The October debate thread (no videos)
the "surprising friend" question got absolutely panned in Variety. Yes, Variety. Even an entertainment publication knew that was a painfully stupid question.
And then, with 15 minutes to go, co-moderator Anderson Cooper turned to the final, most ridiculous question of the evening: “Last week, Ellen DeGeneres was criticized when she and George W. Bush were seen laughing together at a football game. Ellen defended their friendship by saying, ‘we’re all different…and we’ve forgotten that that’s okay that we’re all different.’ In that spirit, we’d like you to tell us about a friendship that you’ve had that would surprise us, and what impact it’s had on you and your beliefs.”
This question, insomuch as it’s even a question, was disappointing in several ways at once. For one, this was the final question on a night in which the increasingly urgent issue of climate change only came up when candidates sporadically brought it up (and without Washington governor Jay Inslee there to ring the bell of impending global doom, these mentions were still fleeting at best). Sure, it was a long night, but it was a disappointing choice to end on a strange softball when there was still at least one giant elephant in the room waiting to be addressed. The question’s inefficiency showed in the answers; only a few people meaningfully engaged with it, with the vast majority quickly pivoting to deliver broad closing statements.
ml1 said:
the "surprising friend" question got absolutely panned in Variety. Yes, Variety. Even an entertainment publication knew that was a painfully stupid question.
Well, it helped John McCain win the Debate!
dave said:
Morganna said:
It took only 2 hours and 42 minutes to arrive at out first conspiracy theory.
dave said:
Must be CNN uses some kind of algorithm that let's those at top of polls speak longer.
Those at the top, in this case Warren, was attacked more by other candidates so she was given more response time. No one wanted to attack Bernie out of sympathy for his recent heart attack and they didn't go after Biden like they did last time because of trump's attacks on Biden and because they don't see Biden as much of a threat anymore.
The "lower tier" sees Warren as the target.
Here is one fairly sensible opinion from Politico's polling of "experts".
Right or wrong, the field thinks Warren is in the lead.
Larry J. Sabato is the founder and director of the University of Virginia’s Center for Politics and is a contributing editor at Politico Magazine.
Who lost? The awful format and the rules that produced a record 12 candidates on stage. I don’t know whether Biden lost, because for long stretches I wasn’t sure if he was still there. Warren was the focal point of much of the debate because she’s at least the co-front-runner. Her answers weren’t always convincing, but the fact that she was challenged so much—while Biden was ignored—reveals the other candidates think she, not Biden, is now the one to beat. (Maybe that’s so, maybe it isn’t.)
I thought every candidate had a good moment or two, though my memory is blurred by the unrelenting pace produced by too many topics and the tug-of-war for control of the conversation. Klobuchar had some smart answers. I’m starting not to care that she is brutal to her staff. (Why do we care so much about that? 99.9 percent of us will never work for her.) Beto, Booker, Buttigieg and candidates with names not starting with B asserted themselves usefully at times. But their dilemma underlines my first point about this kind of debate: How do you really stand out and make progress in a mob of ambitious pols who all have working microphones and snappy, memorized soundbites?
Lastly, Bernie added a genuine note of humanity in thanking everyone for the love they sent after his heart attack. I thought he looked hale and hearty. May he live to 100, or as Trump’s doctor might say, 200.
I found the framing of the questions related to funding Medicare for All to be the worst of the lot. Of course it has to be paid but the question presumes that there will be no offset for the additional costs. Ignored, of course, are two related facts. First is that "Medicare for All Who Want It" will require subsidies (though no one seems to be asking Mayor Pete how he'll pay for that) and second is that everyone will now have access to health care (I think that a national health service is a better option than M4A) which should drive the per capita cost of healthcare down (plus, well, everyone will have access to healthcare).
Dems should bundle their health care proposals with simplified tax filing. The IRS already has all the info it needs to figure out your tax liability in the majority of cases, so why make people fill out their taxes? Scrap that. Then Dems can honestly say something like "90% of families will never see a tax bill, and my medical plan means they'll see their take home pay go up by {whatever percentage}".
ETA -- ok, not 90% of Americans, but a lot of them:
I think pairing that with, really any program that will require raising taxes but end up lowering costs overall, would be a smart play. Health care is the obvious one, but any big ambitious plan would benefit from being able to frame things this way.
Klobuchar had some smart answers. I’m starting not to care that she is brutal to her staff. (Why do we care so much about that? 99.9 percent of us will never work for her.)
I don't know if the stories about Klobuchar as a boss are actually true. But if they are, it does matter at least somewhat to me. We've been seeing for three years what the results of a POTUS being a terrible boss are. It's been a revolving door since day one, and anyone with any competence doesn't want to work there. Why when there are so many otherwise qualified candidates would we want to support one who possibly treats her staff so badly?
Last night Warren said manufacturing job losses were due to bad trade deals. The AP "fact checked" and said she was wrong and it was due to automation.
Actually, she was right. (article is below the =====)
Sanders and Warren distinguish themselves among all the candidates by having a real understanding of the economy. The others kinda suck at it. As does just about every talking head you're likely to dig up to moderate a debate. (Biden's blathering about taking all the money from the military blah blah blah is a perfect case in point. Truly stupid stuff).
=======================================================
It is amazing how reporters and many economists feel the need to deceive the public about the reason for the loss of manufacturing jobs in the last decade. The number of manufacturing jobs was little changed from 1970 to 2000. From 2000 to the end of 2007 (before the Great Recession) we lost 3.4 milllion manufacturing jobs as the trade deficit exploded.
Fans of logic and arithmetic might think there is a connenction there, the AP's Fact Checker apparently does not. It tells readers:
"On trade
ELIZABETH WARREN: “The data show that we’ve had a lot of problems with losing jobs, but the principal reason has been bad trade policy. The principal reason has been a bunch of corporations, giant multinational corporations who’ve been calling the shots on trade.”
THE FACTS: Economists mostly blame those job losses on automation and robots, not trade deals.
So the Massachusetts senator is off."
Here's the picture as of a few years ago (sorry, I'm too lazy to update it).
Apart from the huge falloff in the years from 2000 to 2007, which continued with the Great Recession, it is also interesting to note that manufacturing employment stabilized, and has risen modestly in the years since the Great Recession. So the economists AP relies on as sources much believe that robots and automation stopped displacing workers in manufacturing some time in 2010. Alternatively, we might note that the trade deficit has stabilized in the last nine years.
Kisses up, kicks down. We've tried having a bully for a President and it hasn't worked very well.
STANV said:
Klobuchar had some smart answers. I’m starting not to care that she is brutal to her staff. (Why do we care so much about that? 99.9 percent of us will never work for her.)
Can someone give me any examples of smart answers from Klobuchar? I was wholly unimpressed.
Good piece by Ryan Grim on how much work Biden actually did (or didn't do) whipping up votes for the CFPB.
Sounds like he did squat.
=======================================================
But the insistence that Biden had anything whatsoever to do with rallying support for the CFPB in the Senate left many other people closely involved scratching their heads.
“In all honesty, that was news to me last night,” said Jim Manley, who was communications director for Reid at the time. A senator closely involved in the fight, who didn’t want to speak on the record, said that he never heard from Biden. A former Senate staffer who worked on the bill told us, about Biden’s claim, “I
needed a drink when I heard that.” They added that Biden and his staff were not involved in any Hill meetings on the subject or engaged in the legislative process in any fashion.
Rep. Brad Miller, D-N.C., was the CFPB statute’s lead author in the House. Asked what Biden did to win votes for the CFPB, Miller told The Intercept and the American Prospect: “Nothing.”
He elaborated on Twitter: “I had no contact with Biden and cannot recall every [sic] hearing his name mentioned by anyone,” he said.
Here's a clip of Biden angrily making the CFPB claim, yelling at Warren
Here's Biden yelling at Warren. Then later telling her, You did a hell of a job in your job. Warren deadpans, "Thank you." pic.twitter.com/ztcLurnnd7
drummerboy said:
Here's a clip of Biden angrily making the CFPB claim, yelling at Warren.
Senator Warren's calm, deadpan parry of what Biden thought was a "zinger" is a good preview of how she'd handle Trump in a debate.
drummerboy said:
Here's a clip of Biden angrily making the CFPB claim, yelling at Warren
every once in a while Uncle Joe lets the mask slip a bit and reveals his entitlement. It's as though he's angry that these other people have had the temerity to challenge his rightful place as the nominee.
I could not last the three hours, so I was interested to see this wrap-up. NYT was co-sponsor of the debate with CNN...
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/10/16/arts/television/democratic-debate.html
nohero said:
Senator Warren's calm, deadpan parry of what Biden thought was a "zinger" is a good preview of how she'd handle Trump in a debate.
the pause before the "thank you" was brilliant. The music is in the spaces.
I kinda feel bad for Biden. He's been a decent guy for the most part over a long career, but he's just so crummy as a 2020 presidential candidate. He tried to be all fired up at the end and thundered his closing remarks about how America can be anything it wants to be or something like that, but he got only tepid applause. Thundering the close might have been a good idea conceptually but it came across as just so contrived and rehearsed.
Second most wince-worthy bit of the night, at least among major (or once major) candidates: Harris' bit on how Trump should be banned from Twitter. When Warren declined to agree on this, Harris actually mouthed "wow". I think most people, even Trump detractors, would prefer Trump to be on Twitter so his asshattery is out there for the world to see. And even if you think he should be kicked off, it's such a minor thing to make a stand on.
drummerboy said:
STANV said:
Klobuchar had some smart answers. I’m starting not to care that she is brutal to her staff. (Why do we care so much about that? 99.9 percent of us will never work for her.)
Can someone give me any examples of smart answers from Klobuchar? I was wholly unimpressed.
I just have to say that I did not say this, it was from something I quoted in full.
Smedley said:
Second most wince-worthy bit of the night, at least among major (or once major) candidates: Harris' bit on how Trump should be banned from Twitter. When Warren declined to agree on this, Harris actually mouthed "wow". I think most people, even Trump detractors, would prefer Trump to be on Twitter so his asshattery is out there for the world to see. And even if you think he should be kicked off, it's such a minor thing to make a stand on.
I agree completely and not just because I support Warren.
Twitter banning Trump would validate Trump's claim of bias against him and really fire up his supporters. In my opinion Harris's candidacy is going nowhere.
STANV said:
Twitter's response
https://www.cnn.com/2019/10/16/politics/twitter-kamala-harris-trump-account/index.html
Harris: hey, this guy broke your rules. You're supposed to ban him.
Twitter: yeah, um, it looks like, um, yeah, he didn't.
I guess Joe Biden is a "decent guy" in the sense that he's played one on TV for many years. But when it comes down to policy positions, he's been about as destructive as any Democrat of the past 40 years. He helped sell in the Iraq War to the country as much as Colin Powell. He was a big proponent of the crime bill in 1994. He led the Anita HIll debacle. He was terrible on the bankruptcy bill.
When it comes down to it, Biden is a prime member of the neoliberal movement that created the conditions that led to Donald Trump. Sure he seems like the kind of guy you could "have a beer with." But his policies have done a lot of real harm to a great number of real people.
So personally, I hope he rides off to his retirement sooner than later.
I think it's time to close out this thread and get back to the 2020 Candidates thread.
STANV said:
drummerboy said:
STANV said:
Klobuchar had some smart answers. I’m starting not to care that she is brutal to her staff. (Why do we care so much about that? 99.9 percent of us will never work for her.)
Can someone give me any examples of smart answers from Klobuchar? I was wholly unimpressed.
I just have to say that I did not say this, it was from something I quoted in full.
oops. sorry
STANV said:
Smedley said:
Second most wince-worthy bit of the night, at least among major (or once major) candidates: Harris' bit on how Trump should be banned from Twitter. When Warren declined to agree on this, Harris actually mouthed "wow". I think most people, even Trump detractors, would prefer Trump to be on Twitter so his asshattery is out there for the world to see. And even if you think he should be kicked off, it's such a minor thing to make a stand on.
I agree completely and not just because I support Warren.
Twitter banning Trump would validate Trump's claim of bias against him and really fire up his supporters. In my opinion Harris's candidacy is going nowhere.
It is a weird position to take - and to treat it as so important. Pretty bad judgement if you ask me.
conandrob240 said:
Harris is just full of herself. I can’t stand her.
Its weird but I hear that from a lot of people. Politically, she is pretty far to the right of me on a fair number of issues and she definitely wouldn't be my first, second or third choice but, on a personal level, I kind of like her. She's funny. That line about the "little dude" still makes me laugh.
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the "who are you friends with" question was the last of the night. Look at the proportion of each candidate's time that was devoted to that pointless question: