Over the Better Universe, last night's debate went something like this:
Moderator: Do you agree with Donald Trump's face-down-ass-up approach to North Korean 'diplomacy'?But we don't live in the Better Universe.
Everyone: Are you fucking kidding me?
We live here. And if you watched any piece of last night's "debate", congratulations! You were a witness to history, because that was, hands down, the worst presidential debate I have ever seen. In fact I'm banking the time I spent watching it to apply it against any future community service obligations to which I may be sentenced.
The moderators were an embarrassment who seemed to realize early on that the ship was headed for the rocks and just shrugged and leaned into it. The questions were facile. The Bloomberg and "Medicare For All Will Kill Us All" commercials they ran during the breaks showed exactly what kind of crassly mercantile freak-show CBS knew it was running here. And once the candidates figured out they were on their own sans traffic cops or mediators, it turned into a Lord of the Flies scrum over whose got the conch.
Narrator: There was no conch.
I cannot imagine that the opinions of Democratic primary voters were changed very much by this mess, but there were a scattering of memorable moments, and here are a few of them...
Bloomberg really sucks at this. His awkward scripted ad-libs just lay there like dead trout. He was never more than two minutes away from a "Please clap"moment, but when you rent your own cheering section I guess that doesn't matter much. There was also this --
-- which was a big, fat, slow pitch which no one thought to belt out of the park.WOULD YOU EXPUNGE THE RECORDS OF THE BLACK & BROWN PEOPLE YOU HARRASSED INTO JAIL? #StopAndFrisk @MikeBloomberg— Frangela (@frangeladuo) February 26, 2020
Biden did...OK. Being this guy in answer to every question --
-- gets really old really fast, but his genial mention of his "Catholic school training" was a nice touch.
Mayor Pete name-checking his spouse as a teacher was a nice touch too. He also knows how to do scripted ad-libs in exactly the same way that Bloomberg does not. For example, asking Bernie how he expects to pull off a revolution if he can't support a rules change in the Senate.
How is that we got halfway through this thing and Tom Steyer was almost the only one going after Donald Trump with a sword in both hands?
Klobuchar's answer on the Corona virus was good. She and Mayor Pete fighting over who gets the hog the I-94 center lane didn't move the needle for either of them.
Warren did nothing to make me doubt that she would make a fine president. She's smart, has a confident command of the policy details, is very good public speaker, I would definitely watch a ten episode Netflix series of her verbally pistol-whipping Mike Bloomberg. Her pitch is simple: she has the chops to actually get her ideas drafted into legislation and passed into law.
Bernie was Bernie. For me, he is at his most effective when he uses humor or calmly explains why some stupid question that someone tossed his way was stupid and then pivots back to his central message. And his pitch remains the same: his revolution will sweep aside or overwhelm the creaky, slow and easily obstructed means by which a bill currently becomes a law.
For the record and the umpteenth time, I will be voting blue no matter who.
I Want Just Enough Socialism To Make Charlie Sykes Weep Tears of Blood
6 comments:
Yeah, Bernie's revolution.
Any revolution that has, as a part of its plan, "and the people will rise up," is a revolution with a bad plan. In fact in a real revolution, i.e. one with people literally shooting each other, the revolutionaries that bank on the people rising up usually end up with a noose around their necks instead.
I haven't watched any of the debates because I just... can't. I just got a new script for my blood pressure meds and I'm not tryna fuck that shit up.
As for your first video, I'd jump over a whole gang of Davids to get to a Mel.
-Doug in Sugar Pine
Like our historical Revolutionary War against Britain that led to America's independence?
AS many leaders of the day who became our "founding Fathers", quotes of them from the day as,
"If we do not stand together we will shall definitely hang separately""
Preamble of the Constitution, "We the People".
When massive wealth can control and buy unconstitutional law to make what is illegal, legal. Owning Justices to Taffy twist words to say "corporations are people" And "money is speech" and "money is how corporations speak (omitting people of wealth but including them. Twisting paid speech and the claim that money is speech.
This makes non money speech something other than speech and Thomas Paine would have some revolutionary words on that.
We agree a hundred percent here, Drifty. This was a jaw-dropping display from, fuck. The people running this debate, as well as the participants. If the moderators let people talk over other candidates for upwards of half a minute or more, why are they even there? For that matter, why are we letting big companies even run these things ever?
To be fair, most of these have been tortuous, but in sort of the traditional politics way. Maybe it's just because that last one, with OK Bloomer getting beaten up for literally like an hour by everyone else except Rat Emoji, was just so good. We got unrealistic expectations.
I have no clue if Mini Mike actually bought the audience or packed the seats or whatever, but the mere fact that we have to ask that is a bad sign.
The medium is the message. It's funny how this is forgotten but then very few understood the message to begin with. Among the few who did were no, working, what are called journalists.
The fact that all the candidates agree to these things should be understood to mean we are doomed.
At this point, the fact that Americans are not mostly rioting in the streets over what Trump has done since his impeachment "acquittal" tells me there won't be any revolution, because they don't want to risk anything. And so, since Bernie's entire plan hinges on people protesting to get guys like Mitch McConnell to suddenly wake up and care about America... He's going to end up having Obama's problem. Two years in, he'll lose whatever power he had, because the people he's counting on will do nothing and then vote to remove Dems because they "aren't giving us EVERYTHING we want", just like 2010...
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