broad takeaway from the debates....
- wang looked a bit more serious this time, but he seems to....i got the impression that he saw himself as out of place, and he doesn't like being the token nigger, you can tell. i wonder how seriously he would consider an independent run.
- wang looked a bit more serious this time, but he seems to....i got the impression that he saw himself as out of place, and he doesn't like being the token nigger, you can tell. i wonder how seriously he would consider an independent run.
- steyer seems to see himself more as a moderator than a candidate at this point. it's not at all clear what his purpose is, other than to try to directly influence the discourse by standing on stage. how long is he going to carry through with this for?
- buttigieg was clearly trying to come off as "presidential". that's a term i don't think i've heard this cycle. i've heard repeated appeals to "authenticity". but, i think "presidential" sells better than "authentic", in the end. he just keeps doing everything right. he's going to be hard to beat. this was a strong performance, and while it won't convince the party's left (or people further to the left than the party altogether, like myself), it was likely quite compelling to the core of the actual party. i keep pointing this out: for all the revulsion that buttigieg creates on the left, he's exactly what your actual card-carrying, dues-paying, fully registered member of the democratic party actually wants to vote for - and they're the ones that actually vote for who gets to lead their party.
- the abc anchors argued that klobuchar had a breakthrough performance, but that just struck me as the latest iteration of the media shilling for her. they like her, clearly - and, on paper, as the only competitive candidate between the ages of 40 and 70, she should have a lock on this. but, her policies suck; her politics are, broadly, flat out awful. and, she's getting upstaged by a charismatic young male that doesn't really deserve to be there, something i bet she's been through before. the media saw a breakthrough; i saw a last gasp, and a desperate plea. i suspect that was the last we've heard from amy klobuchar as a major candidate, this cycle.
- the abc anchors argued that klobuchar had a breakthrough performance, but that just struck me as the latest iteration of the media shilling for her. they like her, clearly - and, on paper, as the only competitive candidate between the ages of 40 and 70, she should have a lock on this. but, her policies suck; her politics are, broadly, flat out awful. and, she's getting upstaged by a charismatic young male that doesn't really deserve to be there, something i bet she's been through before. the media saw a breakthrough; i saw a last gasp, and a desperate plea. i suspect that was the last we've heard from amy klobuchar as a major candidate, this cycle.
- warren seemed to acknowledge that she's having funding issues along with her sagging poll numbers, and, to me, that was the most interesting thing that she said all night. i think she checked out quite a while ago, around the time that buttigieg bludgeoned her for being a hypocrite. she's kind of going through the motions. and, if she has some kind of a chip or a grudge, her passive aggressive attacks on sanders are just going to get more bitter, as she sputters out further into total emotional collapse. the people that care about her need to sit down and talk to her in an attempt to avoid her from hurting herself.
- i've become less and less impressed by sanders the more i hear him talk, and there were a few points of absolute cringe. his argument against assassinating soleimani by invoking the slippery slope canard was pretty awful, for example - the right answer being that you don't change the direction of an organization by killing it's leaders, and you'd never think that unless you were a corporatist fascist like trump; they'll just replace him with somebody else, it was tactically pointless, and not worth the problems it caused.....if they were going to do something like this, they should have done a massive strike that took out the entire leadership class, not just one guy they can easily replace with somebody else - but he also has this tendency to avoid answering questions that makes him come off as sort of a bot. who's writing these scripted lines of his, anyways? there's reasons his support is stagnant to declining, and i don't think he did much to help himself on this night. there really are a lot of things about him that you have to put aside in order to vote for his health care plan, at this point.
- what i'm going to say about biden is that it would be hard for me to understand why anybody would go with him over buttigieg when presented with the kind of contrast we saw in that debate. where buttigieg looked young, confident and in control (things these types of voters like), biden stumbled over words, was unsure of himself, and came off as flat out ancient. a debate between biden and sanders is one thing, but buttigieg has this guy dominated, and all he did was cycle himself down the drain. there is finally some evidence of polling decline, and the only thing saving him right now is that the south doesn't have an obvious candidate to move to.
winners:
buttigieg, wang
losers:
the rest
i'm still endorsing the greens.
- i've become less and less impressed by sanders the more i hear him talk, and there were a few points of absolute cringe. his argument against assassinating soleimani by invoking the slippery slope canard was pretty awful, for example - the right answer being that you don't change the direction of an organization by killing it's leaders, and you'd never think that unless you were a corporatist fascist like trump; they'll just replace him with somebody else, it was tactically pointless, and not worth the problems it caused.....if they were going to do something like this, they should have done a massive strike that took out the entire leadership class, not just one guy they can easily replace with somebody else - but he also has this tendency to avoid answering questions that makes him come off as sort of a bot. who's writing these scripted lines of his, anyways? there's reasons his support is stagnant to declining, and i don't think he did much to help himself on this night. there really are a lot of things about him that you have to put aside in order to vote for his health care plan, at this point.
- what i'm going to say about biden is that it would be hard for me to understand why anybody would go with him over buttigieg when presented with the kind of contrast we saw in that debate. where buttigieg looked young, confident and in control (things these types of voters like), biden stumbled over words, was unsure of himself, and came off as flat out ancient. a debate between biden and sanders is one thing, but buttigieg has this guy dominated, and all he did was cycle himself down the drain. there is finally some evidence of polling decline, and the only thing saving him right now is that the south doesn't have an obvious candidate to move to.
winners:
buttigieg, wang
losers:
the rest
i'm still endorsing the greens.