After a short time, it seemed like Bluto (John Belushi) would come out on stage and start throwing cake. Or maybe Harpo Marx would start blowing his horn at the participants. Yet, all we had was the remaining candidates for the Democrats’ nomination for president. This was a political spectacle never quite seen before.
One would think they might anticipate having a large audience derived from the addition of Moneybags Bloomberg to the lineup after he poured hundreds of millions into his campaign. It turns out the TV audience was the largest ever for a Democrat debate. Excellent timing for the six people on stage to go after each other like family members after the death of the wealthy matriarch.
Fifteen minutes into the debate I tweeted we are really going to need fact checkers for this slugfest. But, since they are all left-wing operations, that would be futile. True to form PolitiFact almost exclusively went after Bloomberg while letting the others off the hook.
One fascinating part of this debate was how little the opposing candidates went after frontrunner Bernie Sanders. Here is a question that one of them needs to ask, but never have: “Senator Sanders, this is your second attempt at gaining the presidential nomination of the Democrat party. When are you thinking about registering as a Democrat? The rest of us up here are members of the Democrat Party and have worked for the party for years. Are you willing to commit to registering as a Democrat on your next trip to Vermont?” The fact that he has gotten away with this for five plus years and none of the other candidates nor the press has called him on it speaks volumes.
Even Bloomberg, who took a hiatus for 12 years so he could be elected Mayor of New York City, has been a registered Democrat most of his adult life. They called him on his temporary foray into the Republican ranks, but no one will say a thing to Uncle Bernie.
So much for Minnesota nice. Did you see Senator Klobucher going after Mayor Buttigieg? To be fair Buttigieg did go after her. But she did get quite personal in her attack on that young man. You know — Senators thinking they know more than Mayors. The real point here (if you are a supporter of the Democrat party) this argument must have left you in a tizzy. How do you make a choice between supporting the gay or the woman? You certainly would not want to criticize either and risk being called either a homophobe or anti-woman. Choices can be so challenging in the modern Democrat party.
We did learn why Mayor Pete has gotten some backlash from his local community because of the job he did in South Bend. He spoke of his targeting help to DACA recipients and transsexuals. He appeared to establish committees for every rainbow coalition group deemed to have special needs by the national party in major cities such as Los Angeles, New York and Seattle. The question must be asked: Exactly how many of these people are in this Mid-West town (not city) of 102,000 people? Were these projects strictly an effort to build credentials for Mayor Pete? How much did they draw away from the basic blocking and tackling of running his town like paving streets, preventing crime and collecting trash? Apparently many of the local residents think so.
Then there is the special case of the former mayor of New York City. He spent so much money on high level consultants. They seem to be the same people who advised Mitt Romney in his presidential campaign. I am not a fan of the former mayor because of his policies and particularly his reversals since entering the race. It seems the only thing he stands behind is banning Big Gulps from 7-11 stores. Any Jew who supports gun control, like Bloomberg does, radiates ignorance of the times Jews have been prevented from defending themselves placing all guns in the hands of government.
His advisors had to know the hectoring Senator Warren would go after him regarding his former sex-related charges. Let’s be clear he is no Harvey Weinstein. Yet after being viciously attacked regarding NDAs (Non-Disclosure Agreements) from his company, two days later he offered to release some people from the NDAs. Just think if that night he had turned to Senator Warren and said “I am happy to do that. I have nothing to hide.” That would have shut her up and would have left him with a positive perception.
Yet, the one thing that is so easy to defeat are the attacks regarding the policy of stop, question and frisk. While he was being withered by numerous candidates on stage there was an easy comeback that he should have been prepared to launch. “Yes, there were some imperfections in the program of stop, QUESTION and frisk. There were some people who suffered inappropriately as a result of the program. But I am not going to apologize for this program. I was mayor for 12 years. In those 12 years there were 8,600 fewer people murdered in NYC than in the previous 12 years. If you go back to the 12 years prior to Giuliani, there were 15,300 fewer people murdered in NYC. Most of those lives saved were from the Black and Latino communities. I am not going to apologize for creating an environment where people of color did not fear that a young girl would be caught in crossfire on the way home from school. I am not sure what you were doing, but my administration was saving lives and creating a safe place for those communities.”
Now that would have shut them up. Unfortunately, the mobs force all the Democrat candidates to cower. That is why the debate was a food fight that diminished the Democrats chances of getting near the White House in 2021.