Finally, only one debate, featuring the ten legit candidates. Steve watched a wonkfest in which most everybody held serve.
Of all the gods on the Olympus of politics, none dazzles
and shines quite like Momentum. Riding Media, the mighty
stallion, Momentum elevates and soars, lifting its chosen candidate like
Icarus, casting the sheen of deity on mere mortal flesh. Momentum casts
an aura of inevitability and triumph over its chosen love.
But Momentum is a fickle and fiendish god who will
depart in sudden silence, abandoning a lover in a heartbeat for a new dalliance.
Momentum seems biologically incapable of sustained fealty, but rather is
a serial monogamist with the attention span of a re-tweet in a sub-Reddit.
Back in March, it was embarrassing to watch it fawn over Pete,
and for a few moments there, we thought it might be lasting. Then Joe entered
and Momentum dutifully took its place at his side, but the god appeared
bored by its obligation to pay homage to the elder statesmen. Momentum flitted
over to Kamala, and then dropped out of sight.
But Momentum is needy, and can’t bear not being in a
relationship. It craves excitement and is dazzled by risk, energy, and
vitality. Soon, momentum was seen about town as just so much arm candy for
Elizabeth Warren, and the rumors of a lasting relationship began anew.
Indeed, most star-gazers expected last night to be the big
coming out party for the attractive new couple, in a Democratic Debate in which
the ten leading candidates would finally all appear on one stage.
With Elizabeth Warren finally on the same stage with Joe
Biden for the first time, people expected that the two would go toe-to-toe, eyeball-to-eyeball,
dancing geek-to-geek, and that the 2020 narrative might be decisively shaped. By
Friday, morning, would the charismatic, articulate, and folksy Warren finally
displace Biden, if not immediately in polls, then most certainly in the liberal
media tabloid romances pages that track the affections of the great god of Momentum?
Ah, fickle god Momentum.
If last night had been a prize fight, it would have been
one of those brutal fifteen rounders that ends in a draw, blood everywhere, and
no real change in the rankings. Much sound and fury, signifying nothing more than that this is going to be a long haul.
Like most debates, there were several electric moments that
could be used in the A blocs of cable news programming.
Most notably, Beto O’Rourke delivered an impassioned plea
about the devastating carnage of military-grade weapons, concluding by
confirming that his administration would actually take the step of confiscating
these weapons from owners.
“When we see that being used against children,
and in Odessa, I met the mother of a 15-year-old girl who was shot by an AR-15,
and that mother watched her bleed to death over the course of an hour because
so many other people were shot by that AR-15 in Odessa and Midland, there
weren't enough ambulances to get to them in time, hell, yes, we're going to
take your AR-15, your AK-47.”
It was a galvanizing moment, in which O’Rourke went far,
far beyond any position that the other Democratic candidates were willing to
take on this charged issue. And yet it appeared that O’Rourke may actually have
been more aligned with the rapidly evolving sentiment of the population than
his more timid colleagues. Prior to last night, Beto O’Rourke’s candidacy appeared
to be on life support, powered by a couple of double-A batteries. He is the
candidate whose fate may have most changed by last night. For Democrats who believe
that gun violence is the number one issue in the country, Beto O’Rourke just became
your guy.
The second viral sound byte was when the usually affable
and charming Julián Castro went thermonuclear on Joe Biden, attempting to turn
what was at best a questionable interpretation of a Biden comment into a
referendum on Biden’s age, mental acuity, and memory. Castro so overplayed his
hand that the audience raced to Biden’s side.
BIDEN: They do not have
to buy in. They do not have to buy in.
CASTRO: You just said
that. You just said that two minutes ago. You just two minutes ago that they
would have to buy in.
BIDEN: Do not have to
buy in if you can't afford it.
CASTRO: You said they
would have to buy in.
BIDEN: Your grandmother
would not have to buy in. If she qualifies for Medicaid, she would
automatically be enrolled.
CASTRO: Are you
forgetting what you said two minutes ago? Are you forgetting already what you
said just two minutes ago? I mean, I can't believe that you said two minutes
ago that they had to buy in and now you're saying they don't have to buy in.
You're forgetting that.
Expect Castro to spend the next month on his heels, constantly
having to defend his overzealous attack. As it is, Castro has the lowest polls
among the ten candidates who qualified for the debate… his overreaction to
Biden’s comment may have effectively taken him out of the game.
Yet apart from these two moments, the entire evening was a
1950s Big Ten football game… three yards and a cloud of dust. You could make a
reasonable argument that the biggest winner was Barack Obama, as all the
candidates who had made the mistake of treading upon his legacy in the last
debate went miles and miles out of their way to lionize the popular President
last night. This, of course, caused Joe Biden to once again resort to his campaign’s
most essential rationale… that he loves Barack Obama more and better than anybody.
Once again, the first topic of the evening was healthcare,
a topic that really ought to be a big winner for the Democratic Party. Instead,
the angry bickering, out-sized statistics, thunderous accusations, and smug
posturing threaten to turn this issue into the kryptonite of party policy.
The fault lines have been clear forever: Warren and Sanders
want to end private insurance and move to a single-payer system, arguing that
the overall cost of healthcare will go down and the quality of healthcare will
improve if greedy, for-profit entities like insurance companies are eliminated and
big pharma is reined in by governmental authority. Moderates insist on a more
incremental approach to providing universal healthcare by adding a public option
to Obamacare, but preserving the right of individuals to continue with their
private insurance. The Warren/Sanders position may actually be correct – a single
payer system could well be more efficient and would actually achieve universal
coverage. But the optics are terrible: it would appear that the government is “taking
away” the right to seek private coverage, and it is inevitable that middle
class taxes would increase even if that cost was offset by dramatically lower medical
costs.
It was on the issue of healthcare that Elizabeth Warren stumbled
right out of the box. Bernie Sanders at least has the guts to admit that a single
payer system would result in higher taxes for the middle class. He argues vigorously
that their “overall costs” will decline, but he concedes that taxes will
increase. When Warren was asked to
address this exact point, she chose to evade the question, no matter how pointedly
George Stephanopoulos teed it up:
STEPHANOPOULOS:
Direct question. You said middle class families are going to pay less. But will
middle class taxes go up to pail for pay for the program? I know you believe
that the deductibles and the premiums will go down. Will middle class taxes go
up? Will private insurance be eliminated?
WARREN:
Look, what families have to deal with is cost, total cost. That's what they
have to deal with. And understand, families are paying for their health care
today. Families pay every time an insurance company says, sorry, you can't see
that specialist. Every time an insurance company says, sorry, that doctor is
out of network, sorry, we are not covering that prescription.
Families
are paying every time they don't get a prescription filled because they can't
pay for it. They don't have a lump checked out because they can't afford the
co-pay. What we're talking about here is what's going to happen in families'
pockets, what's going to happen in their budgets.
And
the answer is on Medicare for All, costs are going to go up for wealthier
individuals and costs are going to go up for giant corporations. But for
hard-working families across this country, costs are going to go down and
that's how it should work under Medicare for All in our health care system.
In truth, Elizabeth Warren missed her opportunity to
capitalize on the momentum she brought into the debate. She receded into the
background as other candidates seemed much more engaged, much more present, and
even much more capable of connecting with the audience. All of Booker, Buttigieg,
O’Rourke, and Klobuchar were in the game last night, fighting for every yard.
Warren warmed up toward the end of the evening, but by then all but the most
wonkish of policy nerds had begun channel surfing.
Ask people what they think of Joe Biden’s performance last
night, and you will simply be conducting a Rorschach test on their incoming
bias. Biden supporters will say that he was far more energized and animated
than in past debates. Biden detractors will say that in his effort to appear
more energetic, he spat our answers at a frenetic, almost uncontrolled pace, leaping
and pirouetting across the space/time continuum, occasionally appearing to have
lost contact with the tower. All you can really say about Biden’s performance
last night was that he did not commit yet another seismic gaffe.
If forced to call the evening, I give it to Cory Booker. He
stands apart from the grave, intense, and serious rivals because he appears to
be enjoying himself on the stage. The genial, upbeat Booker is passionate,
engaged, and yet also fun, deftly invoking humor and flashing smiles in the
midst of the somber parade of worrisome topics.
We love Pete Buttigieg, but he has now settled at a plateau as
the ever-well prepared honor student and Eagle Scout who brings some great
one-liners but has yet to truly take command of the room. One also gets the
sense that the well-funded Mayor Pete has a much longer view than other
candidates, and he is putting his marbles on a ground game in Iowa with the
goal of pulling off a game-changing stunner there.
Kamala Harris had a decent night but she utterly lacks the
gift of appearing to deliver planned zingers as if they were spontaneous
moments. As such, they often fall with a thud, as when she made an incredibly juvenile
comment that seemed intended to question Donald Trump’s manhood. C’mon, Kamala.
We are Democrats. We don’t do stupid stuff like that.
There is a doggedness about Amy Klobuchar that is endearing.
She is gradually learning how to simultaneously convey Midwestern decency with
ferocious determination and willfulness. She and Buttigieg are each waiting in
the wings to lead the centrist Republicans if Biden ever completely collapses,
but their candidacies are each beginning to look like just so much legwork for
2024, 2028, or – in Pete’s case – 2048.
Ah, Andrew Yang. Call me crazy, but I don’t get it. He has
fanatic supporters and is well funded, but his campaign seems to be a series of
unexplained stunts. Yang started his evening last night by announcing that his
campaign was launching the functional equivalent of The Publishers Clearinghouse
Sweepstakes to attract support, and then he had the gall to think that anything
else he said should be taken seriously. Yang is now merely a curio, a vestige
of the period in this campaign cycle when we had to endure the time delays as Marianne
Williamson was beamed in from the Crab Nebula. Say good night, Andrew.
Bernie Sanders seems to just keep getting madder and
madder. Maybe Bernie is just angry because everybody has absconded with his
ideas. But I don’t see any of this ending well for Bernie, who just seems like
he is ferociously and perpetually pissed off. Hey, Bern-man, lighten up! Nobody wants to elect President Gloom. Name your great Democratic Presidents of the
past century and you see a bunch of guys with a sly wit, a winning smile, and a
twenty-ton reservoir of optimism. Bernie’s people should force him to watch
last night’s debate with the sound turned off. All he would see is the face of
a mean-spirited and angry man who appears contemptuous of all around him. Not a
winning play, Bernie.
I hesitate to provide a scorecard on this evening, because
the bottom line is that very little in the polling will likely change as a result
of last night. But here goes:
Above
average:
Booker
O’Rourke
Klobuchar
Status
Quo:
Biden
Warren
Harris
Buttigieg
Underwhelming:
Sanders
Castro
Yang
Tonight, on Olympus, a fickle god played coy, withdrawing
as it watched a field of candidates ardently woo the awesome power of Momentum.
Last night, no one took flight.
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