Eighteen plus Seventeen equals Thirty-Five, and the Dems’ Third Debate in Houston

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In their perennial prattle about “electability,” so-called “pundits” forget a vital fact. The leading triad of Biden, Sanders and Warren represent two different kinds of politics. Biden is the “moderate,” rated highly for his long experience in politics, his presumed ability to compromise, and his likability as “Good Ol’ Joe.” In contrast, Sanders and Warren have an entirely different brand of politics. They both think, and say, that the system is “rigged” against ordinary workers, and that we need strong medicine to un-rig it. So as not to fall into the right-wing’s trap of labeling anyone who wants real change an “extremist” or “socialist,” I’m just going to call this brand of politics “strong.” Among the top three, we have one moderate or weak candidate and two strong ones vying against each other. According to the latest poll, among Dems and Dem-leaning independents, 24% prefer Biden, 18% Warren, and 17% Sanders. I’d say that’s far from a win for Biden, at 24%. A total of 35% prefer the strong remedy. Eventually, the Dems will have to choose between Warren and Sanders. When they do, Sanders’ votes will go to Warren, or vice versa. Few, I think, will go to Biden, because he’s a different kind of candidate offering weaker remedies for what ails us. Of Warren and Sanders, who will win? Ultimately, I think (and hope) Warren. Warren has three big things going for her. First, she doesn’t fall into right-wing verbal traps by talking about “socialism.” She insists she’s a capitalist who just wants fair rules of the game. Second, Warren really knows her stuff in much greater detail than Sanders. She created the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, and she studied financial shenanigans as a Harvard Professor for nearly two decades. If you want to un-rig a rigged system, you’ve got to know exactly how it’s rigged, in depth and in detail. Warren does. Third, Sanders is something of an anomaly among this crop of Democratic candidates. He’s the only one among the eight whose education I reviewed who has no law or other graduate degree. He graduated from college, but that’s it. Now the guys on Wall Street (they are nearly all guys!) are far from stupid. They are smart, and they are well trained in math and finance. Whom do you want to protect you against them, a guy who merely graduated from college, or a woman who became a distinguished, tenured professor at Harvard studying precisely how Wall Streeters cheat and bring our economy down for nearly two decades? I don’t mean for a moment to belittle Sanders. The Dems, progressives and the American people all owe him a huge debt of gratitude for bringing the fact of a rigged economy into the political mainstream. He should be president today, and he might have been, if Hillary hadn’t rigged the party process. But it’s not his time. Warren is the smarter, tougher, and more strategic candidate, and I think Democratic voters will eventually figure that out. When they do, it’ll be Biden 24%, and Warren at least 35%. There’s not much question that the mass of today’s Dems wants the smartest person with the strongest remedies, and that’s she. I’ll post my analysis of tonight’s debate tomorrow.

The Dems’ Third Debate in Houston

Practice makes perfect. After a promising first debate, a mediocre second debate, and a privatized seven-hour “town hall” on climate change, last night the Dems finally got it right. They served up a solid debate that advanced the Dems’ chances of taking the presidency next year. Whether it winnowed the candidates significantly at this early stage won’t be known until the next major poll.

The private network, ABC, got it right, too. It limited itself to two commercial breaks in 2-3/4 hours, so that the candidates and the audience could concentrate on substance. Its moderators asked no questions about “gotchas,” such as making illegal immigration a civil, not criminal, offense. They did press the leading candidates on the peculiarities of their major policies and relevant bits of past behavior.

In other words, the moderators acted as neutral “newspeople” ought, eliciting the candidates’ goals, records and character, rather than batting for “home runs” of sensationalism. For some strange reason, the full transcript of the debate even appeared online for free, but under NBC’s brand. At least this time there is one.

What caused these big changes for the better is unclear. I hope it was stricter rules by the Democratic Party, if not prior vetting of all questions. If the Dems trust in the integrity and professionalism of commercial newscasters, they might get burned again, at a time too close to the elections to permit recovery.

Part of the reason for the Dems’ productive performance was teamwork. Candidates with little chance of becoming president took potshots at Donald Trump, with good effect.

Some pulled no punches. Beto O’Rourke accused Trump of inspiring the Hispanophobic killer in the El Paso massacre. Bernie Sanders noted that Trump had spent his first year trying to kill Obamacare and his second trying to get the Justice Department to bring back exclusions for pre-existing conditions and keep kids 26 or under from riding on their parents’ health insurance.

Pete Buttigieg noted that Trump “has no strategy” in his trade wars and left an “empty chair” of American leadership on climate change. Regarding our tussle with China, he taunted Trump, saying

“You know, when I first got into this race, I remember President Trump scoffed and said he'd like to see me making a deal with Xi Jinping. I'd like to see him making a deal with Xi Jinping.”

But the prize for baiting Trump goes to Kamala Harris. After pointing out how we must have both a competitive and a cooperative relationship with China, especially on global warming and North Korea, she likened Trump to the Wizard of Oz. “[W]hen you pull back the curtain, it’s a really small dude.”

Earlier, purporting to speak directly to Trump, she had castigated him at length:

“So, President Trump, you've spent the last two-and-a-half years full-time trying to sow hate and division among us, and that is why we've gotten nothing done. You have used hate, intimidation, fear, and over 12,000 lies as a way to distract from your failed policies and your broken promises. The only reason you’ve not been indicted is because there was a memo in the Department of Justice that says a sitting president cannot be charged with a crime.”

After describing how she would do things quite differently, she dismissed the absent president airily: “And now, President Trump, you can go back to watching Fox News.”

If the Dems are lucky, Harris’ words may bait Trump into Tweeting and insulting her with such over-the-top vituperation as to keep most African-Americans and women from ever voting for him. Baiting so skillfully is likely something that Harris learned in her distinguished career as a prosecutor.

While Pete Buttigieg, Kamala Harris, and Cory Booker all showed both passion and eloquence, the prize for eloquence probably goes to Booker. His peroration on gun control (in part by gun licensing) included these words:

“Nobody has ascended to the White House that will bring more personal passion on this issue. I will fight this and bring a fight to the NRA and the corporate gun lobby like they have never seen before.” * * *

“We have had more people die due to gun violence in my lifetime than [in] every single war in this country combined, from the Revolutionary War until now.” * * *

“We must awaken a more courageous empathy in this country so that we stand together and fight together and overwhelm those Republicans who are not even representing their constituency. Because the majority of Americans, the majority of gun-owners agree with me, not the corporate gun lobby. It is time for a movement on this issue, and I will lead it.”

The leading candidates—Joe Biden, Bernie Sanders, and Elizabeth Warren—were in no position to bait Trump or to be eloquent. Their job was to explain and justify big, important differences in policy among themselves and between themselves and the other candidates. The rest of this essay focuses on two such differences, which I think were crucial to the debate’s importance and the push it gave the Dems.

The first big difference was between [mandatory] Medicare for All, which would wipe out private insurance, and Medicare for All Who Want It, which, as I and Pete Buttigieg explained, introduces expanded Medicare gradually, as consumers themselves discover its benefits. Sanders and Warren both chose Medicare for All, while Harris chose a modified version of it, while Buttigieg and others rejected it.

The second big difference concerned our “forever” war in Afghanistan. Biden, Sanders and Warren all said they would bring our troops home. They all implied, but didn’t say, that they would bring them home immediately, whether or not there is a deal with the Taliban.

The trouble with both these views is that, examined closely, they are impractical. Wiping out all existing private health-insurance at the stroke of a pen would eliminate some 150 million policies. (The candidates’ own estimates in the debate ranged from 149 million to 160 million.) To say that would destabilize the insurance market and cause anxiety, if not panic, among insureds would be an understatement.

Just so an abrupt troop withdrawal from Afghanistan. You can’t pull all our troops out in a single (or even a few) airlifts, let alone with the Taliban still trying to kill them. Even if all our troops survived, what about all the people—spies, translators, cooks, drivers, Afghani soldiers and police, among others—who helped us? Would we abandon them to be imprisoned, tortured and killed? Even in Vietnam, our biggest military debacle to date, we tried to avoid doing that. Do it too often, and no one will ever help you in any other foreign military adventure.

So why do Warren and Sanders (on health insurance) and all three leading candidates (on ending the war in Afghanistan) take such impractical positions? The reasons are all political, not logical. I see at least six, as follows:

1. On issues as important as health insurance and war, voters want certainty. Give them a bunch of ifs, ands and buts, and they won’t trust you. Some won’t even understand you. So you’ve got to take positions that seem definite, clear and clean, even if they won’t be so in practice.

2. You don’t have the time even to state, let alone explain, all relevant ifs, ands and buts in a one minute, ten second answer or a 45-second rebuttal during a debate.

3. Taking an extreme position gives you bargaining leverage over domestic political opponents, for example, in Congress. It also give you room to compromise. (Unfortunately, this doesn’t apply to foreign opponents: promising in advance to get out of Afghanistan kills all leverage in dealing with the Taliban.)

4. On vital, complex issues, most pols promise an extreme or simple outcome, for reasons 2 and 3. Until Trump made lying a profession, this wasn’t considered lying. It was just thought to be “politics.”

5. Health insurance and war have always been complex, messy issues. For over a century, presidents since Grover Cleveland had tried to get us some form of universal health insurance. The problem got even more complicated after President Obama chose an incremental approach, rather than cutting the Gordian knot. As for war, the war in Afghanistan, like the war in Iraq (which it resembles) is among the two longest and messiest in our history. If you want voters’ attention and allegiance, you don’t explain messes. You promise to cut that Gordian knot and make things simple.

6. As for forever wars, promising to pull out regardless of consequences helps convince voters of your anti-warmongering bonafides. At least that stance shows voters that you’re not likely to start any new forever wars, whatever the provocation and however strong the pressure from our military-industrial complex and warmongering apparatchiks like John Bolton (but with greater people skills).

All of these reasons point to a simple conclusion: after decades of uncertainty and vacillation on health insurance and war (and other things like guns and the economy), voters want to trust the pols they elect. They want to hear solutions they can understand with reasonable intelligence and attention spans, and that they can expect to see implemented in their lifetimes. They want results, not excuses or explanations.

This is why, for me, the Dems’ third debate reinforces the conclusions in the green-framed box above.

The notion that voters want to chose someone “moderate” by triangulating between extremes is absurd. What’s a “half racist”? What’s a “moderate” white supremacist? How do you kill the middle class only “halfway”? How do you let the oligarchs rule us only “halfway”? What’s “halfway” out of Afghanistan: moving our troops to Pakistan, which also has its share of homicidal Islamic extremists?

What’s “halfway” to universal health insurance? fifteen million uninsured, instead of a full thirty? Anyway, didn’t voters reject Hillary for her triangulation? Didn’t Bill let the GOP take us all the way to the right-wing goal post by his own triangulation? Didn’t Trump himself win by making wild promises that are nowhere near fruition?

No, American voters are sick and tired of halfsies. In a little over a decade, they’ve suffered: (1) the Crash of 2008; (2) the bailout of the bankers that caused it; (3) those bankers going scot free; (4) the extension of our two forever wars towards double decades; (5) the loss of millions of jobs; (6) the closing of tens of thousands of factories; (7) the opioid epidemic, which killed about 400,000; (8) the failure of our health insurance for tens of millions, even as health care gets more and more expensive; (9) a sharp decline in our national prestige and influence; (10) the near monthly recurrence of firearms massacres; (11) the incarceration of millions, lopsidedly skewed by race; (12) the presence of millions of undocumented immigrants among us; (13) an explosion of student debt, which is eating our young; and (14) being told that, in the midst of all this confusion, they have to give up fossil fuels to save our planet. Will it make them happy to solve all these problems halfway?

Even if they ever really did, voters just don’t want halfsies anymore. They want whole solutions. That’s why they elected Donald Trump: they simply didn’t trust Hillary’s “moderation” and “triangulation.”

Sanders and Warren understand this truth. That’s why they’re fighting over much the same “solutions” for three of the most important issues: health insurance, war and peace, and student debt. That’s why, when the race gets tough and one of them sees the writing on the wall, the winner among the two will have the other’s votes. If both Sanders and Warren are out for the people, and not for themselves, as I believe they are, the loser will wholeheartedly endorse the winner. Then Joe Biden will fade into history, along with Amy Klobuchar and all the others who don’t ken the extreme danger of the moment we live in.

It’s not about just getting along, although solving our problems for real should help reach that goal. It’s about throwing off rule by the oligarchy, fixing what ails us and getting our country right.

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