Debate Takeaways From An Unaffiliated Voter

Warren’s continuous attacks on Bloomberg seem to be excessive. Now, he may be all the slimeball a person can possibly be and if he is then he shouldn’t be running. I have zero tolerance for a slimeball presidential candidate. However, without knowing the details behind the attacks it just seems like a cheap shot because people are not going to look into it.

Sanders is consistent; not always right but he is consistent. If he wins, the debates with Trump will be nearly impossible to watch. Two advanced aged people stuck in their ways. Trump will win and people will be trying to get rid of the electoral college… again.

(Selfishly) Biden should’ve run in 2016. I think he’s losing his ability to make his points, and he needs to stop talking about how he wrote all the bills.

Steyer is good but he needs to drop out and endorse someone. Clearly, he doesn’t like Bernie. He’d be better off boosting Klobuchar or Pete.

Klobuchar is likely the best candidate but she’ll be out after Super Tuesday. I wish I could say more. I really like her.

Bloomberg looks annoyed with the process, his jokes are bad and he needs to get Warren to sign an NDA. ??‍♂️ He nearly said, “I bought the”… rather than “I donated to” the Democrats in the house.

Pete is gifted, but feels like he’s memorized talking points to court people of color. He seems very composed and I think he’ll be the best person to take on Trump attacks.

Gabbard (#NotPresent #PunIntended) will be the 3rd party candidate. Why else is she still running when she hasn’t been on a debate stage on 3 months?

Debate Winner: Trump. This debate was a mess due to the awful moderating by CBS.

Losers: CBS Moderators, clarity of points and the filibuster.

Look, I get that people want to get rid of the filibuster and go to a simple majority vote in the Senate. Put it this way, think about all of the laws that would’ve passed in the first 2 years of the Trump presidency if he only needed 50 votes. I would much rather have a rule law that states all bills passed in either chamber have to be voted on within 60 days. It’s time to put our elected officials on the record. If that doesn’t make you happy then reduce the super-majority to 57 votes, but don’t get rid of it altogether. I agree something has to change, but change can’t be as easy as getting a simple majority in both chambers.

Still don’t know who I’m voting for.

Similar Read: Warren and Pete Showed Up… Bloomberg Hit, Amy Flustered

My Summary of the Democratic Debate in South Carolina

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

My Summary of the 7th Democratic Debate

My debate summary:

Sanders started out the strongest but started to fall back when it came to health care.

Biden started out the weakest but picked up when discussing foreign policy. He had an OK night.

While I’ve never been a fan of hers, Klobuchar had a solid night.

Buttigieg didn’t stand out at all and I still see him as manufactured, smug, and condescending. 

Warren made great points throughout but she lost it for me when the beef with Sanders came up. It made me think her camp concocted the Sanders smear so that she could go on stage to make her case on why women can win a presidential election. I didn’t like that. In previous debates, Warren acted as though she and Sanders were friends. Now she’s suddenly bringing up a supposedly old conversation? NOW she’s upset? I don’t get it and it feels disingenuous.

I don’t dislike Steyer.

If I had to choose the winner for this debate I’d say Klobuchar. Sanders and Warren follow in a tie for second place. Biden would be third and Buttigieg last. Buttigieg represents what I think a lot of people don’t like in politicians. On the other hand, some people love that he seems very “politician-y.” I’m torn on where to place Steyer. I could place him in first with Klobuchar or I could place him last with Buttigieg. Go figure.

I don’t think this debate will move any needles but then again, who knows! Maybe Buttigieg will drop? Maybe Steyer will get a boost? ??‍♀️ What happens on the ground is most important.

I don’t think the Warren-Sanders spat will do anything. From what I’ve seen, Sanders supporters feel Warren is lying and Warren supporters think Warren made a slam dunk on stage with her well-planned performance regarding their beef.

Although he gets the least bit of speaking time, Yang was definitely missed. Plus if you follow me you know he’s my #1 in this race.

I agree with Van Jones when he said this post-debate:

“Democrats have to do better than what we saw tonight. There was nothing I saw tonight that would be able to take Donald Trump out. And I want to see a Democrat in the White House as soon as possible… I came away feeling worried for the Democratic Party. It felt like a big bowl of cold oatmeal, and I got to say this: I missed Andrew Yang tonight.”  

My Summary of the 5th Dem Debate

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? 

Who Did Well in the 4th Dem Debate… Sanders, Yang, Buttigieg?

My thoughts…

Buttigieg – He expresses himself well but everything about him seems so contrived. Why does he seem so disingenuous to me? He seems like someone who talks over people. I can see how some people might view him as the winner of this debate. I didn’t.

Biden – I wonder if he can respond to a question without saying “Look” and pointing his finger at people. I really hate that. Every response he gave was horrible plus he was patronizing to Warren.

Warren – How she shaded Biden after the patronizing was great ??! Problem with her is that she is vague. She isn’t a straight-shooter when responding to questions and when she’s taken by surprise she gets flustered and grabs her notes. I can’t see how anyone would think she won this debate.

Booker – I’ve either gotten used to his theatrics or he’s toned them down a bit. He made some good points but my takeaways are that he lives in an area with gun violence and he’s a vegan.

Beto – He had to remind us that he can speak Spanish. He couldn’t answer the simple gun question. I think he’s hurting his chances of running for Senate in Texas.

Steyer – It was his first time hitting the stage. He didn’t do badly but I hate the fact that he essentially bought his way onto the stage.

Tulsi – She tripped up Warren as expected. Her interaction with Buttigieg was interesting too. But Buttigieg expresses himself more convincingly even when he might be wrong.

Yang – His best debate performance to date. The post-debate interviews allowed him to get a little more in for people who aren’t familiar with his platform, but I loved how at the end he invited everyone to his website on Friday where he will be answering questions from all tuned-in Americans for 10 straight hours. Brilliant. #AskYang #AskYangAnything #AskAndrew

Bernie – I can’t say I’m a fan of his but I feel like he won the debate. What a way to come back after having a heart attack and the death of his daughter-in-law these past two weeks!

Harris – Lost. It was a huge waste of time when she started pressing Warren on booting Trump off Twitter.

Klobuchar – She was able to get a lot of talking time.

Castro – I think this was his weakest performance to date. I’m glad he stopped attacking people based on their age.

1. Sanders
2. Yang
3. Buttigieg 

Do you agree?

Similar Read: Kamala or Bust?