Part 2 of July’s debate, with notes and different Democrats’ takes

Debate notes on night 2 in Detroit

by Eric Jackson

Remember that the presidency is an administrative job, and it’s not really like running a business. A governor, a cabinet officer, a mayor, head of a large state or federal agency, a military officer – these are the traditional things of which presidents are made. When I think of the three greatest president I think Jefferson, Lincoln and Franklin D. Roosevelt. Jefferson and Roosevelt had been governors. Lincoln came in with no executive experience, was keenly aware of that and brought in a team of bright young tutors / advisors to bridge that gap in his experience.

Biden, Inslee, Castro, De Blasio, Booker, Harris, Gabbard – they have all in their ways paid such dues. Of these, Tulsi Gabbard is the only veteran on the stage.

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“Go easy on me kid,” he pleads. HA! She has been preparing for the debate at the dojo.

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Julián Castro has the best opening line: “I don’t want to make America anything again. I don’t want us to go backward. We’re not going back to the past. We’re not going back where we came from. We’re going to move forward.”

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Biden starts out as in the others are not there, addressing Donald Trump, who is also not there but likely watching.

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Protesters who are mad at De Blasio interrupt Booker? That’s weird. Seems that both cops and people who are opposed to police brutality are in Detroit to say mean things about De Blasio.

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De Blasio would “tax the hell” out of the rich? Guess they don’t let HIM appear on Lifestyles of the Decadent and Bourgeois.

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Harris wants to privatize much of Medicare and call it Medicare for All, while Biden is for at most small incremental changes from what exists now. The left will beat both of them up over those stands.

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Tulsi slams Kamala’s health plan as corporate by way of noting what her plan’s Kathleen Sebelius endorsement means, Bennet rises to the defense of the private insurance industry, De Blasio says private insurance isn’t what Americans want or need. Biden trashes Medicare for All in general. De Blasio accuses Bennet and others opposed to universal health care of spouting Republican talking points.

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CNN is outrageous. They describe the disruption as about “New York police officer Daniel Pantaleo, who is accused of fatally choking Eric Garner.” Pantaleo DID kill Garner. What legal conclusions one may want to draw may differ, but he actually did choke Garner to death. It’s an absolutely well documented fact.

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So what is it about Booker praising the protesters who disrupted him? Look at this whole primary race, in its early stages, as three races: a left primary, a corporate primary and a black primary. (Never mind that the dividing lines are not so rigid and clear.) Tonight is Booker vs. Harris to see if they can start a process of sweeping the black vote, which will be 30 percent or more of the primary electorate.

You don’t get elected president running as a black nationalist, but do not dismiss that minimal black nationalism wherein much of the African-American electorate, all other things being more or less equal, will prefer to be governed by black politicians. For months there has been a fringe of black nationalists going after Kamala Harris because her mother was from India and on her father’s side she’s descended from African slaves who were obliged to work in Jamaica rather than in the USA. I would expect that between Booker and Harris most black voters will be interested in who has the economic ideals better suited to their needs and hopes.

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Bennet talks about how the Nazis separated his mother from her parents in WWII Poland, goes after Trump and defends a path to citizenship for undocumented foreigners already in the USA.

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Castro, like in the first debate, gets into decriminalizing border crossing. He says the United States should “aid” Honduras and Guatemala. No admission of a US role in the 2009 Honduran coup or the decades-long genocide in the Guatemalan highlands.

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Biden gets heckled over the three million deportations during the Obama administration.

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Castro also served in the Obama administration, and is reminded by Biden of cabinet meetings together in which border policy was discussed and the then housing secretary did not advocate what he does now. But about the subject of immigration Castro tells Biden: “It looks like one of us has learned from the lessons of the past and one of us hasn’t.”

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Inslee gets into the racism of Trump’s immigration policies and talks about how as governor of Washington he welcomed refugees and did battle in court against Trump’s Muslim ban.

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De Blasio and Booker pile onto Biden about Obama administration deportations. It could be a defining moment, when the gleam on the Obama veneer dulls and Biden can no longer run on his association with the former president.

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Biden stands fast: “The fact of the matter is if you cross the border illegally you should be able to be sent back, it’s a crime.” He also talks about helping Honduras, but fails to mention the US-backed coup that started the massive migrations from there.

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Booker goes after Biden on mass incarceration. Biden says that as mayor of Newark Booker failed to control crime.

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Yang lashes out at Amazon destroying much of the retail sector.

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Harris vs Biden on busing and Biden’s old segregationist friends: “Had those segregationists had their way, I would not be a member of the United States Senate, Cory Booker would not be a member of the United States senate and president Obama would not have been in a position to nominate him” as vice president.

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Gabbard jumps in on criminal justice, criticizing Harris for her war on drugs policies and prosecutor and attorney general in California, where she accused Harris of taking a hard line on marijuana offenses. “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.”

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Booker and Biden get heated about criminal justice again. “Your crime record destroyed lives,” Booker says.

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Castro and Gillibrand call out De Blasio for not firing Pantaleo. De Blasio says that there are required procedures for that and those are ongoing.

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Inslee pans Biden approach to climate change: “Too little, too late is too dangerous.” Yang jumps in, pointing out that climate change is already with us and people along the coasts need to start moving to higher ground. Gillibrand says the basic Democrat things about rejoining the Paris Accords, and also jokes about using Chlorox to decontaminate the Oval Office.

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Gillibrand gets into the duty of white politicians to explain and stand against white privilege.

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Did he really? Biden says he’ll win Michigan because he was for the corporate bailout of General Motors.

Booker says HE’LL win Michigan by energizing black voters.

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Biden says he would not join TPP as it is written. Kind of mandatory to say that in Detroit.

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Nothing too new or compelling comes from the top tier in their closing statements. Harris talks prosecutor tough and Biden, as a concession to where he is, makes reference to soul. Andrew Yang is best, talking about the whole weird spectacle: “We’re up here with makeup on our faces and our rehearsed attack lines, playing roles on this reality TV show.”

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Takeaways? This writer needs to be cautious about presuming that others might share his biases. But that said, it looks like Biden took a beating, Harris had an up and down night, several of the others had their good moments and it might have been a breakout night for Booker. On that latter score, particularly look at how African-Americans saw it.

These links are interactive — click on the boxes

Part 1 of July’s debate, with notes and different Democrats’ takes

Eric Jackson’s debate notes, night 1

Hickenlooper and Delaney go after the left in their opening statements.

I like Warren’s opening best. She, Bernie and Buttigieg right off the bat stood out from the others in the openings.

Buttigieg states the problem in starkly, perhaps alarmist, terms. He says that we can’t go back to the past. He doesn’t really say what ought to be done. Perhaps we will hear some specific ideas from him yet.

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Delaney comes out swinging against Bernie on health care – really, in defense of the insurance companies – and then both Bernie and Elizabeth rise to defend Medicare for All. I LIKE these two ganging up.

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Bullock “won’t support any plan that rips away quality health care from individuals.” As if the present system is high quality.

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Ryan thinks that union members who lose their jobs would be better off with private health care once the companies cut that off, too?

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“Republican talking points” – Warren mentioned them in responding to Delaney, Bernie blew off a Jake Tapper question as one of those, and then Buttigieg got into a rap about how fashioning Democrats’ discourse around what Republicans will say is foolish.

All good points. With Buttigieg, the question remains that if you don’t fashion what you say based on GOP responses, all well and good – but just what does he stand for?

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Elizabeth sounded slightly garbled about now criminalized border crossings, but people could get that she wants to decriminalize and is against family separations.

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Ryan makes a run at Sanders over Medicare for All, and Sanders handles it quite well.

Sanders also laid out the paradigm so well without talking any “isms” when Delaney renewed the attack – Delaney said that Sanders doesn’t understand the health care business and Sanders said it isn’t a business. WHAM!

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Back to the border. Bernie and Elizabeth are for decriminalizing border crossing. Buttigieg tries to play it both ways, talking about criminal prosecution if there is fraud involved. But having dealt just a tiny bit with Border Patrol guys in Detroit way back when, they’re the most racist law enforcement agency I have seen and Buttigieg again just doesn’t get it about racism in America. Beto also tried to play it both ways, but with more humanity, nuance and knowledge than the mayor showed. Hickenlooper fell into one of these ‘all they do is bicker’ routines, which allowed him to, beyond saying he’s not into family separations and kids in cages, mostly duck the question.

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Hickenlooper the scold, Sanders throws his hands up, and Hickenlooper scolds about that too. No damage to Bernie, IMO.

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She didn’t call it that, but Warren unloaded on the red-baiters. When they bait her as too far left to win, look at where she is in the polls and where they are.

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Bernie: “To win this election and to defeat Donald Trump — which by the way, in my view is not going to be easy — we need to have a campaign of energy and excitement and of vision. We need to bring millions of young people into the political process in a way that we have never seen by among other things, making public colleges and universities tuition free and canceling student debt.”

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AH, CLIMATE CHANGE! Buttigieg notes the oft-cited UN report. But the change is here and perhaps the biggest question is what the candidates would do to adapt. And the one with the most comprehensive grand plan? It’s going to be a matter of collective thinking, much like the 1930s New Deal was. Leadership will matter more than detailed plans.

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Delaney is against a Green New Deal and say he has a more “realistic” plan. Market based, no doubt.

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“We can’t choose a candidate we don’t believe in just because we’re too scared to do anything else.” Another memorable line by Warren.

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CNN lamely goes after Sanders about his claim that half of Americans live paycheck to paycheck. It is, of course, an imprecise claim but a demonstrable reality. Maybe not if your paycheck is from CNN.

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Williamson gets into the Flint and Grosse Pointe comparison, CNN can’t spell the upscale neighborhood’s name right, and Williamson didn’t get into half of he viciousness of what was done to Flint and why. But she brought up the reality of environmental racism, which was a very important thing to do.

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Williamson is the Grosse Pointe lady who upholds the necessity of the private insurance companies? Had she ever held public office to build up some goodwill, she might carry Michigan with that. But given who and what she is I expect it wouldn’t play with most Detroiters, or most Michigan primary voters.

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The thing about civil vs criminal liability for border crossing and the relationship of that to family separations is real yet beside the point. Were it just a civil infraction Trump would do the same thing. The family separation issue and practices and attempted practices is a hydra-headed evil. As in, if there are to be impeachment investigation a deep and thorough public inquiry is called for.

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Don’t think that Mayor Pete explained his record in a way that’s going to convince a lot of black voters.

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Delaney wants to revive the TPP? That’s delusional. That goes right to the problem of the centrist argument that we can go back to what was. Even were it desirable, what was is broken and won’t be fixed. The way forward in the emerging paradigm is not a revived US-led economic empire, which is what TPP was about – a coercive US-led coalition against China that really didn’t do anything for Americans or the citizens of the other countries involved, just to block China.

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Delaney goes after Warren over her proposed wealth tax. He loses it about fairness. She may or may not win much with her proposal, because tax laws are these messy compromises even at best. On the notion that the very rich don’t pay their share and should, especially among Democratic primary voters she win that point.

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Warren goes after NAFTA 2.0. It’s likely to pass with almost all Republicans and a bunch of Democrats. She laid out good reasons why it should not pass. But after all these years things have changed and it’s not really possible to go back to the status quo ante that was there before NAFTA. (Which isn’t really what she’s advocating.)

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Williamson is for reparations, which is a popular stand in Detroit. How practical is another question.

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To recognize that forced labor is one of the cornerstones of any prosperity America has had is not a small part of understanding where the country is now, even if there are no living former slaves. Reparations for Jim Crow? One might ask what about reparations for stolen Native lands, and if the response is that there were treaties about it and that’s the only response it would be a lame answer. Reparations for violations of the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo in California? Another great injustice, which mostly does not apply to the current Hispanic communities of that state, who came later, or whose ancestors did. Was affirmative action “reparations” for any of that, and to the extent that it may have been, how does that get calculated into the equation? Questions like these are why there is no reparations bill before Congress, but only a proposal to study the question.

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Beto also supports reparations, or rather the bill to study it. His defense of it was perhaps his best moment of the night.

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WHAT?!?!? Elizabeth isn’t into going around the world threatening everyone with nukes? Will someone call her an anti-Semite or a communist or a wimp or something?

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Sunset bill on war authorizations? Good idea, Pete. It would have required a re-authorization in World War II and the Civil War the way he says it. Such bills would have passed. The problem is wars without informed authorization in the first place.

Pete never was an antiwar activist. But being for withdrawal from Afghanistan keeps him among the options for a lot of antiwar Democrats.

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Beto takes an even more forthright antiwar stand – get out of the wars we are in, don’t start new ones – and then Hickenlooper lays into him with a light at the end of the tunnel routine about Afghanistan. We really have not heard a systemic set of ideas about when to go to war or the basic principles of foreign policy from any of the candidates. Maybe that’s a calculation by all that it flies over the heads of most voters. But the old paradigms are gone and we need to have some discussion about the emerging new ones.

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Buttigieg handled the age question perfectly.

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Pete takes the safest possible way to disagree with the NRA.

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Williamson, Sanders and Warren had reasonable closings. The rest didn’t. Pete was so very enthusiastic about nothing in particular. Most of the rest talked about how divisiveness is the big problem, as if they are going to go back to 20th century comity with the current crew of Republicans.

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Takeaways? No significant movements — up or down, to or from — between the top tier and the lower tier. Let’s see what the polls indicate about the relative performances of Warren, Sanders and Buttigieg and whether or not my basic assessment is in line with other Democrats’ thinking.

These links are interactive — click on the boxes