If you can’t think quickly on your feet like Hillary can and can’t articulate well, you can sound as dumb as a sack of hammers even if you aren’t actually stupid. Webb was way over his head last night.
I didn’t get to watch the debate (no TV at home for me) but have been reading the analysis at news site as well as the Dope. It’s left me with one question I haven’t seen a lot of discussion about…
What did the candidates say to differentiate themselves from one another?
Price Tag of Bernie Sanders’s Proposals: $18 Trillion
[QUOTE=WSJ]
The Sanders program amounts to increasing total federal spending by about one-third—to a projected $68 trillion or so over 10 years.
For many years, government spending has equaled about 20% of gross domestic product annually; his proposals would increase that to about 30% in their first year. As a share of the economy, that would represent a bigger increase in government spending than the New Deal or Great Society and is surpassed in modern history only by the World War II military buildup.
By way of comparison, the 2009 economic stimulus program was estimated at $787 billion when it passed Congress, and President George W. Bush’s 2001 tax cuts were estimated to cost the federal treasury $1.35 trillion over 10 years.
Mrs. Clinton so far has proposed programs that together would cost an estimated $650 billion over 10 years. Her college-affordability plan is estimated at $350 billion over 10 years, and an expected child-care proposal is estimated to cost at least $200 billion. Those are modest sums next to Mr. Sanders’s agenda.
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I think Bernie Sanders is a good man, and I appreciate the type of campaign he is running. He is honest and trustworthy. He is seemingly willing to discuss his proposals with more than simple soundbites. I wish there were more people like him (in terms of personality and approach to governing) in politics.
That said, his proposals are ludicrous. It’s not hard to gain support from a section of the country when you are proposing a bunch of ridiculous give aways. Free education, free healthcare, increase social security benefits, increase wages. An increase in government spending by 10% of annual GDP? He’s going to pay for this just by increasing taxes of the evil wealthy? Raising the top tax rate to 90%+?
His proposals are no more workable than Ron Paul’s.
Presidential debates (i.e. ones between candidates already selected by their parties, plus the occasional independent) usually last around 90 minutes. The single-party debates tend to run longer as there are more candidates involved.
What I want to know is, how many “thank yous” did each candidate receive - i.e. how many times did Anderson Cooper say “thank you” as in “your time is up” to each of the candidates, as a show of which candidates felt that time limits are a suggestion and rules are meant to be broken? Not that the Republicans aren’t guilty of this as well, mind you…
Idea for the next debate: when someone goes over the time limit, after one prompting by Cooper, the second one is by his CNN New Year’s Eve co-host, Kathy Griffin - “Hey! Time’s up! What part of ‘one minute’ was not clear the first time? Excuse me, Hillary, but didn’t you learn anything from the 1988 Democratic Convention?” (Bill gave a 33-minute speech nominating Michael Dukakis)
Mostly? They didn’t differentiate themselves from each other nearly as much as they were shoring up the Democratic Party brand. The big takeaway was (clearly, and successfully executed): they were not the Republican Party, and they were all pretty much the same vintage in different bottles. In a striking turnabout, this time it was the Democrats who were in lockstep unity while the Republicans are tearing out each others’ throats.
Seriously, I wouldn’t have been surprised if Chafee had whipped out a guitar and had them all singing Kumbaya.
Was she thinking quickly on her feet when she favored DLs for illegals, unintentionally putting herself to the left of everyone else on the stage in 2008?
Or was it quick thinking when she flip flopped immediately after realizing that she had indeed gotten to the left of everyone?
Was it even faster thinking when after being questioned by the other candidates about where exactly she stood on DLs for illegals, she just blamed everything on Bush?
Don’t mistake glibness for intelligence.
Undocumented immigrants drive. That’s a fact of life. Now do we want to test them and license them so that we know they have adequate vision and know the rules of the road or do want to call them names and pretend they’re criminals not worthy of driving? Giving them the opportunity to get licenses is the wise approach.
That’s an argument for DLs for illegals, but she got off script in that moment and it was a big deal at the time that affected her credibility. Her stance on TPP does the same thing now. Even her supporters don’t believe her on that one.
Clinton is smart and disciplined, but not polished and certainly not quick when off her talking points. She’s gotten herself into trouble too many times when deviating from them.
You’ve got to be the only person that I’ve read that came away thinking Webb sounded dumb. Nearly everyone else thought he came across as stiff, brooding, intense, maybe a little weird and whining too much about speaking time. He seems highly intelligent to me. It’s shocking hearing someone describe him as dumb. It’s like as if someone described Sanders as too silly or Chafee as a meathead.
If I’m in the minority, so be it, but he in my opinion was by far the least impressive of the bunch.
He’s always come off that way. He’s a man of substance, not style. His resume attests to that.
He’s pushed back against that article. Specifically that they are arguing that the cost of the single payer should be counted, but not the savings over the current health care system. Similarly with the college tuition.
If someone is paying five hundred a month for health insurance, and they get it “free” and it adds less than 500 to their taxes, counting that as a spending increase without context is a bit dishonest.
Paul’s positions are based on fantasy, Sanders’ are based on real-world countries that do similar things to what he’s proposing with good results.
So why isn’t this man of substance out actually campaigning?
Perhaps. But why did he type it in Comic Sans?
I don’t know what’s motivating him. There’s literally nothing you can accomplish by being a candidate and not having a real campaign. If he wanted to make Democrats more friendly to white working class interests then he’d need to run a campaign on that to force Clinton in that direction. Maybe he thinks that can happen just by his presence in the race. I guess if he hasn’t hired professionals to explain life to him, maybe that’s exactly what he’s trying to do.
He could also want VP. Unlike O’Malley, he probably brings a state with him that the Democrats can’t be sure of winning, plus he has white working class appeal. In a close race, he almost assures victory since there’s no plausible path for the Republicans without Virginia. Although I still think Clinton would choose Terry Mac since he’s a longtime friend.
Just a reminder: Except when one’s intent is to characterize people as “other than human,” “illegal” is an adjective.
In the Kennedy/Nixon debate of 1960, Kennedy won partially because he shaved a little cleaner than Nixon. It’s pretty apparent that much of America judges more by how a candidate projects a presidential appearance than content. Hillary really connected in this regard, in fact, Hillary is the only candidate in either party who projects a presidential image. Although it may be subconscious, I’ll bet that’s worth another 10% in support base numbers.
Bernie just doesn’t project confidence with international issues, nor does he appear ready to move into the Oval Office. That’s going to hurt him.
Undocumented is just as inaccurate a term, moreso actually. They have documents in most cases. Fake ones.
“Unauthorized” is probably the best term.
I dare say that more have no documents than fake ones. “Illegals” is just a scare word used to conjure up “OMG! THESE BROWN PEOPLE ARE COMING AFTER OUR JOBS AND OUR WHITE WOMEN AND GETTING FREE STUFF!”
If they have jobs, they most likely have documents. Further, those that overstayed their visas are most definitely documented. So more than likely the vast majority have documents.
Once E-verify is in place everywhere, they’ll all go home. No place to work. Fake docs won’t work anymore.