping into the Kool-Aid and you don’t even know the flavor. You need to come to the city of Newark and see the reforms that we put in place. The New Jersey head of the ACLU has said that I embraced reforms not just in action, but in deeds.

Sir, you are trying to shift the view from what you created. There are people right now in prison for life for drug offenses because you stood up and used that “tough on crime” phony rhetoric that got a lot of people elected but destroyed communities like mine. This isn’t about the past, sir. This is about the present right now.

Btw Trump is WAY ahead of the left on this issue. I doubt any moderator will bring this up during the general because Trump is actually doing something not just talking about it.

The best exchange of the night was Tulsi Gabbard’s take down of Kamala Harris. It was brutal and had it been a boxing match it would have been Buster Douglas taking out Tyson:

GABBARD: I want to bring the conversation back to the broken criminal justice system that is disproportionately negatively impacting black and brown people all across this country today. Now Senator Harris says she’s proud of her record as a prosecutor and that she’ll be a prosecutor president. But I’m deeply concerned about this record. There are too many examples to cite but she put over 1,500 people in jail for marijuana violations and then laughed about it when she was asked if she ever smoked marijuana. She blocked evidence — she blocked evidence that would have freed an innocent man from death row until the courts forced her to do so. She kept people in prison beyond their sentences to use them as cheap labor for the state of California. And she fought to keep …Bail system in place that impacts poor people in the worst kind of way.

The bottom line is, Senator Harris, when you were in a position to make a difference and an impact in these people’s lives, you did not. And worse yet, in the case of those who were on death row, innocent people, you actually blocked evidence from being revealed that would have freed them until you were forced to do so. There is no excuse for that and the people who suffered under your reign as prosecutor owe — you owe them an apology.

OUCH!

The first several minutes of the debate were Biden and Harris sparring over healthcare and throwing out numbers. 3 billion here, 5 billion here. I am surprised no one yelled “BINGO”. SNL could do a short musical skit with them singing “Anything you can do, I can do better”.

Corey Booker tried to credit Obama with the good economy. I am confused. I thought this was a terrible economy that wasn’t working for everyone. That’s the message from the first debate. Apparently things have gotten a lot better in just a month (which would make Booker’s point totally incorrect wouldn’t it?).

About half way through I was hoping Williamson would walk on the stage yelling “Yada yada yada”.

Then there was Andrew Yang’s sunny optimism: “Even if we were to curb our emissions dramatically, the Earth is going to get warmer. The last four years have been the four warmest years in history. We are too late. We are 10 years too late.”

Or as Carol King might say: “It’s too late baby, it’s too late though we really did try to make it”.

Too late????? Dang it. AOC told us we had 10 years. Liar!!!!

I think the winner of this debate was Tulsi Gabbard. She was composed, knew her facts and picked her spots very well. She was moderate compared to the others even with her ridiculous comments about Syria (Trump is supporting Al-Qaeda??) That tells you how far out there the others are. It’ll be interesting to see if she gets any traction.

The big losers were Biden and Harris. Both spent most of the debate on defense. And Biden’s answers sometimes seemed awkward like he was over-conscious of the clock. Harris is starting to come off as an arrogant jerk.

Some are saying Biden survived simply because he had no major gaffes. What does that say about him? But actually he did commit a huge gaffe when he said no more fossil fuels. The media of course doesn’t consider it a gaffe because it fits right in with their climate doomsday scenario. But I bet the voters in the Rust Belt heard it. Bye bye Michigan and Pennsylvania!

The other big loser was Obama. He was practically thrown under the bus (esp his deportation policy). He will not be happy about that!

The biggest winner: Donald Trump. He has to feel good going into 2020 knowing he will face off against one of these folks. No one on that stage is in his league. And no one in either debate understands why they lost in 2016 and are repeating the same mistake. They also do not understand Trump as evidenced by their falling for the traps he lays. Every. Single. Time.

You know it’s bad when Michael Moore is begging Michele Obama to jump into the race.

Update: Kamala Harris’ press secretary tweeted this after Gabbard’s effective attack:

Reporters writing their stories with eyes on the modern-day assignment desk of Twitter, read this:

“The Russian propaganda machine that tried to influence the 2016 election is now promoting the presidential aspirations of a controversial Hawaii Democrat”

And of course the media dutifully obeyed. At least we know who they want to be the nominee. And yet we haven’t heard Harris or her campaign refute a single allegation made by Gabbard. I’ll have to admit, I over-estimated Harris. I thought she was more prepared than this. She got totally blind-sided and so far has handled it terribly. Russian collusion??? Good grief! If Harris can’t deal with Gabbard, what in the world is she going to do if she wins and faces Trump?