28th June 2019, 8:46 PM
So the first Democratic debates were yesterday and the day before, and like apparently more people than had ever watched a Democratic debate, I watched them. They were both pretty good and well worth watching.
My main takeaways -- I agree with the consensus, and the first post-debate poll, Kamala Harris is the big winner. She went up significantly after the debate, and it's easy to see why, she did best of anyone either night for sure. Her biggest moment was tearing into Biden on busing, but she was good all around -- I liked the part where she got the others to stop all talking over eachother, nobody watches a debate to watch the candidates all talk at the same time.
The big surprise from the first night was Castro, who stood out more than anyone in the debate and well outdid Beto in the 'Democrat from Texas' category. Elizabeth Warren also did well in night one, in the domestic policy section. When it came to foreign policy she seems to have kind of disappeared, as she let the others talk without interrupting. She's mostly famous for domestic policy (fiscal issues) so this kind of makes sense, but I hope she improves on it, foreign policy is very important as well. She did fine, but it'll be a bigger test once all of the major candidates face eachother, which they didn't this time with its divided format. It's always nice to see the full breadth of people running early in the cycle so two 10-person debates were fun to watch, but you definitely learn a lot less about the candidates' positions and how they interact with eachother in this kind of debate. There will be like ten more primary debates, though, so that's fine.
Getting back to busing though, Biden's messaging here is confusing, which makes sense given his very mixed record on the issue, but still is, well, hard to make sense of. So, Biden was, from the '70s on, opposed to Department of Education-ordered busing. He did, however, eventually decide to support busing if it happened because of a court order because of racial justice reasons. He seems to have stuck to this strange dichotomy ever since, and still is refusing to say there was anything wrong with his position then.
Now, the debate didn't mention it, but Biden's side pretty much won -- busing isn't common, instead there have been attempts to improve poor schools where they are, to mixed-at-best results. Busing poor black children to suburban white schools is, obviously, still unpopular. Now it's more a money issue than just purely a racial one, as anyone can go to a good school with the money to pay for it, but race and money are clearly linked a lot of the time. But given the still-difficult racial tensions around education, even Harris is being careful about how far she goes to criticize Biden here... but still, it was a definite win for her in the debate and it's shown in the polling, she's gained a lot and he has lost some ground.
My main takeaways -- I agree with the consensus, and the first post-debate poll, Kamala Harris is the big winner. She went up significantly after the debate, and it's easy to see why, she did best of anyone either night for sure. Her biggest moment was tearing into Biden on busing, but she was good all around -- I liked the part where she got the others to stop all talking over eachother, nobody watches a debate to watch the candidates all talk at the same time.
The big surprise from the first night was Castro, who stood out more than anyone in the debate and well outdid Beto in the 'Democrat from Texas' category. Elizabeth Warren also did well in night one, in the domestic policy section. When it came to foreign policy she seems to have kind of disappeared, as she let the others talk without interrupting. She's mostly famous for domestic policy (fiscal issues) so this kind of makes sense, but I hope she improves on it, foreign policy is very important as well. She did fine, but it'll be a bigger test once all of the major candidates face eachother, which they didn't this time with its divided format. It's always nice to see the full breadth of people running early in the cycle so two 10-person debates were fun to watch, but you definitely learn a lot less about the candidates' positions and how they interact with eachother in this kind of debate. There will be like ten more primary debates, though, so that's fine.
Getting back to busing though, Biden's messaging here is confusing, which makes sense given his very mixed record on the issue, but still is, well, hard to make sense of. So, Biden was, from the '70s on, opposed to Department of Education-ordered busing. He did, however, eventually decide to support busing if it happened because of a court order because of racial justice reasons. He seems to have stuck to this strange dichotomy ever since, and still is refusing to say there was anything wrong with his position then.
Now, the debate didn't mention it, but Biden's side pretty much won -- busing isn't common, instead there have been attempts to improve poor schools where they are, to mixed-at-best results. Busing poor black children to suburban white schools is, obviously, still unpopular. Now it's more a money issue than just purely a racial one, as anyone can go to a good school with the money to pay for it, but race and money are clearly linked a lot of the time. But given the still-difficult racial tensions around education, even Harris is being careful about how far she goes to criticize Biden here... but still, it was a definite win for her in the debate and it's shown in the polling, she's gained a lot and he has lost some ground.