1st Dem debate: We monitored reports by those who watched so you wouldn’t have to

by WorldTribune Staff, June 27, 2019

[Editor’s Note: We had other things to do Wednesday night but heard about the debate. A Google search on: ‘first democratic debate, what a joke’ turned up only serious liberal Democrat media reports. Not a single conservative news report or analysis showed up. So because Google took the exercise seriously, we did too.]

Of the 10 candidates on the Democratic debate stage on June 26, none “went for the jugular, let alone a gentle slap of the wrist,” of Sen. Elizabeth Warren, who is polling near the top of the heap, American Spectator columnist Dan Flynn noted.

“Julian Castro went after Beto O’Rourke and Tim Ryan and Tulsi Gabbard took issue with one another. How does that help? Anyone can kick a poodle. It takes guts to take on the big dog. No one showed any guts.”

At 9:35 p.m., President Donald Trump tweeted a brief reaction to the debate: “BORING!”

Later, after the broadcast of the debate was hit by a technical glitch, Trump tweeted: “.@NBCNews and @MSNBC should be ashamed of themselves for having such a horrible technical breakdown in the middle of the debate. Truly unprofessional and only worthy of a FAKE NEWS Organization, which they are!”

Flynn’s scorecard from the first debate of the 2020 presidential election season:

Warren won: Elizabeth Warren did nothing to damage herself in Wednesday night’s debate. In fact, in showing fight and folksiness in her answers, she helped her standing. Surprisingly, none of the nine on the stage went after her.

Beto Disappearing: Beto O’Rourke came across as not only a chastened, understated candidate, but one who lacks the intelligence to go toe-to-toe with the intellectually superior — Jay Inslee excluded — men and women who surrounded. Youth helps when it means vigor. It hurts when it signifies immaturity.

Line of the Night: John Delaney, a congressman from Maryland, delivered the line of the night. He warned Democrats to provide “real solutions, not impossible promises.”

Problem Solved: Congressman Tim Ryan solves school shootings thusly: “trauma-based care in every school,” “social and emotional learning,” and “a mental health counselor in every school.” He rebounded nicely by lecturing his fellow Democrats: “We are not connecting with the working-class people.” He characterized his party, at least the perception of it, as “coastal, elitist, Ivy League,” and that for Democrats to beat Mitch McConnell and other Republicans they needed to appeal to working people.

Vote for Pedro: Beto O’Rourke spent half of his first answer at the Democratic presidential debate speaking to viewers in Spanish. He later answered in Spanish in response to a question from a moderator in Spanish. Cory Booker also spoke Spanish on a question involving immigration. Julian Castro showed his bilingualism in his closing remarks. When one considers that the United States contains a larger amount of people who speak Spanish than Spain, the strategy does not seem so harebrained.

Bill de Blah Blah Blah: The mayor of New York, the city home to the largest portion of one-percenters of any in the United States, Wall Street, and Saks Fifth Avenue, Citigroup, American Express, and so many other corporations, demonized one-percenters and corporations during Wednesday night’s debate. Did he not have the last five-and-a-half years to solve this issue in the belly of the beast? Did he not call it “mission critical” to provide corporate welfare to Amazon in exchange for the behemoth opening a headquarters there? The former Warren Wilhem’s contempt for the one-percenters stems perhaps from, as it does for many, envy. Many presidential polls peg his support at beneath one percent.

Exit, Stage Left: Three people on the stage — Tulsi Gabbard, Amy Klobuchar, and John Delaney — struck this viewer as sane, non-programmed human beings. The other seven consistently relied on talking points and ideological bromides robotically without reference to their own thoughts, which seemed scarce. The paucity of sane candidates who speak their minds strikes as especially troubling when you consider Bernie Sanders, Eric Swalwell, and the other screwballs who dominate Thursday’s lineup.

Rachel Maddow and Chuck Todd Happen: Notice that the MSNBC debate went south as soon as Rachel Maddow and Chuck Todd commandeered the microphones? Technical difficulties allowed a hot mic to continue—On the audience? On the three previous moderators? Both?—as the new moderators took over. MSNBC needed to cut to a commercial to recover.

Breitbart’s John Nolte noted that Todd managed to speak more words during the debate than seven of the actual candidates.

“What makes this feat even more impressive is that while all ten candidates were on the stage for the full two hours, Todd managed to top seven of them during his single hour of moderating,” Nolte wrote.

FiveThirtyEight, who originally did the word count, adds that Todd’s 1633 word count is only four fewer words than that of Warren.

Here is the breakdown:
1. Sen. Cory Booker: 2181 words
2. Beto O’Rourke came in second with 1932
3. Warren: 1637
4. Todd: 1633
5. Sen. Amy Klobuchar: 1614
6. Rep. Julian Castro: 1588
7. Tim Ryan: 1383
8. Rep. Tulsi Gabbard: 1243
9. Maddow: 1163
10. John Delaney: 1060
11. Lester Holt: 1001
12. Mayor Bill de Blasio: 881
13. Jay Inslee: 875
14. Savannah Guthrie: 748
15. Jose Diaz-Balart: 377

Slate declared Todd the night’s loser.

“The Meet the Press anchor was the clear loser of the first of the two debates this week, which is a bit of a shame, because he was so evidently excited to be there,” Slate writes. “But excitement can easily transmute into disorder, and a stumbly, fumbly question-asker does a disservice to both the viewers at home and the candidates on stage.”

None of the debate moderators nor any of the candidates challenged Warren on her false Native American ancestry claims.

While Warren’s proponents argue that the debate was policy-oriented, critics pointed to Todd’s question aimed toward Gabbard on her past controversial positions on gay rights.

“Let me say that there is no one in our government at any level who has the right to tell any American who they should be allowed to love or who they should be allowed to marry,” Gabbard said. “My record in Congress for over six years shows my commitment to fighting for LGBTQ equality.”

During the debate, Gabbard’s sister tweeted, “It’s clear who MSNBC wants to be president: Elizabeth Warren. They’re giving her more time than all the other candidates combined. They aren’t giving any time to Tulsi at all.”

In many online polls following the debate, Gabbard was voted the winner.

Castro agreed with the other 9 candidates on the crowded 2020 Democratic presidential debate stage that women have the right to choose to have an abortion.

But the former secretary of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) took it a step further. Castro said he believes “trans females” — or as many would call them, men — should have access to “women’s reproductive rights” as well.

Asked if his government health care plan would cover abortions, Castro responded:

“Yes it would. I don’t believe only in reproductive freedom, I believe in reproductive justice. What that means is just because a woman or, let’s also not forget, someone in the trans community — a trans female — is poor does not mean they should not have the ability to exercise that right to choose.”

“Trans females” refers to men who identify as or have transitioned to become women. Because they do not have women’s reproductive systems, they are not capable of getting pregnant nor having an abortion.

Conservative commentator Ben Shapiro tweeted: “So glad Castro just clarified that biological men must be granted abortion rights.”

For Castro “to spend time on-stage saying that ‘trans women’ or men should have access to abortions completely misses the mark on what the majority of Democrat women actually want to hear when it comes to talking about abortion rights,” columnist Chrissy Clark wrote for The Federalist. “This comment paints a broader picture that Democrats are simply pandering to people who will hand them votes regardless of coming up with or implementing legislation that would actually help them.”

Breitbart columnist Neil Munro noted that “Pro-transgender activists insist that women do become men, and men do become women, merely by declaring they have an opposite-sex ‘gender identity.’ ”

This means that Castro’s term — “trans female” — “actually refers to a person with a male body who cannot get pregnant, despite the person’s female ‘gender identity.’ Castro should have said ‘transman’ or ‘transgender man,’ which activists say describes a woman with a male ‘gender identity.’ ”

The activists “also argue that a woman’s ‘male gender identity’ means that she is a man who can get pregnant,” Munro wrote. “The idea of a ‘man who can get pregnant’ seems ridiculous to many Americans. But activists welcome the contradiction because they agree with the feminist demand that government must ensure sexual equality by blurring, hiding, and barring any legal or civic distinctions between the two sexes.”

That demand “is now dominant in the Democratic Party,” Munro wrote. “For example, all but a handful of Democrats voted in May for the pro-transgender ‘Equality Act’ which would bar women from excluding men from their civic clubs, scholarships, sports leagues, bathrooms, showers, and other female institutions.”


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