Thursday night’s Democratic debate was held in Houston, at Texas Southern University.
Before last night’s third debate among the Democrats who would be President, the buzz was over Andrew Yang’s campaign teaser that, in Houston, he was going to do “something no presidential candidate has ever done before in history.”
In the age of Trump, this is quite a statement. Thankfully, it turned out to not be anything obscene, although it was perhaps a bit garish.
To give people a test drive of his basic income plan that would give every U.S. adult $1,000 a month in guaranteed income, Yang announced, “My campaign will now give a freedom dividend of $1,000 a month for an entire year to ten American families, someone watching this at home right now. If you believe that you can solve your own problems better than any politician, go to yang2020.com and tell us how $1,000 a month will help you do just that. This is how we will get our country working for us again, the American people.”
In reality, it’s even simpler than that: All you have to do is go to Yang’s website and his enter your name and email “for a chance to be randomly selected” to “win” the $12,000 prize.
The gimmick worked: Hundreds of thousands of potential voters flocked to the site. And every person who signed up imagined briefly what it would be like if every adult in the household got a “no matter what” check every month from Uncle Sam, while they gave the Yang campaign a pretty great list to take his campaign to the next level.
For what will ultimately cost Yang 120K, this may be one greatest debate gimmicks of all time.
The other gimmick at last night’s debate was when Julian Castro called into question whether Biden—who would be the first President to reach his 80s in his first term—had the basic faculties to be President.
A fair issue to be sure, but a sensitive one. Uncle Joe is a beloved elder of the Democratic party that gave up his nearly automatic bid in 2016 (in the last fifty years, Dems have always given the nomination to the Vice President) because he was grieving the death of his son.
In the first debate, audiences were forced to contend with this issue by the only candidate who can really make the case: Joe Biden. For two hours, the “confused” Biden looked like the guy endlessly wandering the parking lot to find his car.
If that Biden returned to additional debates, his numbers would have continued to fall and he would have been toast. But, in his second debate and this third one, he has proven serviceable, which is all many voters want when it comes to getting rid of Trump.
Nonetheless, Castro came loaded for bear, ready to call out Biden at the first moment his age started to show.
In a wishful redux of It’s a Wonderful Life, Castro thought he would play the heroic young George Bailey, correcting a befuddled old Mr. Gower on his erroneously filling what would be a deadly prescription.
“Are you forgetting what you said two minutes ago? Are you forgetting already what you said just two minutes ago?”
“Are you forgetting what you said two minutes ago?” Castro hectored. “Are you forgetting already what you said just two minutes ago? I mean, I can’t believe that you said two minutes ago that they had to buy in and now you're saying they don't have to buy in. You're forgetting that.”
In case you (or Biden) missed it, he was sure to get in the word “forgetting” three times. Oh, and it turned out that Biden was actually right about what he had said—and Castro was just scolding the old guy for no reason and looking a real jerk in doing so.
Biden was also confronted during the debate by something he once said about slavery: “I’ll be damned if I feel responsible to pay for what happened 300 years ago.” He used the opportunity to prod poor African American parents to do better—telling them, incomprehensibly, to “play the record player at night” so they will hear more spoken words.
Biden, who has been in elected office almost continuously for the last fifty years, was decidedly on the wrong side of history in the ongoing struggle against the United States apartheid for much of the 1970s and 1980s. His thinking evolved in recent decades to the point where our nation’s first African American President chose him to be his Vice President.
Unfortunately, like many whites and most politicians of his age group, Biden’s past includes thinly veiled race baiting. That something many people can relate to and move past—if he owns it.
What’s not going to play, though, is for Biden to sidestep a straightforward apology for past race-baiting, and to use that time in a Trumpesque targeting of black parents for their under-performing children. Good grief: Does the Biden campaign not realize that African Americans are his strongest contingency?
Beyond Biden and the two gimmick-meisters, the seven remaining candidates all gave solid performances in what was once again more like a Q&A candidate forum than a traditional debate. ABC deserves immense credit for asking reasonable questions and actually giving candidates time to answer them.
Mayor Pete Buttigieg stood out, with his Mr. Rogers-like ability to ooze maturity and speak like an adult, yet make people want to listen to what he’s saying.
U.S. Senators Amy Klobuchar and Cory Booker were also intriguing, both coming across as people you’d like to have a beer with and would pick as the jury foreman—the secret sauce for any presidential candidate.
Elizabeth Warren, once again, sounded like a different sort of earnest Jimmy Stewart character, and validated her slow and steady march up the polls with another strong performance.
U.S. Senator Bernie Sanders pounded away at his sweet spot of the wealthy controlling not only the nearly all the wealth, but all the power. It’s a great message but maybe there should be a limit to how many times he can say “three people own more than the bottom 50 percent!”
Former U.S. Representative Beto O’Rourke still comes off a bit more like Keanu Reeves than JFK, but his solid performance revealed him slowly evolving into a serious candidate.
U.S. Senator Kamala Harris had many great lines, including opening up with a message for Donald Trump (“we all know he’s watching”):
[T]he American people are so much better than this. And we know that the vast majority of us have so much more in common than what separates us, regardless of our race, where we live, or the party with which we’re registered to vote. And I plan on focusing on our common issues, our common hopes and desires, and in that way, unifying our country, winning this election, and turning the page for America.
And now, President Trump, you can go back to watching Fox News.
Geez, can you imagine the look on Trump’s face when he heard that?