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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.
Can you say Grand Cayman?
We were on a cruise with a stop in Grand Cayman. When asked if we were going on a shore excursion, we said, “Yes, we’re going to see Mitt Romney’s money.” I think the cruise was in 2012 . . .
My favorite part of scoreboard watching during Obama’s presidency was the use of the word “Unexpectedly” on every grand technocratic scheme that fell short.
That and the FDR-esque browbeating of corporations for foiling his plans and not being patriotic.
Obama makes full time workers eligible for benefits at 30 hours a week, employees “unexpectedly” find they’re only scheduled for 20.
@reformed_yuppie I agree with a lot of JVL regarding societal norms, and while I don’t think Warren is as “firm” on crony capitalists as JVL wants her to be, especially if it benefits certain left wing causes, I find her to be the second coming of Woodrow Wilson in many respects
Which is my concern for why JVL “likes” her, not respect or “can see where she’s coming from”….”likes”
But as you say, people are complicated
Yep, we got hit by it. The first year it happened, my wife said, “I didn’t know we were rich.”
God Bless Kentucky.
You give me an idea for how Ms. Warren can acknowledge that she is going to raise taxes on “the middle class” – refocus people on the fact that most people in the United States are rich (or “the wealthy”) so of course we need to raise everyone’s taxes.
The median income in the United States is apparently something like $42,000 per year. I have also heard that a person earning more than about $34,000 per year is in the global top 1% of income earners. Therefore, since everyone earning at least the median United States income is well into the very highest income earners of the world, as wealthy people they should pay “their fair share” by forking over most of their income to the government to be distributed to people Elizabeth Warren likes.
I’m in favor of same-sex marriage. However, that’s not what is really desired. What they want is the government benefits for being married.
If there were no goodies from the government as a result of being married, I very much doubt there would have been a push for government recognition of same-sex marriage.
Which goodies, Jose? No snark here; I really don’t know what you mean.
Tax breaks, mainly, but things like being automatic beneficiaries of estates, not being compelled to testify, visitation, power of attorney, and etc.
Pensions.
You count those as goodies from the government? I thought you meant actual benefits, like money. I’ve been married for more than 30 years. It never occurred to me to get married so I couldn’t be compelled to testify, power of attorney, etc. so I’m dubious that it’s a big come-on for the gays.
EDIT: Anyway, we’re unintentionally hijacking the Dem debate thread. Just a sidebar, folks! Thanks for the explanation, Jose and Judge.
Government pensions, and the government requiring pension survivor benefits to include gay marriage. That’s one of the things that used to be named, along with making medical decisions.
“There are over one thousand federal laws in which marriage status is a factor. These laws confer rights, protections, and benefits to married couples — from Social Security survivor benefits to federal tax benefits to federal employee health and retirement benefits.”
https://www.nolo.com/legal-encyclopedia/same-sex-couples-federal-marriage-benefits-30326.html
Note: This isn’t counting state, county, city, and corporate benefits.
P.S.: I remember hearing a gay activist, years ago, say that it’s the benefits that gays are after, and not marriage per se. However, I think he was speaking for the gays who advocate promiscuity as a positive good, not for all of them.
There might still be quite a push; it is the Constitutional right of every American to not have their feelings hurt, and some people – not many, but some – aren’t celebrating gays enough.
Marriage is kind of in an odd place in terms of ‘ownership’, because it’s an act of both church and an act of state. You have a marriage that is seen as being sanctioned by God, and one where your tax situation, benefits and property is weighed by the government based on your marital status.
That’s created a question of who gets to define the term marriage, where you have people on both sides demanding that the other side conform to their views. Up until 15 years ago, that meant the term was fairly in sync between both churches and government, but you’ve had the split since then, and the situation now where the hard-line activists on the left are demanding that churches bow to the government in accepting the new wider definition of marriage or face sanctions.
That’s what Beto’s attempt to pander to the left at the CNN gay rights forum was all about, and it’s in the same vein as the Obama Administration trying to force the Little Sisters of the Poor to pay for abortion coverage for their workers. While the majority of the public now seems to have come to terms with same-sex marriage, the progressive activists aren’t satisfied with that, and seek to bend all religious denominations (well, maybe not Islam) to the new normal, or be crushed by the power of the state.
Beto said he was out to crush Mosques as well. And black colleges. Has the media weighed in on that yet?
It occurs to me that marriage is an act of church and state and society. Which is probably what most gays were aiming at – legitimacy in the eyes of people in general. But the only fast way to do that is to force or use church and state.
TBA,
Heterosexual Monogamy was not always the religious standard. About 1,000 years ago both Judaism and Christianity agreed that Heterosexual Monogamy was the moral standard of marriage. Islam did not agree and to this day a Muslim man may marry up to 4 women and in fact, can have as concubines as many women as he can afford.
Could Western Civilization have been wrong for those 1,000 years? Maybe, but I wouldn’t bet on it. I think it is much more likely that we have been in moral freefall for the last 50 years. Our judgment has been corrupted. It strikes me as likely that at some point we will snap out this as the incredibly negative consequences of dropping the standard become evident. I think Heterosexual Monogamy will reassert its dominance as the moral standard of marriage. I think this will happen because Heterosexual Monogamy is the a priori definition of marriage. Meaning that it is inevitable that we will return to this fundamental idea.
Regards,
Jim
I hope you’re right. I’m not too fussed about homosexual monogamy, but multiple spouses is incompatible with our economic system. And a really bad idea.
You know what the penalty is for Bigamy?
Two wives.
“Incompatible with our economic system”?
I do not recall that 19th century Utah had any particular difficulties.
I don’t think they had divorce and child support either.
They certainly had divorce (I just looked it up) and that probably implies child support as well.
The Church frowned on divorce, but permitted it, especially for women in an unhappy marriage.
A husband who divorces one wife and keeps the other creates a situation no more complex than if he divorced and remarried. In fact, our currrent system is sometimes called “serial polygamy”.