What Does It Mean To Have Two Old White Men Running For The Democratic Primary In 2020?

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The 2016 election was historic. Hillary Clinton became the first woman ever to secure the Democratic Party’s nomination for president. While her run for president was historic, unfortunately, she did not win against Donald Trump. 

However, after her run, unprecedented drives of women – more than ever before – began stepping up to run for office across the country and at every level. So, it was no surprise that the 2020 election for president would see a historic level of women running. Major Democratic ticket contenders included NY Senator Kristin Gillibrand, MN Senator Amy Klobuchar, CA Senator Kamala Harris, Hawaii Congresswoman Tulsi Gabbard, author Marianne Williamson, and MA Senator Elizabeth Warren. Of these six women, Gabbard remains in the race, but her campaign is not viable.  Warren was the last serious candidate to drop out, falling hard after Super Tuesday where she had a poor showing. 

So what does this mean for a primary that has seen upwards of fifteen-plus candidates enter and leave the race? 

Some Americans are saying this country is ready for a woman president; however, their actions are not matching their words. Arguably, Warren was the Democratic Party’s best chance for a woman candidate, but she did not win a single state during the four early primary contests (IA, NH, NV & SC) and she fell flat during the 14-state Super Tuesday contest. She didn’t even win her home state which is a bad indication of support. 

Even more than her loosing and ultimately dropping out, we now face a primary that is likely to showcase a contested convention with two old White men. Our moderate candidate being former Vice President Joe Biden and our liberal candidate being Bernie Sanders. 

As a self-proclaimed woman advocate, it’s extremely hard to look at a contest that seemed so promising with a diverse field of candidates running from age, gender, race and sexual orientation to dwindle right back down to what we’ve been used to in this country – old white men. 

While Gabbard remains in the race, clearly unviable, Warren dropping out sends a strong signal that what this country preaches it clearly doesn’t practice. We already have a president who has proven himself to show clear bigotry and sexism towards women. What we should be running toward are more women who can represent the more than majority voting population of this country – women. 

While I believe we will have a woman president within the next decade, I can’t help but wonder what message we are continuously sending by advancing old White men.

Debate Takeaways From An Unaffiliated Voter

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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 5th Dem Debate

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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?

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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? 

Luke’s Consciousness from Night 2 of the Debates

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My thoughts… 

Biden vs Harris is good TV. Kamala Harris is trying to get Warren supporters with her single-payer plan, but now allowing private plans after taking some heat. The one person who is clear on this issue is Bernie Sanders, and he embraces every criticism for single-payer, including raising taxes. Warren and Harris are not comfortable getting into the criticisms. 

The similarities between Harris and Ted Cruz’s campaign from 4 years ago can’t be understated. She is very sharp and very tight to the base, which will turn out in caucuses. Harris has one mission tonight, and she telegraphed it loud and clear – tear down Biden. 

Gillibrand’s answer on healthcare feels forced. Taking the same position as Bernie or Warren is a lost cause because people who care about this will choose Bernie or Warren instead.

Mayor De Blasio enjoys listening to himself talk. He just teed it up for Biden on healthcare when Harris had landed a number of haymakers.

Just like the previous night, the divide between red or purple state candidates versus blue state candidates when it comes to decriminalizing illegal border crossings made it clear that some of them do not know the difference between illegal crossings and seeking asylum. 

Castro is extremely opportunistic on illegal immigration and it is also the only issue he feels comfortable on the offensive.

Cory Booker is trying to be the unifier. This is not an electorate that wants unity.

Joe Biden is being framed as hostile to immigrants. I don’t think it will cause lasting damage because his base is more interested in general election dynamics than primary-based issues. Biden’s biggest threat is after the field winnows down to 3 or 4 candidates. If Bullock, Delaney, Hickenlooper, or one of the moderate wing candidates catches fire, he will be in trouble.

Booker vs Biden on criminal justice reform is fascinating. Booker is wisely milking the attention. This is how candidates raise their profile. We will see copycat attempts by the rest of the field to duplicate it.

My wife brought up a great point, every single time a candidate attacks Trump, 1) he gets more TV time to speak to voters, and 2) it reinforces that he is the unquestioned frontrunner.

Biden is campaigning to be Obama’s 3rd term. He is betting Obama could win another primary. 

Tulsi Gabbard will not receive a Christmas card from the Harris family this year.

Candidates need to STOP USING ANECDOTAL STORIES EVERY. SINGLE. TIME. I get it, you spoke to a stranger before.

There was a better discussion on climate change on Night 1. Considering it is Inslee’s pet issue, I expected a better dialogue tonight.

If candidates were serious about addressing lead levels in water in places like Flint, the profession that needs to be brought in are civil engineers, not politicians.

I am surprised to not see anyone at least push for additional tariffs in a state like Michigan.

Biden will face questions over TPP if he is a candidate. The base opposes it, and Trump does as well.

Biden faced accusations of racism in the first debate and sexism in the second debate. It raises the question if his critics will fully unite behind him if he is the nominee.

Biden is the only person on stage to be around for the 2002 Iraq vote and voted for it. Will that come back to haunt him if it comes down to him and Bernie?

Calling for impeachment hearings during campaign season is pandering. If impeachment hearings are going on next year, it will be political theatre that Trump feasts upon.

This debate crystalizes the intra-party civil war. Biden is the traditional Democratic Party, running against Warren, Sanders, Booker, and Harris who represents the new Democratic Party. I don’t think Biden wins if the race is reduced to a 1 on 1 race after New Hampshire. He is a near-lock if 3 or 4 of the others stay in the race on Super Tuesday.

Similar Read: Luke’s Consciousness From Night 1 of the Debates