Originally published at: https://boingboing.net/2019/07/31/poison-apples-r-us.html
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He totally nailed it. When can we shed these marginal candidates?
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It was a classic case [again] of circling the wagons and shooting each other, Democrats have this down to a science.
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The summary of the summing up:
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Presidential debates should be to the death.
May only the strong survive.
(/Xs)
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And Biden along with them. It’s not 1992 anymore, and young voters aren’t scared when crabby old Grandpa Bernie and cool Great Aunt Lizzie dare to tell them the truth: that this unsustainable system is screwing them over and will keep screwing them over unless it’s changed now.
Democrats: stop trying to appeal to old people who will never vote for you; start trying to appeal to young people by giving them a reason to show up to the polls.
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I’m prepared to blame CNN. They basically built that debate to create this outcome.
Those questions were basically GOP attacks wrapped in “please fight with each other”.
Its a political debate not a reality TV after show.
“Liz you said Bernie’s bikini was slutty, how do you really feel.”
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I’ll blame timorous Third Way candidates as well, but CNN is in their corner in addition to pandering to the lowest common denominator with their “infotainment” approach.
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I feel like a well prepared, clever candidate could deal with questions that are designed to generate entertainment value and give real answers. There are definitely candidates in the field that are capable of that. But I think a lot of candidates are only really there to grandstand anyway, so it’s less about CNN baiting them into a fight, and more like them and CNN working in concert.
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It is mind-boggling to see “serious” democrat candidates talk about what is within reasonable possibility for elected officials. As I’ve said before: Trump is here to blow our minds. Look at what is possible when you have the support of the party behind you: Savage incompetence itself can’t stop the advance of the party’s wishlist.
I suppose there must have been times when the republicans hesitated to pack the courts with nazis, or poison public drinking water, because of concerns that centrist democrats might not like that. I’m sure they’ll argue those concerns during their own primaries.
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You need someone with a combination of quick wit and rockstar charisma to truly beat CNN on its own terms – an Obama or a Bill Clinton. Sanders came close by refusing to be the slickster or smooth talker or quirky character actor the corporate media wants to see, Warren seems to be cottening onto that as a winning approach. All the rest, though, seem happy to play whatever role the media-industrial complex has assigned to them to make the reality show easier to produce.
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I loved Sanders’ response to the dufus saying “you don’t know what’s in that bill”. Sanders: “I wrote the damn bill.”
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- Recognized the real problems America faced.
- Found the right person for the job.
- Supplied active encouragement to get the job done.
- Once that was done, didn’t let ego get in the way, and stepped aside for the good of the country.
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Let’s go back to the simpler times when the party decides internally who is the real nominee. Primaries should not be a democratic process. If you don’t like who your party picks, start a new party. (the 2 party system breaks a lot of things)
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This is getting common. During the debates for the last BC election “[Dr. Weaver] I don’t know if you’re familiar with of this paper that was just presented to the UN…”
“I’ve heard of it.”
One of the lead authors: Dr. Andrew Weaver.
Whatever happened to actually preparing for bombshells like this? It’s not deep research, just basic prep so you don’t hand your opponent the keys to your armory and a password to your network.
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Am I turning into a crazy conspiracy theorist, or were they pretty firm with cutting off people’s answers, unless that person happened to be Pete Buttigeig?
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Yeah sure, simpler times like 2016, lets schedule the debates for tuesday nights and hide them on cable only access too. Because we don’t want our constituents thinking this is their choice.
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First, the polling numbers to get into this debate are TOO LOW, and so are the fundraising criteria. It’s like the DNC apologized for forcing Hillary over Bernie by forcing Everyone and Bernie. Tim Ryan, Daley, Hickenlooper, Williamson, Klobuchar and Bullock shouldn’t have been on that stage last night, and saying they can be is a sop to ego and stupidity in the post-Trump era, where there’s no downside for running for President. Same goes for Yang, Booker, DiBlasio, Castro, Bennett, Inslee and Gabbard tonight. (Also, Tom Steyer needs to be pantsed and kicked out of the race – being rich doesn’t make you a leader, jerkface, it just makes you rich.) All having 20 candidates does is makes the Dems look even weaker while big-money donors push Biden and other ‘moderates’ down the throat of the electorate.
The DNC needs to:
– Tell New Hampshire and Iowa to fuck off; they’ll decide the Primary dates, thank you, and if New Hampshire and Iowa still want to be firstest in the nation, they can have those results invalidated by the party.
– Have 6 candidates, max, AND THAT IS IT. If you’re not 10% in the pools or over, GTFO and stop wasting time. (Biden, Bernie, Warren, Harris – plus one or two more – is really all you need.)
– HAVE ACTUAL DEBATES. Having 10 people answer one question is not a debate; having a show-of-hands is not a debate; having ‘moderators’ be cut-outs preventing people from talking to each other is not a debate.
Finally, why is it that NO DEM CANDIDATE (aside from Gabbard, so let me rephrase that: NO REAL DEM CANDIDATE WHO COULD WIN) is willing to talk about the military budget as a gross and criminal drag on our economy? Every time some CNN pencil-neck asks where the money for Medicare-for-all would come from, I want to scream at the TV: “We have 6,600 nuclear weapons, motherf***er, and I don’t see us sweating where all that cash comes from; why not cut in in half and give every man/woman/child in the US friction-free single-payer healthcare to improve their lives and jobs instead of potentially using it to destroy the world someday?”
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That isn’t working so great for the uk right now.
Also, the primaries ARE party-internal activities. It’s just that the rest of us are all but forced to watch the sausage being made.
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