For once the Vegas hype machine is justified.
We sure had a Wang Dang Doodle Wednesday, didn’t we? The Democratic debate was definitely the most entertaining yet. Certainly if you’re a liberal, and especially if you’re not. It helped that there were only SIX candidates! Of course, one of the two remaining billionaires who actually IS running in Nevada did not qualify for the debate by Democratic National Committee rules, while the one who is not running did. By rules recently changed by the DNC, Mike Bloomberg qualified after spending literal tons of money to raise his profile in Nevada or South Carolina, while Tom Steyer, who is running in Nevada but is only super-rich, did not. Steyer himself said that the previous rules that the DNC threw out excluded people “of color” like Julian Castro, but the new rule allowed Bloomberg to barge in basically by paying enough cash.
If Bloomberg choosing not to run in Nevada was a big Fuck You to the state, then the DNC changing the rules to let him into the Vegas debate when Steyer was excluded was an even bigger Fuck You. Maybe caucus voters can deduce which candidate the party establishment hates most and push that person over the top on Saturday just to show them, huh?
And so to review:
Mike Bloomberg: What the FUCK was this guy doing there? It wouldn’t be so bad if he could actually debate, which he can’t, or if he were at least an entertaining boor, like Trump was in the 2016 debates, but Mike just stuck there like a sour lemon and assumed that that attitude was proof of his superior qualification.
The real issue is that hoser seemed to think that he could run in a party that, much more so than in 2008 or even 2016, has to at least play to the idea that liberal billionaires and technocrats don’t have all the answers when people in the real world are still working multiple jobs. His presentation is basically that Trump’s success has less to do with the Republican plurality gaming the system to keep their Leader in charge and more the idea that the majority actually LIKES a bossy New York elitist who thinks that his money gives him more rights than anyone else. Whereas the party he now chooses to run in has invested much of its identity in opposing that very concept, especially after Trump took charge and made himself more unpopular than he already was.
Of course since Bloomberg is not running in Nevada, we will have no way of knowing if this debate really affected his trajectory, but we can only hope it hurts.
Warren: Wow. She was the clear winner. Not only did she reserve her (justified) focus for Bloomberg, she had plenty of trash to sling around, even bagging on Amy Klobuchar’s health care plan (or lack of one). And if the whole campaign was one debate, she certainly distinguished herself as the candidate best positioned to push “progressive” policies while still being a member of the party establishment. Of course the context is a little different from that. She is widely perceived to be fighting for her life. The good news is that she IS. If the contests from Nevada on are considered to be the substantial test (especially after the Iowa fiasco made that state a wash), Warren is suddenly a lot more viable.
Buttigieg: He certainly justified why I like him, but I’m not sure he made that case to everybody else. He had some of the best lines, positioning himself as the middle ground between the “extremes” of Bloomberg and Bernie Sanders, especially “let’s put forward somebody who’s actually a Democrat” – which merely points out that Bloomberg and Sanders are NOT. Sanders is an open socialist and Vermont Independent who only runs as a Democrat for the sake of expediency, whereas Bloomberg was and ultimately still is a liberal Republican who’s running as a Democrat because Republicans have hunted their liberals to extinction.
It’s just that when the current political system is based so much on hate – Trump hating everybody, Democrats hating Trump, and some Democrats unsure of whether they hate socialists more than Trump – Pete’s approach may get him drowned. As with Warren, he put words together beautifully, but even more so than Warren, he’s in tough position and unlike her, things may be more rather than less difficult after Saturday.
Biden: He didn’t really distinguish himself, but by the same token, he didn’t negatively distinguish himself. He stanched the bleeding, as they say. I think his best moment might have been when Bloomberg claimed to have a change of heart on “stop and frisk” and Biden pointed out that he basically had to be forced into ending the policy due to legal action from the Obama-Biden Administration. This goes to show what a tremendous strategic error it was for Bloomberg to get into this race: He makes everyone else in the primary, including Klobuchar, look better.
Klobuchar: That doesn’t mean Klobuchar did well. She was called upon to name the president of Mexico and couldn’t, which we can call an honest flub. But then Pete Buttigieg kind of scored an own-goal when he counted that as a case of her not being that knowledgeable. She shot back, “Are you trying to say that I’m dumb? Are you mocking me, Pete?” And then Elizabeth Warren stepped up to take Amy Klobuchar’s side.
Ah yes, the tried-and-true “They’re Picking on Me Cause I’m a Woman” tactic. Well, that may work against men with chivalry or a sense of scruples, but as we saw in 2016, it will not work on Donald Trump. As I’ve already mentioned, both Klobuchar and Warren have the same built-in support base that Hillary Clinton had in 2016, but Klobuchar also has Clinton’s personality issues – namely a sense of oblivious entitlement – that Warren lacks (but that Klobuchar shares with Bloomberg). Not only that, as we saw this week, Warren is much better at maneuvering and changing the debate. So if you’re going to do the politically correct thing (like the Times did) and endorse both Klobuchar and Warren, knowing only ONE of them can be nominated, Warren is clearly the superior.
So that goes to the last candidate on stage. Bernie Sanders. And again, if the goal in promoting Mike Bloomberg is for somebody, anybody, to save the Democratic Party from socialism, this was a tremendous strategic error, because for one thing, on one night, Bernie Sanders was NOT the most unpopular guy on the stage. Most of the debates up to this point have been a game of King of the Mountain as everyone gangs up on the person who has the current political buzz. At one point it was Biden. Then it was Warren. Then Sanders. Then Buttigieg. Now it’s Bloomberg.
Moreover, by being such an obvious and deliberate symbol of corporatocracy, Bloomberg allows Sanders to focus his class-warfare, bottom-up vs top-down arguments in a way that he would not have gotten to do until the general election, assuming he is nominated. Which is now a little more likely.
Because Sanders didn’t even have to do a lot in this debate, just watch everybody pile onto Bloomberg, whom even the moderates like Klobuchar and Biden can see as a bigger threat to their party system. And so if the goal is for everybody is to unite behind the not-Sanders and present a non-socialist alternative to Trump (as if Sanders were the new George McGovern, when Trump is not even as popular or competent as Nixon), well, Mission un-Accomplished. And so, it is that much more likely that Sanders will win the Nevada caucus going into Saturday (especially since Queen Hillary the Inevitable is not in position to lean on the votes this time), which given this state’s demographics will make it harder to argue that he can’t get non-white votes, which will help him going towards South Carolina and Super Tuesday. The problem is that at least one other person had an even better debate, which means that the process of elimination hasn’t really eliminated any of these people yet.
And so, in conclusion: