Anybody else watching it tonight?
They are really going after each other.
When they went to climate change, you can imagine what I was thinking.
I wrote a long comment below about their discussion and decided to just delete it. You already know my position based on authentic science.
Author and investigative journalist Peter Schweizer told 'Fox & Friends' Wednesday that Sanders has more skeletons in his closet than his supporters are aware of.
https://www.foxnews.com/media/peter-schweizer-bernie-sanders-wife-campaign-money
Delving further into Sanders' history, Schweizer told Doocy that his stock portfolio shows investments that aren't "socially responsible."
"He's not buying solar company stock or buying into an organic cattle farm. He is buying Fortune 500 companies. So, he attacks Wall Street, he attacks big pharma, he attacks big oil...He is invested in those companies; that's where he is actually putting his assets," he stated.
"So, it's a major problem for Bernie: this gap between the image he portrays and the reality of how he actually conducts his own affairs," Schweizer concluded.
https://thehill.com/homenews/campaign/483850-bloomberg-trump-was-the-real-winner-of-las-vegas-debate
"Look, the real winner in the debate last night was Donald Trump, because I worry that we may be on the way to nominating somebody who cannot win in November," the former New York City mayor said. "If we choose a candidate who appeals to a small base, like Sen. Sanders, it will be a fatal error.
https://www.cnn.com/2020/02/20/politics/michael-bloomberg-debate-campaign-spending/index.html
In the unlikely event that Bloomberg wins the presidency or even just the dem nomination, it will be evidence that a rich person can buy those positions.
no matter how much money he spends, I do not have to vote for him.
I can vote for anyone I want. regardless of whether they have lots of money or not.
A politician who feels justified in telling people what size drink they are allowed to have scares the crap out of me.
On the debates... If I didn't know better, I'd swear the dem candidates want Trump to win. Who could walk away from those debates feeling confident about voting for any of them? Only a die hard leftist. Moderates, perhaps while holding their nose, will almost certainly feel the need to vote for Trump
Meanwhile, Trump's overall job approval continues to climb nicely while his approval on the economy (it's the economy stupid) in somewhat above +16.
I missed the latest Dem debate tonight and will have to read what others state about it:
Biden, the former frontrunner, was somewhat absent during the first moments of the debate. But came out strong when he told the other candidate to shut up so he could speak. He hit Steyer over his support of private prisons and shut down Sanders when he tried to chime in, which earned his cheers from the debate hall.
A strong performance ahead of the primary could help him and, before now, he had only attacked Sanders over guns and forcefully declared that he will win the South Carolina primary, which his campaign has dubbed his firewall.
In the Nevada debate, Biden had a strong performance and came in second place in the Nevada caucuses. In South Carolina, his black support has been chipped away at by other candidates. If he sits back and lets the others attack will it allow him to go into the primary without many bruises or will it make him look feeble to voters here who wants a fighter against Trump? We’ll see.
This is the 10th Democratic debate, and the candidates are arguing over the math of health care plans ... again. Feels like the same exchange could have happened in the first debate — and it probably did. But this is South Carolina, where health care is a critical issue for the electorate.
Asked about his sliding polling numbers with black voters, Biden vowed to win South Carolina.
“I’ve worked like the devil to earn the vote in the African American community,” Biden said. “I intend to win South Carolina and I will win the African American vote here in South Carolina.”
Biden, once considered the front-runner in the Democratic presidential primary race, has seen his standing slide as overwhelmingly white electorates in Iowa and New Hampshire handed more votes to candidates like Buttigieg and Klobuchar. In Nevada, Sanders' success with Latino voters has been credited with securing a victory in that state’s caucus last week.
Biden’s campaign needs both the narrative and fundraising boost that could come with a victory in South Carolina. And, due to the state’s demographics, the key to such a victory could lie with black voters.
Warren used her first substantial speaking time at Tuesday night’s debate to slam Bloomberg, saying that his past support of Republicans amounts to being the “riskiest candidate” on the stage and a candidate unworthy of Democratic voters’ trust.
“Who funded Lindsey Graham’s campaign for re-election last time? It was Mayor Bloomberg. And that’s not the only right-wing senators he has funded,” Bloomberg said.
She also referred to his backing of Scott Brown, Warren’s competition in the 2012 Senate election.
“It didn’t work, but he tried hard,” she said.
“I don't care how much money Mayor Bloomberg has. The core of the Democratic Party will never trust him. He has not earned their trust,” Warren said. “He is the riskiest candidate on this stage.”
Warren also opened her speaking time in last week’s debate in Las Vegas with a scorchingattack on Bloomberg.
Bloomberg was once again asked about stop-and-frisk, a policy that overwhelmingly targeted minorities and was ended by a federal judge. He apologized for the policy, but pivoted to ones that have made New York City safer.
Buttigieg criticized Bloomberg and said the policy was racist. He said that South Bend, Indiana, has had its own issues with race and that it’s important to be more conscious about racial inequality.
Bloomberg tried to atone, saying he “knows that my success would have been a lot harder to achieve” if he were black.
The debate opened with a question on the economy to Sanders — but his response (as well as an ensuing response from Bloomberg) prompted the topic to quickly shift to Russian interference in elections.
After being asked about why voters should support him, when the economy is growing under President Donald Trump, Sanders used his reply to take a shot at Bloomberg.
The economy, Sanders said, is only doing well “for Mr. Bloomberg” and “other billionaires” but that “things aren’t so good” for ordinary Americans.
The Republican party wasted no time in blasting Tuesday night’s debate.
“The complete chaos we saw tonight shows that none of these Democrats deserve to be anywhere near the Oval Office," Republican National Committee Chairwoman Ronna McDaniel said in a statement, released moments after the debate concluded.
"When we could hear over the crosstalk, we heard Democrats singing the same old song in support of socialism,” she added.
The Trump re-election campaign weighed in, too.
“The Democrat Party is a hot mess and tonight’s debate was further evidence that not one of these candidates is serious or can stand toe-to-toe with President Trump,” Trump 2020 national press secretary Kayleigh McEnany said. “The only thing that was clear in the chaos was that they’re all still running on Bernie Sanders’ big government socialist agenda. It doesn’t matter who emerges from the carnage, President Trump will dominate in November.”
In one back-and-forth, Klobuchar and Biden attacked each other over who wrote which gun control bills — and requested a fact checker take a look.
“I am the author of the 'boyfriend loophole' that says that domestic abusers can’t go out and get an AK47,” Klobuchar said.
“I wrote that law,” Biden interjected.
“You didn’t write that bill. I wrote that bill,” Klobuchar said.
“I did. I wrote the bill the Violence Against Women Act that took out of the hands of people who abused their —” Biden said.
“We’ll have a fact-check look at that,” Klobuchar fired back.
“Oh, let’s look at the fact check,” Biden said. “The only thing [was] that the 'boyfriend loophole' was not covered. I couldn’t get that covered. You in fact when you were as a senator tried to get it covered and Mitch McConnell is holding up on his desk right now and we’re going to lose the Violence Against Women Act across the board.”
As a senator, Biden wrote the Violence Against Women Act, which stopped people who were convicted of misdemeanor domestic violence from buying guns. But it only covers certain relationships, like married couples or those who have children with their victim. Klobuchar wrote a bill that would close that loophole by including stalkers or dating partners who aren't already covered.
So while Biden’s off the mark in the beginning, he catches up in the end. He's right to note that the VAWA is stalledin the Senate, where Majority Leader Mitch McConnell has not acted on three gun control bills passed by the Democratic-controlled House in 2019. Last February, the House passed a law closing the “Charleston loophole,” which allows the sale of a firearm if a background check is not completed within three days. It’s a loophole that allowed Dylann Roof to obtain the weapon he used to murder nine people at the Emanuel AME Church in Charleston, South Carolina, in 2015. Last March, the House passed a bill that would expand background checks for gun purchases to include buys made at gun shows, online and other private sales.
And in April 2019, the House voted to reauthorize the Violence Against Women Act with new language that would close the so-called boyfriend loophole Klobuchar mentioned — a change opposed by the powerful National Rifle Association.
The candidates were asked to provide their personal mottoes.
Here is what all seven said:
Steyer: "Every day I write a cross on my hand to remind me to tell the truth and do what's right no matter what."
Klobuchar: "Politics is about improving people's lives," she said, quoting her mentor, the late Sen. Paul Wellstone.
Biden: "When you get knocked down, you get up, and everyone's entitled to be treated with dignity."
Sanders: "Everything is impossible until it happens," he said, quoting Nelson Mandela.
Warren: She quoted Matthew 25:40, saying, "Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these my brethren, ye have done it to me."
Buttigieg: "If you would be a leader, you must first be a servant," and "We should treat others the way we want to be treated."
Bloomberg: "I've trained for this job for a long time, and when I get it I'm going to do something, not just talk about it."
In a debate with a lot of cross-talk among candidates, Biden noticed that he was the only one minding the time clock.
"Why am I stopping? No one else stops," he said. "My Catholic school training."
Reminding viewers once again of Sanders' comments (made in the 1980s) about the Castro regime in Cuba, Buttigieg slammed the Vermont senator for expressing "nostalgia" for revolutionary politics.
"I am not looking forward to a scenario where it comes down to Donald Trump with his nostalgia for the social order of the 1950s and Bernie Sanders with a nostalgia for the revolutionary politics of the 1960s," Buttigieg said. "This is not about what coups were happening in the 1970s or '80s. This is about the future. This is about 2020.
"We are not going to survive or succeed, and certainly not going to win, by reliving the Cold War," he continued. "And we're not going to win these critical, critical House and Senate races if people in those races have to explain why the nominee of the Democratic Party is telling people to look at the bright side of the Castro regime."
We don't quite have as many people as the early debates did, but seven candidates still feels like a lot.
Many of the candidates clearly feel they haven't gotten enough time and are firing back at the moderators when told they're out of time. And other candidates can seem to disappear for particular chunks of time.
Steyer had his strongest moment in the debate so far when he attacked Russia for interfering in the 2016 election — which was confirmed by 17 American intelligence agencies — and its purported interference this year. He also excoriated Trump and Republicans in Congress for not standing up to Russian President Vladimir Putin.
He also gave a nod to his Need to Impeach campaign, which he started before he ran for president.
"There was a hostile, foreign attack on our election last time, and the president sided with the hostile foreign power. That's why I started Need to Impeach. That's what we have to do. We have to oppose a president who sides with a hostile foreign power that commits cyberwarfare against the United States of America," Steyer said.
"That's where we are. Where are all these patriotic Republicans who wave the flag but, when we're actually under attack, they side with our enemies? It's outrageous. That's why he should have been impeached. They covered it up, and I was years before these people. There's something wrong here. We're under attack, and they're not doing a darn thing about it."
Asked whether he would move the U.S. Embassy in Israel back to Tel Aviv after the Trump administration moved it to Jerusalem in May 2018, Sanders, who is Jewish, said it is "something we would take into consideration," but he didn't provide much more of an answer past that.
Trump's decision to move the embassy delighted the Israeli government but angered Palestinians and brought concerns that it could further destabilize a fraught region, and it has been a point of contention since.
Many are curious where Sanders would land. The progressive Vermont senator has received much criticism for his stance on Israel, and the recent fight he has picked with the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, which is considered the direct lobbying arm of the Israeli government, has only made that intrigue pick up steam.
Sanders, who has argued that the U.S. must also be supportive of a Palestinian state, said AIPAC is a platform for "leaders who express bigotry and oppose basic Palestinian rights."
Bloomberg has spent the first 90 minutes of tonight's debate retaliating against Sanders and Warren, the two who have lobbed the most attacks toward him.
Mostly, Bloomberg's approach tonight has revolved around attacking Trump and saying he has what it takes to beat the president.
The only other candidate Bloomberg has attacked is Biden, who has yet to target Bloomberg. Last week, Biden attacked Bloomberg 12 times, focusing on his contentious stop-and-frisk policy when he was mayor of New York and his non-disclosure agreements with women who have worked for him.
Buttigieg pointed out that states that haven't expanded Medicaid have seen higher rates of hospital closings, and he noted that those states have larger minority populations that then cannot get health care coverage. That's true, according to an Urban Institute accounting, and an outsize percentage of communities of colors in those states carry medical debt that is now in collections.
The medical debt is incurred at hospitals, which people go to in emergencies when facing dire health crises. When they don't have insurance coverage to pay for their treatment, they take on that debt, injuring their credit and economic situations long term. It also means poor rural hospitals don't receive reimbursement for treating those patients.
By refusing the Medicaid expansion that states were offered through the Affordable Care Act, the South Carolina government has rejected more than $10.5 billion since 2014, which would provide health care coverage to nearly 200,000 low-income people — many of whom are members of minority groups.
The decisions of the 15 states that have declined expansion have contributed to a rural hospital crisis in which 166 infirmaries have closed nationwide since 2005 — four alone in South Carolina — according to the North Carolina Rural Health Research Program. The crisis peaked in 2019 with the closings of 19 facilities in the U.S., and four more have shut their doors this year.