| | | I thought tonight's debate was the best one by far. The questions were good for the most part, they allowed a little leeway for the answers without allowing too much, the answers were mostly pretty good, the candidates were intelligent, a little sniping but not too much, some hedging and evasiveness of course (when is there none in this kind of event?), but they answered the questions more often than not.
No one had a bad debate, but a couple of them surprised me a little. I think Booker has his eye on VP, but he would have more of a chance of that if he had won a statewide race in PA rather than NJ. Still, he could be a pull for black votes which could swing the race in a few states with increased turnout, including perhaps PA, MI and WI, the three swing states in '16. He was articulate and strong, making some very good speeches at times and went out of his way to not put down other candidates, emphasizing that they were all far better than Trump. Klobuchar was stronger than in past debates too, I thought she was very effective, but still don't think she has a chance. Too bad because she would probably make a good president. She, Biden and Pete all critiqued Medicare for All, staking about the "moderate" Democratic space.
Bernie and Liz say that Americans want something radical and I'm sure that that is what their supporters tell them that that is what they want, but I can't believe it. Americans for the most part have never wanted anything revolutionary, even during the Revolution and during the Civil War. You can fool them into doing something revolutionary, a crisis can cajole or push them into it, but in the normal course of events, they will reject it for the most part, even if there is always a slice of the population who will scream for it. Even though there were screams about equality after the Revolution was over and some of the state constitutions fined people for things like "putting on airs" (yes, I'm serious about that; see The Radicalism of the American Revolution ), the upper class kept their heads, their property and their wealth after British loyalists were sent packing to Canada, slaves weren't freed legally even though a number of people called for it and some of them even freed their slaves and, in the North, one by one states did adopt laws that eventually freed slaves over a period of decades. But it was all very orderly and tame compared to what happened in Europe.
And with the Civil War, there was certainly a revolutionary period where blacks were freed, elected to offices and promised 40 acres and a mule, but then that promise was reneged on, there was widespread violence against them in the South and over the next 30 years, Lost Cause Southerners retook their governments and turned blacks in sharecroppers, restricted their movement again, kept them from voting and holding political office, put them into debt servitude and instituted widespread convict labor, which became a kind of substitute for the work camps that existed during the Antebellum. Jim Crow was different from the Antebellum, but as a famous and excellent book and documentary said in their titles, it was "Slavery by Another Name". Not revolutionary at all. And the North allowed it, there wasn't widespread rebellion against it in the North even it a number of people were repulsed by it. They were mostly silent about it.
For the most part, Americans are not into explicit Revolutions and never have been, even if a vocal minority are and always have been. That vocal minority is fooling Sanders and Warren. |
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