Democratic Debate Time, 4/14/16

Some initial impressions:

I thought this was a debate, not a rally. Isn’t the audience usually warned to keep quiet while the candidates are talking? At least it doesn’t seem the Sanders supporters are any louder than Hillary’s.

Took Hillary about 3 minutes to hammer Bernie on the Daily News interview, but then it took him less than that to question her judgment again. Why Wolf threw him a softball to lead him straight into it is beyond me.

And now to my particular issue with his Big Policy (aside from that he doesn’t seem to have put any thought into it), letting the banks decide how to break themselves up…

I can’t believe it! Bernie forgot his “political revolution” line!

Sanders is full of shit about fundraising for the Dem party.

I don’t even know why they’re holding this debate. I’m not really impressed either way; almost all the same old talking points.

Whoever told Sanders to go aggressive and sarcastic did him a disservice. He’s looking like a zealot rather than a leader. Clinton is sounding like she knows her shit.

Get down Hillary. “I’m not taking anything for granted.”

Well that was … interesting.

I suspect that each set of supporters heard the candidate they support doing well.

Personally I think Clinton let him off easy at the start, not calling him out for his false quote of her and his essentially going nuclear over a newspaper paraphrase of an unsourced report.

The tone, and Sanders evasion post debate to answer clearly about the need to unite the party after the election whoever wins, verifies to me though the need for Clinton to bury him as large as possible as quickly as possible.

Yep, this one pretty much fell flat on its face. I should’ve waited till after the debate to think about posting it. Not really very much of interest in it.

Refreshing to see Sanders agree with the Donald that our European friends need to start paying their own way in regards to defence.

One thing that I read in some site’s live commentary is that her apparent endorsement of raising the payroll tax limit would be increasing taxes on everyone except the wealthiest.

I don’t think her backers will have any problem with that.

Assuming the wealthiest aren’t working for wages, that is probably true. On the other hand, I’m pretty sure she has also endorsed increasing other taxes that would hit the wealthiest.

And on a little further thought, increasing the *limit *as opposed to the *rate *only affects those fortunate enough to be earning more than the current payroll tax maximum of $118,500 - so that is very far from ‘everyone’.

Not following. Are you talking about raising the limit on FICA taxes? If so, that would increase taxes only on the wealthiest.

Hmmm. Good point. It increases it on some of the putative middle class (which both candidates have defined as up to 250K household although some think that is getting up there a bit to still be called middle) and increases taxation more as a fraction of income for those in the lower end of the 118.5K to 250K range than at the higher end.

I admit to coming from a bias that views capped payroll tax as regressive taxation in concept. I do however acknowledge the perspective that social security was conceptually sold as a retirement annuity plan of sorts that has just been underfunded given the change in life expectancies.

Wow, Sanders came off like a superstar and Hillary, once again, looked like a crony capitalist puppet.

I didn’t catch this debate, so I plan to take Drunky’s opinion as gospel fact.

Their appeal is looking like adults compared to the Pubs – they could have done a little less of the talking-over-each-other.

BernieBro alert.

Neither particularly advanced their cause, although most outlets are giving Clinton an ever-so-slight victory. It was more a rahrah party than anything else.

Since when is the audience allowed to interrupt the debate? Maybe they’ve changed things since I watched them (I’ve only seen this one and one of the Republican ones), but I seem to remember that being strictly frowned upon in the past.

Can I make a humble request to stop with the “BernieBro” … stuff. Yes it is self-evident that the comment was not posted by anyone interested in actual discussion - either whooshing or absurdly partisan. But neither is intelligent fostered by that sort of response.

IMHO and FWIW.

Sorry about that. :slight_smile:

Thanks!