debate

The Debate Nobody Watched

Standard

There has been a strange divide between the two major parties this year. The Republicans have seen record numbers watch their primary debates, while the Democrats have tried their best to make sure no one witnesses theirs. Even Vox, the notorious apologists for the Democrats in general and the Clintons in particular, admits that scheduling a debate in Iowa on a Saturday night when Iowa football is on is sketchy. But it’s not the result of bad planning, it’s the result of a bad candidate, Hillary Clinton, and the party machine’s desire to protect her from scrutiny. And it is lost on no one that Clinton’s own party thinks the best way to help her win is to never let anyone see her.

This debate was on CBS, and moderated by John Dickerson, to general acclaim:

The debate began with opening statements. In hers, Clinton sought once more to assure the American people that she is not a robot:

The people remain skeptical:

Once the debates started, the questions naturally turned to the ISIS murders in Paris and the wider question of war on Islamic fundamentalist terror. Clinton tried to sound tough, tougher than President Obama, just as she did when she ran against him in 2008:

Bernie Sanders turned, as all old Bolshies do, to the past, highlighting the various misdeeds of the nation he seeks to lead:

Martin O’Malley said some things:

Generally, the output was underwhelming:

The candidates next turned to their tax plans, which no one believed:

They talked about reform of the financial industry, which let to the first interesting question of the night: is Hillary Clinton owned by Wall Street? Sanders says yes:

Clinton offered an unusual counterargument: 9/11?

O’Malley joined Sanders’s criticism, then touted his his own bona fides:

Sanders and O’Malley called for the forward-thinking innovation of re-enacting laws from 1933:

This was difficult for Clinton to agree with, since her husband had worked to repeal the act in question in 1999. Plus, you know, she’s owned by Wall Street:

In closing, the candidates reminded the viewer of their strengths.

Sanders called for more “free” stuff:

Clinton emphasized her age and her proximity to important things:

O’Malley said something, but even he wasn’t paying attention:

There was not much said here, and not many people watched it. The only real take-away was in the most ridiculous item of the night:

Fortunately, Democrats will have a chance to revisit the issue in their next two debates, to be held on the Saturday before Christmas and on a Sunday in January, opposite an NFL playoff game.

Mill-e-wah-que

Standard

Tonight, the Republicans will gather for their fourth debate in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. I suppose the locations don’t matter, but why they don’t do it in Iowa is beyond me. Anyway, the debate (on Fox Business Network) will be a little smaller this time, not because anyone has dropped out of the race, but because the debate organizers have required that a candidate average 1% in the national polls to participate. Three candidates, Jim Gilmore, Lindsey Graham, and George Pataki, have failed to reach even this low bar.

The field is still unwieldy enough to require two debates. Chris Christie, Mike Huckabee, Bobby Jindal, and Rick Santorum will sit at the kids’ table, while Jeb Bush, Ben Carson, Ted Cruz, Carly Fiorina, John Kasich, Rand Paul, Marco Rubio, and Donald Trump take the main stage. I hope a debate among eight debaters proves easier to manage than one with ten, which has just seemed absurd at times.

As before, the task for the candidates in the first debate is to get noticed. As the primaries near, this begins to look more and more like a lost cause, but there is still some hope. Jindal polls higher in Iowa than he does in the national polls that determined his placement here, and Christie has the ability to make himself heard. The other two, if they don’t make a strong showing in Iowa (and they haven’t so far) are doomed.

At the big show, Kasich, Paul, Fiorina, and Bush are fighting against the draining of their supporters to the two emerging leaders among the normals: Rubio and Cruz. That sort of a break out is difficult: Fiorina achieved it once, in the performance that elevated her to the grown-up table, but since then her support has receded. For Paul, the number of like-minded libertarians in the party may be too small to move him any farther than he already is. Kasich does well among moderates and the media, but even the disproportionate attention he gets hasn’t raised his standing among actual voters. And for Bush, the challenge is the most acute. He went for the knockout last time, and Rubio counter-punched him back into his corner. It’s hard to see any different result this time.

Trump and Carson continue to struggle to find respect among serious voters, and I don’t see how they’ll do so tonight. Both have run policy-free campaigns. Will they get serious this time? I doubt it. Expect more bombast from Trump and weirdness from Carson.

That leaves the two frontrunners among serious candidates, Ted Cruz and Marco Rubio. Cruz won some hearts in the last debate with his cogent policy remarks, self-awareness, and attacks on the inept moderators. More of the same won’t hurt him. Rubio, the recipient of several high-profile endorsements since the last debate, needs only to replicate his previous performances to show that he is the proper mainstream candidate around whom the party regulars should continue to coalesce.

The Fall of the House of Bush

Standard

Wednesday’s Republican debate had several interesting stories (I wrote about it here) but the most dramatic, and the most shocking from an historical perspective, is the decline of the candidacy of Jeb Bush. Although Bush never enjoyed the “inevitable” frontrunner status that Hillary Clinton holds over her fellow Democrats, Bush was seen as the man to beat at the start of his campaign. He had name recognition, a record of conservative governance, loads of cash, and connections to a family machine that knows how to win. But all those advantages have amounted to little as Jeb’s supporters slowly drained away over the last few months.

Plenty of pundits are calling this the end of Jeb. And for most candidates, it would be. But Jeb still has those resources to draw on, and I don’t think he’ll drop out before the Iowa caucus. Still, his position looks precarious.

This is kind of a strange thing to say. For years, we’ve been hearing about how Jeb was the smarter brother, the more reasonable, the more capable, the more electable. But those promises have all withered in the heat of a national campaign. Maybe George W. Bush was a better politician than we gave him credit for.

With voters and donors beginning to doubt him, Bush took drastic action, attacking his erstwhile protege Marco Rubio on national television. But Jeb is not meant for the heel’s turn. Everyone could tell his heart wasn’t in it, and after Rubio’s devastating response, Bush almost seemed to accept the rebuke, knowing he deserved it.

I’ve supported all of the Bushes for as long as I can remember being interested in politics. Look at this picture:

BushQuayle1992NEAirport

One of those young Republicans is me (the other three are all Democrats now). Even then, I wanted four more years of a Bush presidency. In 2000, I voted for George W. in the primary and the general. I did the same in 2004, and I’m glad I did. All things being equal, 2008 should have been Jeb’s time. But all things are not equal, and even had 2008 not been a disastrous year for all Republicans, the voters were not likely to elect the brother of a man who had held the White House for the past eight years, no matter how popular or unpopular he might be.

We have a love-hate relationship with dynastic politics in this country, but twelve or sixteen years straight of the same family would have been too much for most any voter to swallow. That’s a credit to America’s republican values, but it doomed the chances of an otherwise highly qualified man. 2012, too, came and went. Could Jeb have won then? Maybe. I think he would’ve done better than Mitt Romney, especially in Florida, but even that might not have been enough. Which brings us to today.

Dynastic politics make me uncomfortable, as they do for a lot of people who believe that our republic should not be ruled by a small clique of powerful families. But I have to admit, that Jeb is a Bush is one of the things I liked about him. The Bushes are smart, conservative and (most importantly), they know how to win. And no matter what you think of a primary candidate, the first question you must ask about him is “can he win?” I thought Jeb could win, because I saw his brother win.

Lots of people look on Jeb’s fall with glee, but I’m not one of them. I still think no other candidate is better equipped to do the job of President from day one. He’s smart, well-versed on the issues, and ready to hit the ground running. If Pennsylvania’s primary were today, I’d probably still vote for him. But, more and more, I think 2016 is not Jeb’s year. What’s worse, it is probably his last chance.

On to Boulder

Standard

COORS12PKCANS3bfhrp6SlXf_anHTonight, fourteen of the fifteen remaining Republican candidates meet at the Coors Event Center in Boulder, Colorado for their third debate. As before, the size of the field forced the organizers to split it into two debates. In the first, which no one will watch, Bobby Jindal, Lindsay Graham, George Pataki and Rick Santorum will struggle for attention. Jim Gilmore wasn’t invited. How much longer will these men continue to campaign? Jindal, alone, has a chance of breaking out of the pack, and even his odds are looking longer by the day.

In the main debate, erstwhile frontrunner Donald Trump will participate from behind in the polls for the first time. He must do something to regain his dwindling fanbase, but I don’t think it’s possible. What brought them to him in the first place had nothing to do with words or reason, and no words or reason can bring them back. What will be interesting is how he tries: will Trump attack the new favorite, Ben Carson, or will he continue his assault on Jeb Bush?

Carson, who now outpolls Trump in Iowa by a significant margin, is difficult to figure out. It’s hard for the other candidates to go negative against him because even people (like me) who don’t want to vote for him still think of him as a decent man. The usual Trump bombast might backfire. On the other hand, a more solid performance from Carson might increase his lead, especially if he looks less bewildered than last time.

For Bush, who I think who would do the best job as President, the challenge is to show himself as the best candidate. His campaign has featured the most well-thought-out policy proposals of any of them, but he has yet to translate earnest desire for the job into a more inspirational fire in the belly that will draw supporters to his cause.

Of all of the candidates, Marco Rubio has risen the most in my estimation through his debate performance. He consistently knows what he’s talking about and comes up with thoughtful, conservative answers. His poll numbers have been rising, and another good performance could convince undecided voters that he is up to the job.

Since her inspiring performance last time, Carly Fiorina has been coasting back down to the middle of the pack. She’s the most credible of the outsider candidates, and this is her chance to show it again. Cruz, too, could use this debate as the chance to push ahead of the pack. As the only candidate to straddle the outsider-insider divide, he could pick up some of the supporters Trump is losing, especially if he manages to sound more bellicose. They seem to like that.

Christie has been out of the news so much I keep forgetting he’s running. He had a good showing last time, but something seems to be holding him back. Likewise, Kasich has been getting some supporters, but seems blocked by the other mainstream candidates. Paul will keep looking for the libertarian moment. Sadly, I don’t think 2016 is it. But some good answers on civil liberties questions might brighten his candidacy.

Huckabee will probably make some good conservative answers and sell a few more books, which seems to be the point of his candidacy.

If you’re tired of my opinions, here are some from a few other people:

Blue on blue

Standard

Saturday Night Live’s send up of the Democratic debate wasn’t half bad. Larry David appearing as Bernie Sanders fulfilled the wishes more viewers than anything since Tina Fey played Sarah Palin.

But my favorite moment was Kate McKinnon as Hillary Clinton answering the question about her refusal to obey the law on classified information while Secretary of State: “I welcome this question because I rehearsed this one the longest.” 

Nailed it.

Vegas, the morning after

Standard

The story of the night at the Democrats’ Las Vegas Debate was that Hillary 6.0 was ClintonCo’s most bug-free release since 2009. She made no obvious errors, and her anger subroutine was almost as good as real live angry man Bernie Sanders. Her logic programming was still flawed, as shown in the discussion of whether she was progressive or moderate, but flawed logic may be a feature, not a bug, with the Democratic electorate. All in all, though, I think she calmed the Democratic Establishment’s nerves, and may have helped to stave off the Draft Biden movement. There will be more stumbles–Hillary is still a deeply flawed candidate–but this competent performance may stop the slide, for now.

Sanders’s performance was also strong. He came off at times as a crazy, partially deaf old man, and at one point he definitely wasn’t paying attention, but he, too, made no obvious errors. Sanders projected his weird vision of bourgeois socialism as effectively as his followers could have hoped, and recovered from his earlier struggles with black Democrats by showing that he had been adequately reeducated in the new dogma (which he likely believed all along, but lacked the adequate buzz words to convey).

As to the rest: O’Malley sleepwalked through most of the debate, but showed some flashes of fire at the end when discussing green energy, an issue no one cares about. Webb spent half his time complaining that he wasn’t given enough time, and the other half demonstrating that there’s no place for men like him in the Democratic party. I’d love to see him on stage at the next Republican debate. And Chafee. Even though he’s had months to prepare, his answers sounded like what you’d hear if you broke into his house in the middle of the night, woke him up, shined a flashlight in his eyes, and demanded he explain his PATRIOT Act vote. I don’t think he or Lessig have much of a shot, but I know who would’ve added more serious content to the debate.

On a lighter note, here are some of the best debate tweets of the night:

Mutants:

On guns:

Simpsons quote:


Dodging the question:

Webb:

 

Chafee:

InfoSec:

The PATRIOT Act:

Biden?

And my favorite, on legalizing marijuana: