Waal, that coulda gone better for Joe Biden, but then the format favored controlled chaos and those best adapted to it. Although I love the retrograde notion that whole bunch of people who voted for Joe Biden twice, are outraged over his allegedly compromised record on Civil Rights.
On the other hand, Biden should have been better prepared, he sounded his age and he should have known those questions would be brought up. Moreover, the tenor of the first debate, the lack of directed fire at Donald Trump ought to have tipped Biden that he'd be A Prime Target, on the second night. The Former VP has racked up the best polling numbers and any one of his rivals can transform the debate into a zero sum game at any moment, Joe's a professional you'd think he'd know that. Joe can come back from this, he needs to dial down to an indoor voice, invoke Barack Obama a little less and invite his audience's to look over his own program. He should be billing himself as "An Equal, Not a Sequel".
Kamala Harris definitely had a good night let us be honest, she was brainy, passionate & focused on one goal, demonstrate feistiness, "I can handle this debate and I can handle Donald Trump" was her coded mantra. She put some deep claw marks into Joe Biden, and she did it without turning a hair, the ability to carry the fight to the enemy rhetorically is something the democratic base will be looking for in the primaries. Senator Harris has title and deed to roughly seventy electoral votes from the git-go, but can she grow that base? Thats my current question.
Pete Buttigieg, I confess the South Bend Mayor felt like "the phenom du jour" to me, he was young, gay, fecklessly liberal, he has a big social media presence...it all felt very superficial to me. Ah but that boy-o can debate yo! He is very poised, articulate and well adapted to television, rising from a Midwestern Mayoralty (especially in a Deep Red State) to the White House seems like a stretch but its no more improbable than Trump's rise to power. I dunno if he can carry Pennsylvania or Florida, but I do think democrats and republicans underestimate him at their peril.
Bernie Sanders, The Senator from Vermont may as well have been in The Fraternal Order of the Eagles Lodge on Central Street in Manchester NH, he hardly seemed to take notice of his fellow candidates, he was content to blast thru his Greatest Hits. It is likely the highly truncated format was a burden to him. I thought, he might be the one to directly confront Biden, but I guess Sanders can feel Senator Warren's hot breath on his next so he opted to shore up his base for the bulk of the debate.
Senators Bennet, Gillibrand, Governor Hickenlooper, Andew Yang, Rep Swalwell, Mariann Williamson, are pretty much going nowhere at this point, but the format favored candidates with a strong fundraising profile so its doubtful anyone is dropping out anytime soon...Williamson in particular made a perfectly bizarre impression with her weird "1940's Wonder Woman" style monologues about love conquering hate. Typically the GOP has been routing money to Williamson to keep her in the race in the hopes of embarrassing the democrats. This is a strange stupid strategy as their party is headed by a Horror Movie Clown, Williamson could ramble on for a year and not make a bigger fool of herself as Trump does every day on Twitter.
No comments :
Post a Comment