Well, here we are on the near eve of the 4th show in the series titled “Debate” with a field of 12 entered (CNN Tuesday, Oct. 15, 5 p.m., two CNN talking heads and a NY Times editor are the panel).
Next time, November, the qualifications again move up – to 165,000 small contributors and a 3% polling threshold, which will likely allow Andrew Yang and Tom Steyer to gain the stage while again barring two of the most interesting intelligent able candidates. And this word just in as they say. Yang is a yes. Well, he is promising free money.
Either Sen. Michael Bennet of Colorado or Gov. Steve Bullock of Montana, would crush Donald Trump and could put this county on a path of informed liberal government. But they cannot get traction so they are not on the stage. “Politics,” it has been said, “ain’t beanbag” and neither Bennet or Bullock raised enough beans for their bags to qualify for this debate.
Of course, the Democratic National Committee pulled a fast one with the debate Tuesday at first promising to break it into two sensible nights of 6 candidates each. But it reneged, maybe to save some production money, and so we will watch a 12-way food fight.
As the 12 candidates (Biden, Warren, Sanders, Buttigieg, Harris, Booker, Klobuchar, Yang, Steyer, Gabbard, Castro, and O’Rourke) prepared to attack, slash and burn – which is what the chattering commentariat grade them on — how does this race look? How does it look, given Bernie’s heart attack, Ukraine, Ukraine/Biden, impending impeachment, impending crushing of the Kurds, and lots and lot of new polls?
It starts to look serious because once this debate is done we move on to November and then fast come Thanksgiving and the holidays and then, BOOM, the voting starts.
What were 16 months away when the first part of this ongoing series began is now just a little more than 3 months away.
Then what about:
•Bernie’s heart attack: This Underscores what has been said here over and over and over again. No one who will be 79 on Inauguration Day and 83 at the end of a first-term has any business running for president (or as in the case of Joe Biden, 78 years of age and then 82 at the end of the term. And pretty nearly the same for Warren, 70 years and 74 years.)
Older people are fragile. Any of us who are of these ages can be fine today, gone tomorrow or incapacitated for a lot of tomorrows.
*Plans, lot of plans and proposals: Well this is the hallmark of the Warren candidacy, though Bernie has lots of his own and almost everyone else has responded with this, that and the other.
The fact is, and you can read history or ask anyone who has spent much time around government, a governor, a president get to do one or two really big things in the first year’s glow after their elections and, if they win a second term, maybe the same again the first year of the new term. The rest? High stakes domestic maintenance and world diplomacy.
Otherwise, no — no more than that unless it’s 1933 and the whole world is crumbling. But even FDR by 1935 when he signed Social Security into law in the third year of his first term, had pretty much spent his first mandate and then by beginning his second term with a plan to pack the Supreme Court nearly blew up his second mandate.
True, LBJ got an enormous civil and socio-economic rights program through Congress but that was pretty much done in 1964 when he had the sympathy of the nation and in 1965 his election after-glow year when he had not yet been diverted by Vietnam and had the largest majorities in the House and Senate since the New Deal.
Warren can propose as much as she likes. Little of it will be passed, not in its current form. As someone observed pertinently when the last Democratic debate focused again on health coverage (it is a misnomer to call the political subject health care, the debate is about how to cover, to pay for health care), the candidates all know that while they can propose all they want on health, they will be glad to sign whatever a Democratic congress can agree to send them as the next progressive step.
•Trump/impeachment/Ukraine/Rudy/Syria-Kurds: If anyone thinks they can sort out the impact all of this is having and will have on the contest for the Democratic nomination good for him or her. It is a reasonable guess that it is having big impacts. But what? As Trump says, we’ll see.
One likely observation though is that all these things portend even greater craziness than we have witnessed, a more unhinged Trump in a last-ditch end of the world campaign to which the best antidote the Democratic Party can nominate would be a sensible centrist of a sensible age.
Whatever else the majority of Americans are hungry for right now they are starving for a normal, traditional, sensible presidency. That cannot come from the far left any more than it can from the far-right albeit the far left would make the world better while the far-right seeks always to make to take it back to worse and worser times.
•Polls: The polls are all over the place. During August and September, they showed a steady climb by Warren, some even showing her passing Biden and taking over the lead.
Since Ukraine began to dominate the news and Trump launched the vicious attack on Biden, the former vice president has steadied with at least four major polls showing the race returning to the balance it had before Warren’s ascent when Biden’s candidacy foundered.
More or less on the eve of the debate the polls again show Biden at about 30%, Warren in second in the high teens or low 20% range, Sanders holding third between 15% and 20%, Buttigieg with modest recovery to about 8% from his decline to 5% and Harris in about the same position with everyone else scoring 1% to 3% variously in various polls.
One thing of note. There have been at least three national polls since Sanders’ heart attack and his support remains steady. That, in turn, suggests that his supporters are not going anywhere, are not moving to and not going to move toward Warren anytime soon, if ever.
It still means that 70% of Democrats do not want Biden and that if their support could be joined, and there are no signs it could be, Warren/Sanders together remains short of a majority and that the contest remains fluid as the voting nears.
The take away right now? That in a scant five weeks we have seen Ukraine and all it means, the clear move toward impeachment, the Rudy Tutti Giuliani implosion, the Sanders heart attack, Biden’s confused response to Ukraine/Trump, the reduction of American policy in the Mideast to the whims of Trump. That’s a lot, an awful lot. What else will happen before Iowa Democrats caucus?
Let’s hope the panel in this next debate does not ask a single question about health coverage policy, or this policy or that policy or this plan or that plan or the next plan.
No, ask them, the candidates, how a man or woman should be president? What a president does, what a president should do?
Ask them what they understand to be the limits of presidential power and authority?
Ask them how they would repair the presidency?
Ask them if they believe it is possible to repair the reputation and standing of the United States after this historic disaster. And what they would do to bring that about?
Ask them the first three things they would do immediately to begin to repair the presidency and the United States?
Ask them if they truly understand what being president is about?
Ask them why they dare to imagine themselves as president?
But please, don’t ask again about health policy.
Peeling the Onion 