Introducing President De Blasio!

Well, no, but he did good -- and more debate notes

© 2013 Kevin Case used under a Creative Commons license

Here’s my brilliant Democratic Debate One Twitter thread!

Listen guys, I don’t have much more to say than what’s on the feed. But here’s the main thing: As Democrats like to say, any one of these guys would be an improvement on Trump. And I think ordinary people who might (God knows why) have been watching this debate would be impressed. There was some scuffling on immigration policy (O’Rourke, Castro) and on foreign policy (Delaney, Gabbard) but in the main the politics were liberal — not neo-liberal but liberal — and shared. And we know people approve of these policies, and no one up on stage was so obnoxious that they could turn them off to those policies.

Now, I was gonna interject “no, not even De Blasio! Ha ha” But the thing is, De Blasio did great. He called out Russia. He directed the gun debate toward the extremely intelligent and effective approach New York City has taken (even under the asshole Giuliani). He even called out the party on its elitism — yeah, I know: The Mayor of New York! This strongly confirms what I thought about him when he barged into this election: De Blasio looked at Trump and said, I’m as big an asshole as he is — only I’m right! And he is, on both counts. And did I imagine it, or did he actually hijack the mic two or three times? No one else had the balls, or the lungs, to do that — and he made his points so well that the moderators, who bragged on how tough they were going to be, rolled over. Maybe De Blasio does know how to beat Trump, at that.

Outside that, it was a love fest for all the anti-Trump, pro-New-Deal-Revisited programs that us Democrats go crazy for. The audience only really got shirty with poor, ISIS-obsessed Delaney (who got smacked down by veteran Tulsi Gabbard — how humiliating!). But at least Delaney had the Little People thing going on; arriviste Beto O’Rourke, who got smacked by Julian Castro on immigration, looked like a fraud — not so much so that he’ll have to quit now but, given the prefab nature of his candidacy, it’s not a good thing.

Speaking of centrism, Klobuchar doesn’t seem to think she can win — her reference in her closing statement to her winning ways was, paradoxically, more like a concession than an assertion: She has been a winner but, her low-key approach seemed to say, she will not be a winner. But if you’re a corporation remember her name, she’ll make a darned good lobbyist!

My dream girl Elizabeth Warren suffered from the short-response format, which made her spurt out canned answers that made her look less intelligent than she is, which played badly with her (it has to be said) apparent age, because when she can’t show off the boldness and clarity of her polices she looks like Just Another Politician, senior edition. When, on the other hand, she’s able to articulate her practical ideas — as she did when she said how she’d use popular approval to muscle a recalcitrant GOP Senate majority into supporting her programs — then she was galvanic; it’s kind if amazing, yet in a way makes perfect sense that, in the age of the Moron King, a candidate who can build a coherent argument strong and simple enough that non-elitists can understand it would be doing so well. But I hope she can get comfortable with this particular level and style of campaigning fast.

Lastly, I want to reiterate how great it was to hear people advocate for Medicare for All, a Green New Deal, gun control, and a restrained foreign policy on national TV — because God knows we’d never see these policies presented there in anything but derisive terms otherwise.