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Charleston Democratic debate Discussion thread
New debate, new thread. (Unfortunately somewhat late as the debate was streamed right at the time I wrote this post.)
The debate was being live streamed in CBS's channel in YouTube.
Twitter is one of the debate partners so expect a few questions from there.
The south Carolina primaries are due February 29th and there willl be no more debates until after super tuesday so this debate is pretty important.
I can't tell if I'm a crazy Bernie Bro, or if there is something weird about this crowd. Not that Sanders has had great responses, but there have been some aggressive boos directed toward him and very few supporters despite being a leading candidate. Regardless, this has been a pretty sloppy debate and it really just highlights how bad this format is. Last week, there was an exchange between Sanders and Buttigieg that started to get very specific about the details of their policies and Chuck Todd cut them off immediately. This week, the moderators are allowing candidates to go well over their speaking time, but they're just using it to share portions of their stump speech. Watching these debates just feels like a waste of time, unless you want to be totally up to speed on the media's coverage of it. There has got to be a better way to do this, especially in the age of on-demand streaming and podcasts and all of that stuff.
Apparently tickets to the debate start at $1,700. So no, it’s not just you.
Moderators have also been lobbing him some ridiculous softballs. Overall a shit-show
orof a debate.Yeah I'm gonna have to agree. I'm watching the debates and I haven't really gathered anything from the candidates past some really simplified foreign policy stuff.
Yeah, this is why I prefaced everything with my self-deprecating Bernie Bro line. I really try to rein in my own biases as much as possible, but this week has been particularly challenging. Specifically, I've had trouble finding the line between distinguishing fair coverage and criticism of Sanders and his progressive policies, and the influence of corporate media. Obviously, anyone will be more perceptive to media bias or critiques of their preferred candidate, but with Sanders it often seems excessive - even when I am trying to be as objective as possible. Despite how I might sound right now, I'm not completely blinded by my support. For example, I actually defended the content of the leaked DNC emails back in 2016.
I do want to push back on this idea a little bit. Obviously, yes, there are a lot of moderate Democrats out there; however, I think this idea of nominating a moderate that can potentially get support from independents and moderate republicans - a strategy the Democrats have mostly followed since the early 90s - is flawed. For starters, there haven't been many serious progressive options until very recently. Right now we obviously have Sanders and Warren, and they have about 40% of support nationally. Also, those polls aren't clear on who might support their policies but favor another candidate for his/her perceived electability. Prior to 2016, there really wasn't anyone like those two (unless you want to count Nader and maybe Dennis Kucinich), and there hadn't been for a long time. Since 1992, the most progressive candidate to earn the party's nomination was Barack Obama, who at the time was perceived to be a lot more progressive than he turned out to be. We've grown accustomed to having everything exist within this moderate framework, while the progressive wing of the party had either joined fringe parties like Green or Peace and Freedom, registered independent, stopped following politics, or just settled for a moderate.
I think it is very plausible that there is an untapped progressive voting bloc made up of young people and socially progressive working class people. If we go back to 2008, when Obama excited the progressive base, he ended up with highest percentage of the popular vote for any Democrat since 1964. The other thing that might distort the perception of how many "far-left" or progressive voters there are in the party is nomination process itself. I think the primary process has some bias favoring moderate candidates, given the early primary states, who primary voters tend to be, and the way the media covers (or, in the case of 2016, doesn't cover) progressive candidates. As yourself, how would things be different if we got rid of the Iowa caucus and replaced it with all the states that make up Super Tuesday? I would be shocked, given how unremarkable and average the rest of my life and opinions are, if there weren't a lot more people like me.
U.S. voter turnout for Presidential elections is only 55% in a good year. Young and progressive voters don't bother with candidates who fail to represent their interests or communicate with them adequately.
That's not even counting people who have to overcome serious structural obstacles (e.g. racist voting requirements, unpaid time off work, or under-supply of polling locations) to voting. The belief that voting doesn't matter is a chronic problem with this constituency.
The hope is that Sanders' candidacy might have unique, motivating appeal to those who've been apathetic or obstructed previously.
Bloomberg had a quip about some hundred black New York politicians he helped elect being in the audience tonight... maybe that has something to do with it? Not those people specifically, but a chosen audience.
I wonder how? Electability is purely dependent on whether the electorate agrees on it, Single payer Medicare for all is clearly cheaper than what we have and could be accomplished if we just seize a majority of the Senate and the presidency (which is what the whole election is about, seizing a majority of the Senate and the presidency and keeping the house so we can pass our policy and fight against stuff like the Electoral College by expanding the house, abolishing VoterID and making election day a federal holiday, which will require absurd turnout especially with said voterID and voter rolls being purged and courts being staffed and the impeachment trial being a partisan joke) and the very media they watch be coming increasingly polarized or falsely indifferent and workers' wages being stagnant for the last 40 years and climate change becoming increasingly potent and the infrastructure crisis and student loans indebting a whole generation and Bloomberg just ad-buying his way into the presidency as if it's a joke? Honestly? I feel like if Bernie or whoever doesn't pass all this policy and defeat all these problems and make the Senate as proportional as we can make it to hold back the (usually) Republicans in small states which have laughably inproportionate representation spread, some horrible, dystopian shit will happen in this nation (more than what already has) and especially so with trump/Republicans' undemocratic firing of witnesses, passing of voterID laws, removal of polling stations, staffing of the Supreme Court and other courts, and the phony impeachment trial which will also send a message to conservative politicians all over the world, many already in power in Britain, Brazil, India, Japan, Australia that democracy can be snuffed out and I can't imagine anyone being a 'moderate' hearing this.
Why? I lean hard Sanders/Warren because everything I cited (which is definitely rant-y and 'end of the world-y as fuck, thank you) is, as you said, true and really important (an emergency which if unattended will continue resulting in thousands of people dying every year). We don't want healthcare, we need it and if we don't get it, bad things will keep happening.
Same thing with student debt, but less desperate. Turning these things free will free up thousands of dollars per person per year, which is what the economy needs, right?
As for military spending I can reasonably agree if the military refocuses it's spending to stuff like repairs and replacement of old technology (and demanding the EU to follow on their spending, one of the very few things I agree with trump on), although I don't know what is spending now so a serious alternative model is not something I can provide.
As for higher taxes it's how all the benefits described get paid for and can't be as they are now, even for the middle class.
AFAIK (not very far), Gun ownership only changes if you're getting a gun and if you already have one, not much changes. Even if we wanted to ban our firearms, the second amendment is too entrenched to be changed. This also applies to your climate change comment.
I like Bernie and Warren because they attack the reasons people want the US to be as it is, which is big moneyed interests and people lobbying congress to do nothing or make things worse, along with media outlets saying 'this is radical' because their ad revenue coming from large corporations who would lose money if this form of welfare was implemented despite everyone else.
Some reasons why people might not be for Medicare-for-all are that you have good health insurance and ate worried that it will be worse, or that you work in the healthcare industry and are worried about what might happen to your job. Or you might just think it has no chance.
It's less about whether you think people deserve better healthcare and more about your worldview about the consequences of pursuing it. The future isn't easy to predict and people disagree.
If I might give some responses other than skybrian's:
I never thought I would long for the good old days of NBC, but the moderation tonight has been an absolute nightmare, and has made watching this an exhausting slog.
As an aside, it feels very intentional that despite being second in SC polling, Sanders somehow keeps getting booed in response to every answer, whether good, bad, or standard, in direct contrast to every previous debate. I'm sure the fact that CBS had half an hour of commentary about how unelectable he is directly before the debate started had nothing to do with that, either.
I agree, the 'socialist' smear question has already been used against Bernie...
Moderation was extremely poor! The crowd was ridiculous. Especially when they started booing Sanders when he said Cuba's literacy program was a good thing.
I'm surprised I haven't seen this brought up very often, especially in the post-debate commentary on the major networks. I have a hard time believing she would do well against Trump. She always looks nervous, or, given her history, angry and on the verge of losing her composure which pretty much happened in the previous debate.
As I understand it, Sanders's healthcare plan would not in fact band private insurance. Was a bit peeved that Pete just went back to that topic and Sanders didn't have a chance to retort. Also disliked Pete talking over Sanders during Sanders's time to talk.
Admittedly I started watching towards the end so I don't know how the rest went. It was interesting how some of the candidates went for a joke on that last question.
Private insurance will just do what Medicare advantage plans do now. They’re already planning for it and the big insurers are buying up Medicare advantage plans and figuring out how to submit claims to CMS. This is also part of the impetus behind pivots to managed care and filling in parts of the healthcare industry traditionally handled by healthcare providers, like having remote or automated prescription refills. They partly want to cut costs to lower reimbursements, but this is also how they can make profits by taking capitated payments from the government per member rather than paying fees-for-service.
There is also a market for supplemental coverage that goes above and beyond what Medicare provides.
Pete looked pretty reasonable, in the first few debates. But the more you see of him, the more you start to dislike him. He comes across as rude and whiny.
My favorite debate so far. Hilarious!