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Dem Debate Wrap-up: October in Ohio
Twelve candidates. Three hours. And one guy dumb enough to watch it.
CNN and the New York Times teamed up Tuesday night for the latest cattle call. The contestants were Biden, Booker, Buttigieg, Castro, Gabbard, Harris, Klobuchar, O’Rourke, Sanders, Warren, Yang, and in his first debate appearance, businessman Tom Steyer. They met in Ohio at Otterbein University, which apparently is a real school.
For the first time, candidates focused most of their attacks on Sen. Elizabeth Warren instead of Joe Biden. Her polling rise to second-place has its disadvantages. Warren gave a typically polished performance, promising free-this and free-that, but kept dodging the trillions in tax hikes required. Instead, she promised that the ultra-rich will pay for everything.
“If we put a two-cent tax on their 50 millionth and first dollar, and on every dollar after that,” Warren said, “we would have enough money to provide universal childcare for every baby in this country, age zero to five, universal pre-K for every child, raise the wages of every childcare worker and preschool teacher in America, provide for universal tuition-free college, put $50 billion into historically black colleges and universities…”
The moderator cut her off at that point and hopefully handed her a calculator.
When Warren flatly refused to say “yes” or “no” to raising everyone’s taxes, other candidates called her out. “This is why people here in the Midwest are so frustrated with Washington in general and Capitol Hill in particular,” Pete Buttigieg said. “Your signature, Senator, is to have a plan for everything. Except this.”
But CNN still likes what Warren’s selling, even protecting her from certain attacks. Tulsi Gabbard masterfully took down Kamala Harris in her last appearance and, on Tuesday, aimed for Warren.
“I’d like to start with Sen. Warren,” Gabbard asked, “what her experience and background is to serve as commander-in-chief.” CNN cut her off mid-sentence and broke for a commercial. Considering the anti-Tulsi hit pieces by both CNN and the New York Times, their treatment was unsurprising.
Castro, Yang, and Gabbard had a good night but the moderators gave them so little time, viewers likely forgot they were on stage.
Biden was his usual clunky self, fumbling phrases and gaffeing it up, but maintained his energy for all 180 minutes. (No small feat if you watched the first debate.)
He promised, “I would eliminate the capital gains tax — I would raise the capital gains tax to the highest rate, of 39.5 percent,” and said he “was able to end Roe” before abruptly praising abortion.
Even so, with all the pie-in-the-sky promises being dished out, Biden seemed like the only sober guy at the bar. He focused on legislation that could actually be accomplished instead of promising free sex changes to border-crossing leprechauns.
For being fresh off a heart attack, Bernie Sanders was still yelling about billionaires, attacking them in every answer. Review any Sanders debate line since 1927 and you’d end up with his argument Tuesday night.
Sanders reassured supporters that he’s up for the job healthwise and closed the evening with a rare moment of gratitude for his colleagues’ “love, for their prayers, for their well wishes.” After a zillion-year career of nonstop complaining, the moment was jarring and welcome.
Trump’s abandonment of Kurdish allies in Syria drew further contrasts between the candidates. In his answer, Biden sounded like he wanted to invade Syria and Turkey. Gabbard called for an end to “regime-change wars” while fellow veteran Buttigieg said we should have stayed the course.
“The slaughter going on in Syria is not a consequence of America’s presence,” he replied, “it’s a consequence of a withdrawal and betrayal by this president of American allies and values.”
Beto O’Rourke remains the ever-shrinking candidate. He confirmed his plan to eliminate every AR-15 in America but still has no clue how to accomplish it. “We don’t go door-to-door to do anything in this country to enforce the law,” O’Rourke said. “I expect Republicans, Democrats, gun-owners, non-gun-owners alike to respect and follow the law.”
Surprisingly, Julián Castro gave Beto a nearly libertarian response. “In the places that I grew up in, we weren’t exactly looking for another reason for cops to come banging on the door.”
Cory Booker kept to his peacemaker role. “I’ve had the privilege of working with or being friends with everybody on this stage,” he said, “and tearing each other down because we have a different plan to me is unacceptable.” At this point, Booker’s campaigning to be vice president.
Oh, and Amy Klobuchar was there. She was fine. She’s always fine. She just never says anything memorable.
Not fine was Tom Steyer. It’s unclear how he ended up on stage instead of the dozen other no-chance Dems, but he made zero impact.
We need to stop pretending these people are conservative.
Jeff,
You are totally on target here. Jonathan V Last needs to have his head examined if he likes her?! Anyone with an ounce of integrity left would loathe her.
Regards,
Jim
But OrAnGe MaN bAd.
Drew,
Yes, you have stated the prime postulate that never-Trump will never give up. Even if the Democrats announce that they are repealing the Law of Gravity. Even if the Democrats decide to solve the population/environment problem with a new updated version of soylent green.
It just doesn’t matter. ORANGE MAN BAD!
Regards,
Jim
To be fair to Last, his statement is that he and Warren share cynical views on the virtues of “pure” capitalism although I assume Last’s issue is the displacement of organizations of traditional values.
Y’know all those movies where the upper class person can’t abide the manners of the lower class suitor such that even the sounds of his or her voice causes wincing? And how the viewer can plainly see the suitor’s good qualities, but the delicate sensibilities of class prevent the natural and desired marriage?
Never-Trump.
Jeff,
What a stretch. Maybe Last shared Stalin’s enjoyment of smoking a pipe. He just missed the part about murdering 30 million people. That she is trivially correct about “pure capitalism” which crudely agrees with Last’s view, makes Last look all the more of an idiot.
Warren’s economic policies could put an end to this country but Jonathan likes her. Just great.
Regards,
Jim
Regarding all the talk of making “the rich” pay for everything – has there ever been a tax on rich (or high income) people that hasn’t ended up impacting a lot of other people?
The federal income tax was initially to apply only to a few of the riches people (and was to be “just a couple of percent”)
The federal Alternative Minimum Tax that initially applied to something like 50 people, but ended up applying to millions of people
The federal “luxury” goods tax on airplanes, boats, and cars that ended up mostly putting out of work middle income skilled craftsmen who were building nice boats (that tax was for that reason ended before it could be extended to cover every car and boat)
Etc.
Everyone should assume that whatever tax is proposed for “millionaires and billionaires” will find its way to the $300,000 retirement account held by the engineer, the teacher, the nurse, or the plumber.
Bernie’s only partially honest. He does at least acknowledge that his plans would hit everybody, not just the “billionaires” (now that it has been so widely reported that he is a millionaire and so he has had to stop demonizing “millionaires and billionaires”).
But he is dishonest in that he keeps saying he’s going to make the United States like Denmark but his policy descriptions are more Soviet Union than Denmark.
Even if he were actually proposing turning the United States into Denmark, he hasn’t specified what he’s going to do with all the brown and black people he’ll have to get rid of to make the United States as racially and culturally uniform as Denmark is.
Soak the rich; drown the middle class.
Because the point of the exercise is after-tax income, the “rich” will shift away from productive investments and toward tax shelters.
The end result is more damage to the economy and less revenue raised than expected.
And, because of the latter, middle class taxpayers are stuck with the bill, as in the Scandinavian countries.
I don’t know. They seem to accomplish a lot. Like Obama Care. They don’t waste an opportunity when they have one.
I think when it was 90% tax rate only a handful of people paid it. I can’t find the reference now, but it was so small as to be effectively 0. And as someone said, you have to question the intelligence of those that paid it.
JVL, whose work I’m intimately familiar with, has some deeply held reservations about the excesses of modern American capitalism. He’s pretty anti-Warren on social issues, but he has talked at length about how her message of being against crony capitalism hits home for him. I know a number of conservatives who have similar views (and all of them voted for Trump). People are complicated. I don’t agree with those people’s conclusions, but I kind of understand it.
Put another way, sheltering money from taxes stagnates it. Putting money into investments makes it grow (hopefully), which means saleries for employees, profits for the investors, and tax revenue for the government.
And the rich will find some friendly tax haven to move their wealth too. They are not stupid.
At the time there were lots of loopholes to use. Most of those were removed when the rates became more rational.
somebody asked me today, why Liz was leading in the polls. I was kind of stumped. I could not think of anything she offered other than being the most Hillary-looking.
Because she’s the media’s chosen one. The polls are probably dishonest.
It worked so well for the French in the Eighteenth Century, though.
Yep.
POLITICIAN: “Hey everyone, let’s stab that rich guy and watch him bleed!”
POPULACE: “Yeah! Do it!”
RICH GUY STEPS OUT OF THE WAY, POLITICIAN SHIVS MIDDLE CLASS
POLITICIAN: “Don’t forget to vote for me in 2020!”
Maybe they were feeling that patriotism Biden talks about.
And she’s precisely the kind of white-lady liberal that black folks intuitively distrust.
My fear is that this whole group is so bad someone like Bloomberg or Hillary might jump in. I want to keep Biden and Warren alive. I find myself kinda rooting for them.
After her condescending, canned “joke” about SSM opponents I wonder how many black, churchgoing democrats will take her seriously.
Pinched from The Libertarian Party of Kentucky – 4th District‘s Facebook page:
And they call that “a great weekend.”
It’s her turn. She patiently sat out 2016 and let Hillary take her shot, and now she’s next in line.
At one time last night, they all seemed to agree that the opioid manufacturers should be jailed for making such an addictive product and having it over prescribed. Then most of them thought that opioids should be legalized, which I guess means available without a prescription.
They also wanted to break up monopolies by big tech, because monopolies are bad, but also create a new government monopoly for health care, because that is good.
Did any of them say that nobody should be jailed for non-violent crimes?
Because that one’s my favorite.
Yes. My wife worked as an accountant just before the 1986 tax changes, and she encountered many very odd arrangements by her high income clients to not show high income for tax purposes.