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Wednesday, June 26, 2019

The First Debate

The first debate among the Democrats is over.  Here are a few thoughts:

1.  The worst moment of the night award goes to Beto O'Rourke.  He was asked one of the first questions of the night.  He ignored the question and started speaking.  After two sentences, he broke into Spanish for the next 30 seconds or so.  Then he switched back to English but still never answered the question.  It was a stupid display of O'Rourke filibustering an easy question about the economy.  In one answer, Beto managed to throw away any credibility he had left.

2.  The big winner of the night for me was quite a surprise.  It was former congressman Delany who seemed to have a message that was more common sense than ideology.  It set him apart from most of the rest.  It will be interesting to see if it helps him in the polls.

3.  Elizabeth Warren seemed to get more opportunity to answer questions than the others.  She was peddling outrage and anger and far, far left solutions.  Here's an example.  Warren pointed out that insurance companies made $23 billion in profits last year.  That sounds like a lot until you realize that healthcare expenditures in the USA totaled about a bit more than 3 trillion dollars.  That puts the profits of the insurance companies at something less than 1% of healthcare expenditures.  The numbers are very big but the profit percentage is very small.  It's roughly the same as saying that a company that built and sold a house for $100,000 made a profit of $800.  It's just not something which ought to be giving rise to such angry outbursts on Warren's part.

4.  Bill DeBlasio was effective on occasion repeating the usual NYC style talking points.  Of course, anyone who has seen him and his actual government in New York City knows that the guy is a total loser.

5.  Senator Booker did himself no good.  Ditto Amy Klobuchar.  They were their usual selves, and neither seemed to rise to the occasion. 

6.  Perhaps the worst thing about the debate, however, is that tomorrow there will be another one.  Can't we get time off for good behavior.  

1 comment:

Roz said...

The news media declared President Trump the winner. Roz