My Summary of the Democratic Debate in South Carolina

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No one won this debate.

Steyer – Seems like a nice guy. He’s not afraid to speak his mind. I used to actually think he was a Bernie Bro. ? Nope.

Klobuchar – I guess she was solid. No one went after her though that I can remember. I didn’t like how she pivoted away from condemning Bloomberg (because I loathe him). ?

Buttigieg – He seems like he’s fading and he’s fully aware. He still seems phony to me but I liked his facial expression at a certain point when Warren went after Bloomberg.

Warren – I loved her at the last debate but she should have changed the formula for this one. I felt her attacks on Bloomberg were useless tonight.

Biden – I want him to retire and be with his family. ??‍♀️

Sanders – He was on defense tonight. I’m miffed he didn’t get to respond to Pete saying something about private insurance still being offered in countries with universal health care while Sanders wanted to abolish private insurance after four years. From what I understand Buttigieg is incorrect. M4A would just limit what private insurance companies could do to avoid competition with public. Sanders had the best answer regarding marijuana.

Bloomberg – He came across as ignorant on race and marijuana. His paid for cheering section was annoying.

I think they all had somewhat equally good and bad moments. Some had more bad moments than others.

It’s all a blur.

I’ll definitely want to see the fact-checking for this debate.

Similar Read: Amira’s Debate Summaries

Amira’s Nevada Debate 2020 Summary

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Warren was the clear winner. ?

I feel like Sanders needs to do a better job explaining how his plans won’t cost Americans more money in taxes. For instance, when he brought up the Green New Deal and he mentions “job creation” – all I think of is that taxes will be raised to fund all of these federally guaranteed government jobs. ? If you’re a Sanders supporter maybe you can explain this in the comments. I understand taxes will go up for M4A. Sanders is clear about that. I feel like it’s time for Sanders to say MORE about his policies during the debates to make more people feel confident in him as a leader. I’m not a fan of Sanders but if it’s between him and Bloomberg in NY, Sanders will have my vote. I’ll vote for anyone opposing Bloomberg.

Klobuchar might not have the most perfect record BUT she responds very well, isn’t evasive which is a pretty unheard of for a politician, and she seems to learn from her mistakes. I honestly like her more after each debate. I understand why her polling numbers go up with each debate.

Bloomberg IS evasive (he never answered the question regarding allegations) and doesn’t learn from his mistakes.

Besides his rambling ?, I was really disappointed with Biden’s comments about Bloomberg’s Stop & Frisk ramp up. I was expecting him to say that Bloomberg cut back after the policy was deemed unconstitutional.

Mind you, Stop & Frisk is just one of several things showing how regressive and, as Pete describes, polarizing Bloomberg is. Choosing him as the nom would give us a loss similar to 2016. He’s a bad candidate just like Clinton was.

Bloomberg likes to say he’s not taking any money. That’s not a good thing. Yes, we want corporate donors out of the equation. Receiving support from the average American; however, is a GOOD thing. It means you want to work for OUR interests instead of corporations’. Bloomberg self-funding means that he’s doing this for his own interests. He’s beholden to himself. It’s a power move. The fact that he wants to throw a ton of money behind whoever the nominee is another power move. He wants to be able to pull the strings no matter what.

Buttigieg was his typical self. He’s condescending and continues to sound manufactured. I can understand why people who miss politicians who act and sound like politicians favor him. I, personally, really don’t like him – but Bloomberg makes him look better. Oh, Pete really lost me when he attacked Amy for nonsense and NOT Bloomberg. Warren ended up swooping in and came out the victor.

1. Warren ?
2. Klobuchar (confident, clear)
3. Sanders (needs to get more specific)
4. Buttigieg (childish and got facts wrong)
5. Biden (rambled and got facts wrong)
6. Bloomberg (was ill-prepared for the expected attacks, won’t own up to his faults unless he feels he’ll benefit)

In terms of who I feel is most genuine, here’s my ranking:

1. Sanders and Warren
2. Klobuchar and Biden
3. Buttigieg and Bloomberg

EDITED TO ADD comments I’ve seen in my feed:

“It might have been just been on my stream from MSNBC, but there were multiple ads against Medicare For All (and any other options). The healthcare and pharmaceutical industries are at work trying to keep their large profits by confusing voters. The interests of big business many times doesn’t align with that of the people.” – Anonymous (not a public post)

“Let’s say it comes down to Trump and Bloomberg. Sexual assaults/harassment of women no longer matters. (especially if you can afford to get away with it.)

Singling out minorities through stop and frisk laws is ok (Bloomberg) and opposing it is divisive. (Trump)

New Muslims won’t be admitted (Trump) and those here can expect to be spied on. (Bloomberg)”

Similar Read: Amira’s Debate Summaries 

My Summary of the 5th Dem Debate

by with No Comment FeaturedPoliticsRace Relations

MSNBC/WaPo should be banned from hosting debates. Too many of the questions were centered on Trump’s personality. That shouldn’t be the focus of the questions for a presidential debate, but talking about DT has been excellent for MSNBC’s ratings. DT has especially helped Rachel Maddow’s career.

The debates took place in Atlanta, at Tyler Perry Studios. Buttigieg’s camp just had a week of race-related issues and the only people who got questions concerning race were Tulsi Gabbard and Andrew Yang. ? Yang’s response was spot on though. 

Warren – She’s good when she’s prepared to answer non-surprise questions so this performance wasn’t bad for her. I appreciated that her responses were more specific than most of the other candidates’ responses. At one point she said: “And in the first 100 days, I want to bring in 135 million people into Medicare For All at no cost to them. Everybody under the age of 18, everybody who has a family of four income less than $50,000. I want to lower the age of Medicare to 50 and expand Medicare coverage to include vision and dental and long-term care.” This doesn’t sound too different from what is available now through the ACA. ?

Booker questioned Warren’s wealth tax much like Yang did in the last debate. Booker had a great night. I’m miffed that the media puts so much glory on Buttigieg, the Rhodes Scholar, when Booker is ALSO a Rhodes Scholar. I’m glad Booker let people know! ??

Buttigieg – If I weren’t following the race and only saw this debate, I might think Buttigieg was great. He claims the progressive title but he totally isn’t. He has a lot of big money backing him. The moderators favored him so much that instead of addressing him on his manufactured Black endorsements, people from his camp using stock images of Kenyans to show Black support, and being dismissive of his own constituents in South Bend – they tried to bait Kamala to attack him. Kamala didn’t take the bait. I wonder if she didn’t because she thought that if he were to win the nomination he’d seek her out as his VP since she’s a Black woman and he polls at 0% with Black voters. The moderators were really SOFT on him.

Gabbard went after him, but I doubt her attack will affect his polling numbers. He’s a big-money establishment candidate. She is not.

Harris came into the debates with planned statements. Not once did she answer a question. LOL, She’s very evasive. She also seems to get a thrill out of criticising people. I think she’d make a horrible Commander in Chief. A leader who gets off in criticizing others isn’t a good thing. We already have that!

Neither Harris nor Biden could respond to how they could get Republicans to work with them. I think that says a lot.

I’d feel so badly for the person put in charge of typing up the transcript of a Biden vs Trump debate. ?

Klobuchar – She brings absolutely nothing new to the table. She’s a younger Biden in a dress.

Steyer annoyed me. He also isn’t offering anything new but he thinks he is. He also kept saying he’s the only candidate talking about term limits. He’s wrong. Yang has been talking about term limits too. In fact, Yang is for 12-year Congressional term limits and 18-year Supreme Court justice term limits.

Yang made the most out of the little time he was given. He isn’t the establishment and is obviously not an MSNBC/WaPo favorite. All his answers were substantive and teachable moments. Who knew the only other country without paid family leave for new mothers was Papua New Guinea? What other candidate has concluded that we should have a WTO, but for data (new world data organization) and that this would get Russia to the table and make it so they have to join the international community and stop resisting appeals to the world order?

Sanders offers great teachable moments too. He’s the best at revealing the country’s problems and realities.

Similar Read: Who Did Well in the 4th Debate… Sanders, Yang, Buttigieg?