Jaicee said:
First of all, I'd like to apologize to everyone here for my previous positive remarks about Marianne Williamson. She struck me as a complete, and furthermore highly arrogant and annoying, loon on the debate stage and clearly didn't belong there. In my defense, my initial impression of her was based on this interview by Kasie Hunt wherein, as you can see, she seemed 500,000% more competent. The main thing that drew me to her campaign was the second half of that interview where she discussed foreign policy and embraced the kind of nuanced, complex view of it that I have. At various points, she spoke disapprovingly obviously of the Iraq War and (in a separate interview) of our support for Saudi Arabia's war on Yemen, but also insisted that we should continue to offer support to the Kurdish anarchists in Syria until they have successfully unified their armies and proposed a unique position on what we should do vis-a-vis our ongoing role in Afghanistan: that we should survey Afghan women on what our future role in the country should be, given that they have the most to lose from the legitimization of the Taliban that any peace agreement with the Taliban would yield. I instantly liked her after that because the other Democrats are all embracing less nuanced foreign policy views that I agree with less. So she DOES have a brain in there somewhere, I promise! But she's absolutely abysmal in the debate format wherein she can't speak on her own terms...or, you know, stick to the topic at hand and offer policy solutions apparently.
But I think one of the takeaways from this second debate night for me was that, not just Marianne Williamson, but simply put, people with no governing experience in general aren't qualified for the highest office in the land. Speaking of which, I've heard a lot about Andrew Yang and had seen a couple interviews with him where I thought he was okay (he was never a favorite of mine) I guess before the debate, but the debate clarified for me that he shouldn't be running. Don't get me wrong: he's a nice guy and I actually agree with the idea of establishing a universal guaranteed income that he's running on. But what I came away with from hearing him talk was that he's a businessman who talks like one and that I think is a problem for him. For example, when he was asked early on how he would finance his universal guaranteed income policy, I found I could barely understand anything in his explanation because it was offered in the language of The Economist magazine, not English. I also just think that one-issue campaigns are always misguided (including that of Washington Governor Jay Inslee too). Mr. Yang explained in his closing remarks that a one-issue campaign such as his can bring together "a much broader coalition" than the other candidates are capable of building to defeat President Trump. Based on the long history of one-issue presidential campaigns I've seen so far in my 37 years of living, I disagree with that logic. While single-issue campaigns offend few people, they also galvanize few people, which is why they always fail, and badly.
Also, many have spoken about the minimal air time Andrew Yang got, partially as the result of his polite refusal to interrupt other candidates and rigid dedication to the official speaking time limits. That tack showed him to be a nice guy, but also left me with the impression that the hyper-aggressive Donald Trump would eat him alive in the debates next year if he were nominated; like Yang wouldn't be able to get a word in edgewise because he wouldn't fight any of Trump's inevitable interruptions and attacks. I think you have to be more assertive than what Mr. Yang displayed Thursday night to defeat someone like Trump.
Anyway, and I hope I don't sound terribly elitist for suggesting this, but I've really come to feel after these debates that, between candidates like these and our current president, it would really behoove us to elect somebody who is capable of doing the job this time and who halfway understands what it entails. There are a lot of candidates in this field who can offer that. After watching these debates, here are my personal favorites, in order of preference:
1) Elizabeth Warren
2) Kirsten Gillibrand (though she won't win)
3) Kamala Harris
4) Bernie Sanders
Nobody else running is seriously in my realm of consideration at this point. I mean Julian Castro and Cory Booker proved themselves, for example, to be very competent candidates and I liked Tim Ryan's spirit at least, but I'm voting for someone not just based on their level of competence, but also based on the extent to which I agree with them on the issues and the above four candidates I find the most agreeable by the right combination of both of those metrics. I also really, really want our next president to be a woman -- someone who can understand and relate to someone like me better than our current rapist in chief -- so sorry if that offends anyone.
Speaking of Kirsten Gillibrand, yeah I figured she'd get nowhere from the outset, but she's a highly competent candidate who is broadly aligned with a lot of my own thinking on the issues, as well as a lot of my general priorities. I get that people are annoyed by the fact that she interrupted other candidates a few times in Thursday's debate to get in on the conversation, but contrast that sentiment to how people are complaining about the fact that Andrew Yang didn't! I think there's a double-standard there in people's expectations. The reality of the matter is that Kirsten Gillibrand was polling well below 1% support going into the debate and was virtually invisible in the media and accordingly needed to get people's attention in some way. She knew she needed the visibility this debate would provide her with badly and that this was one of only two such chances to gain traction and probably the better of them and hence I think calculated that there was greater risk in remaining invisible. She clearly had spent an inordinate amount of time preparing for this debate and knew that she had to make herself as visible as possible therein.
As to the complaint the she wrongly attached herself to Bernie Sanders...yeah okay, again, she stood at less than 1% in the polls going in while Bernie was averaging 16.6% according to Real Clear Politics, so I think she figured that even if only one-tenth of Bernie Sanders voters gave her a second look as a result, that would be an improvement for her campaign. Indeed, really all the candidates who have been judged as having fared well in these debates have accomplished that feat in part by attaching themselves to another, better-known rival in some way, like Kamala Harris did vis-a-vis Joe Biden, Julian Castro did vis-a-vis Beto O'Rourke, etc. etc.
That said, I don't think Gillibrand has a chance because, after Hillary Clinton, I think that Democratic voters are just simply biased against the idea of nominating a full-time feminist candidate. Part-time feminists like Kamala Harris and Elizabeth Warren are acceptable, but not women who prioritize women's issues, even if from an otherwise completely different worldview than what Clinton represented. A lot of the answers she gave SHOULD have earned her a bigger response in the room by all logic.
What other commentary to offer here? Oh! Hey @KLAMarine, remember when you explained to me before the debates began about how Biden totally does support racially integrated busing now? Did you check out the highlight from Thursday night's debate by chance to see confirmed which of us was right? It was only the single most defining exchange of the whole event! Just thought I'd point out how wrong you were.  And @HylianSwordsman, I think my previously-voiced concerns about the Democrats potentially gravitating toward actual confiscation of guns were borne out more fully in the second debate night wherein one candidate actually proposed to do exactly that (Eric Swalwell). Although Swalwell's proposal only related to assault weapons and thus wouldn't affect me, I think that any attempt at actually confiscating firearms in this country is very dangerous when you have lots of heavily armed militias out there openly threatening to start a civil war if federal agents come for their guns. Our situation, in that regard, is very different from that of other countries that have more or less disarmed their populations. I think we have to be more careful and embrace a moderate approach to reducing the volume of guns in circulation here (like reasonable purchasing regulations and voluntary gun buyback programs), even when it comes to assault weapons.
Also, a lot has been said about Tulsi Gabbard of late here. My thoughts on her are that she strikes as...well it's as if Michael Flynn were running for president. She strikes me not so much as anti-war as downright anti-Western with how she doesn't just oppose American military interventions in the abstract, but actually praises foreign dictators and police states and the wars they fight against their own populations. I saw one interview where she explained how supposedly we (the United States) were supporting "Al Qaeda" (her term for ISIS) in Syria by not actively supporting the glorious regime of Bashir Al Assad and his heroic chemical weapon strikes and application of rape as a weapon of war. He's such a great guy who has just been fighting "terrorists"! Apparently, Kurdish anarchists fighting (and at this point successfully defeating) ISIS on the one hand and "Al Qaeda" on the other are the same thing in her mind. She promises a "century of peace" if elected to a four-to-eight-year presidency. I seriously think she might be getting paid. I don't get the internet's passion for this candidate. It scares me a little. She's probably the single most genuinely dangerous candidate.
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A lot of the candidates had cringey moments, so I'm not writing off Williamson immediately. Mostly because she had a couple of good moments where she brought up the nuanced and systemic nature of a lot of our problems. She's not even close to my first choice, and I wouldn't say I actually seriously support her as a potential candidate, but I'd certainly vote for her over Trump in a heartbeat, and I'd also choose her over about a dozen or so other candidates in the primary. I want her to stay in the race for more than the comedic value (though that's certainly enjoyable), but for the potential voice she might bring to the table. I do think she has a brain in there. Maybe it's just that before that night, I thought she was just Oprah's crystal healing friend, and fully expected her entire performance to be hippie-dippy pseudo-science left nonsense, because that was the first impression I got of her and never read that interview or any other where she demonstrated that foreign policy nuance. When you first said you supported her, I cringed and thought surely you must have not seen what she's capable of, and it seems I was right, though I think now you're going too hard against her. She's a bit loopy, but not that bad. She's less crazy that the current occupier of the Oval Office.
Though I may be saying that from the perspective of someone who really wants to believe that you don't need governing or political experience to run for the highest office in the land, just good knowledge of the issues, a really good vision to solve them, and good enough judgement to hire the right people to execute that vision, with those people having the experience. Which is why I still very much support Yang. He spoke quite wonkily, to be sure, and you do have a point that Trump might walk all over him in a general election debate, but I really hate that "debates" are a requirement for president anyway. Pragmatically, sure, we need a candidate that can win, which in the current format means one who can debate without looking foolish, because our country elects based on that rather than ideas, which is really fucked up in my personal opinion. But perhaps Yang can eventually come into his own on this front if given a chance. I don't think he ever really stood a chance to win the primary, and probably still doesn't, but 1)he's young, so this could raise his profile while he builds up a political career elsewhere and tries again later, and 2) single issue candidates almost never win but still serve an important purpose.
Single issue candidates (and really they do tend to have tons of other plans, Yang especially, but are called single issue because they have a highly focused primary issue that they go back to) serve to shape the policy debate, and are generally run by candidates who understand that they're not likely to win but want to draw attention to things that are important to them. UBI is not just a good idea, it may eventually become essential to a modern economy, so I'm happy to see it brought up now while it's not 100% necessary so it enters the public consciousness and becomes an acceptable idea by the time automation has obsoleted half of humanity from the workforce. It's also why I support Mike Gravel despite the fact that he'll be 90 years old by the time he became president, and is also too focused in scope to really appeal to enough people. He'll never win, but if he got a bit farther, he might have gotten a candidate who could win to start embracing and talking about his issues. Given that I'm a huge fan of direct democracy and agree with Gravel that the most important issues of today are the two that are imperative to the continuation of the species: combating climate change and nuclear deproliferation. It seems for you, this holds true as well, at least to a degree, as you seem to view Gillibrand as a single-issue women's issues candidate with no chance, yet she's your second favorite.
Speaking of her, I don't blame you for liking her, I'm starting to see it. She earned a lot of respect from me with this debate. There must be something about New Yorkers that they're prone to asserting themselves and interrupting, but as with de Blasio, I didn't usually mind it from Gillibrand because she usually had something relevant and important to add to the conversation, and the debate format was rigged against anyone who wasn't at least close to being a front runner, so she wisely adapted by recognizing that the debate would be a waste of time for her if she didn't insert herself into the conversation. And I can't stress enough that when it comes to interrupting, in general it's not cool, but in a debate like this it's simply pragmatic and necessary, but only works to your favor if you have something interesting to say. Delaney was annoying as hell the 1st night because he interrupted to say nothing of substance. Swalwell was infuriating up until the gun control portion because he was absolutely vapid in everything else he said, and he sometimes interrupted to say something vapid. But yeah, with Gillibrand, the parts that really moved me towards trusting her were that she had a clear commitment to a healthcare system that eventually eliminated private health insurance and had a plan to make that happen that she could clearly communicate, and two things she did that made me think that she really would fight for us.
First, while several people on both nights invoked Sanders, the way Gillibrand did was to insert herself into the heart of the healtcare fight. I don't care what anyone says, Sanders started the fight for Medicare For All in its most recent incarnation, forced it back into the public consciousness, and is largely responsible for its current popularity. Gillibrand spoke about his contributions in a way that recognized that while also highlighting her role on the front lines of the fight as well, in helping with drafting the bill currently being pushed through congress. I still like Sander's commitment to an unapologetic abolishment of private health insurance while offering an even better public health insurance program than the best the market will ever offer, but I appreciate her plan as well, and her belief that her incarnation of it will achieve Sander's results in a way she has more faith in and can communicate that faith to her audience. Second, I really appreciated that she placed herself in opposition to the Bidens and other establishment types of the party that stubbornly insist on "compromising" with a party that doesn't negotiate in good faith, by calling out the failures of that strategy and hyping herself as the one that won't back down when the doors are closed on her and McConnell. That is not friendly language to the current Third Way centrism establishment. As I explained in a previous post, I find the timing of a lot of these candidates breaking away from the establishment to be oddly convenient and am reluctant to trust them, but she did a lot to move me toward trusting her with this performance.
As for the being a woman aspect, I understand the appeal, though it obviously isn't quite the almost existential imperative that it is for you. Like you said, we have a literal rapist in chief, so that obviously affects you quite more directly in ways I can't fully appreciate. And I respect that. Much as I support Bernie over Warren because while there isn't much daylight left between the two, I have absolute faith that Bernie won't swing to the center in the general or in office, and what he's running on now is what he actually believes. He really will fight for us. In the same way, you support the women progressives, because you have an absolute faith in them that they'll represent you on women's issues no matter what is politically convenient at the time. I get that and respect that. And I definitely agree that her answers should have gotten a better response, and I'm honestly surprised that she didn't benefit more from the debates in the polls.
As for Swalwell, I'm embarrased to admit that it didn't really click for me when watching for the first time that he was proposing a mandatory gun buyback program. It was said, but I missed it. The mandatory aspect makes me uncomfortable, but I maintain that a gun buyback program is a good idea, and that a voluntary one focused on assault weapons wouldn't start a civil war or anything. That said, what you call heavily armed militias, I call terrorists, so if a mandatory program were started, and it started a civil war, it would be with terrorists, and I can't say I sympathize all that much if any of their lives were lost. I'd be more concerned for the innocent lives they would kill, but we didn't think about protecting innocent lives when we killed Osama Bin Laden, and I can't say I regret us doing that either. I regret the Iraq War, not the response to the 9/11 attacks. That said, from your description of your living area, you could end up being a victim in such a civil war, and that is a horrible thought. Naturally I'd rather we didn't have one, and while Swalwell's performance I think will ensure that gun control gets seriously talked about in this primary, I don't expect anyone with a chance to win will start talking about mandatory gun buybacks.
I'm very happy to see you came to pretty much the exact same conclusion I did regarding Tulsi Gabbard. I couldn't have put it better myself. I'd vote for her over Trump, but if some crazy accident killed every Democratic candidate except Gabbard and Biden, I'd have a tough time choosing who to vote for in the primary between the two.
