The American people lost the first democratic debate.
It all started with an ominous A Capella rendition of America's violent anthem, "The Star-Spangled Banner," sung by forgotten star Sheryl Crow and accompanied by ghoulish microphone feedback to fill the room with creepy overtones, creating a horror movie soundtrack feel that rang throughout the performance.The rockets’ red glare, the bombs bursting in air, the horror, the horror.
As expected, the debate was between Hillary Clinton, Bernie Sanders, and three other guys. Lincoln Continental, Martin O’Mally, and Martin Webb. Chris Webb? Max Webb? Jim Webb.Jim Webb has since dropped out of the running.
At the beginning of his opening statement, meek, cancerstruck Lincoln Chafee suddenly realizes he didn't plan whether to smile or not and proceeds to spend the entire debate hovering around a frightened awkward half-smile. "I have high ethical standards," he says, the corners of his mouth quivering.
Webb, the cubehead who won a fantasy football competition for a chance to debate with The Candidate, is surprisingly well prepared, but not well enough to make the grade. He fought in Vietnam and his mom chopped cotton. He pauses for a second trying to remember his third daughter's name, and makes up a war to brag about his son fighting on the bloody streets of "Romani," which is a type of Italian cheese.
Martin O’Malley, on the other hand, has four “great” kids and knows their names. However, he has an unforgivable Kermit The Frog tint to his voice.I had no idea that the voice of Hank Hill was (is?) the mayor of Baltimore.
They're all speaking with the nervous scramble of students realizing they raised their hands to say what the person before them just said, trying to say "income inequality is bad and I want to fix it" in as many varied words as possible.They spew out all the hallmarks of the Democratic Party in an unconvincing manner.
Bernie brings out the most convincing and dire vocabulary to reiterate the same points,
“…unprecedented crises… the middle class is disappearing… disastrous Citizens United decision… corrupt… undermining democracy… unbelievable sums of money… virtually unanimous… climate change is real… moral responsibility…more people in jail than nay other country…” His subtle yell-speak gets louder and louder as the potency of what he’s saying digs deeper and deeper into the gilded American psyche.By the time he is finished with his opening statement I completely forget that most of what he said was already said in more reserved, anemic terms.
Hillary is a grandma of a “wonderful” one year old. I doubt her one year old could possibly be full of wonders.It soon becomes apparent she picked a couple of phrases to fall back on in any time of uncertainty, and she starts with the first of many “God-given potentials” and “I don’t take a backseat to anyone when it comes to…”
It’s bad manners to bring God into a people fight.She foolishly failed to come up with a catch-phrase to explain her sudden, unexplained changing of positions on issues to the side that is most popular in current polls. She says “good-paying” instead of “well-paying.” She says the middle class pays too much in taxes with a nod and smile.She’s boring.She drags on: and I want to do this, and we need to do this, and I want to do this, and we need to do this. She lets all her alligator teeth out at the end of her opening, finishing strong with a reminder that she’d be the first woman president, and that’s a big deal.
First question is as direct as it can get towards Hillary’s infamous flakiness. She tells moderate crowds that she’s moderate and she tells progressive crowds that she’s progressive. She stood against gay marriage and championed the Trans-Pacific Partnership until polling safely proved that the opposite side proved undeniably more popular.She somehow manages to evade this harsh line of questions smoothly with the consummate skill that only a dead-behind-the-eyes lizard person whose own individuality and soul has been entirely devoured by the Political Machine can muster, explaining away the ‘moderate’ claim by saying she knows how to get things done and cooperate with the other side and explaining away her stance-maneuvering by saying she absorbs new information and grows and learns and that everyone changes and she’s mostly been very consistent.She hasn’t. Not on the issues.What she has done consistently is change with the political atmosphere of the time with the pure self-preservation instinct of a sewer rat.
Up until this point, it has all been up to the American people to make a judgment call on the personality and intentions of the candidates.This is where Hillary crosses the line.She deliberately misleads the American people about the Trans Pacific Partnership agreement.She “clarifies” that she said she hoped the agreement would be the gold standard of trade agreements, but that she looked it over and certain areas weren’t up to snuff.That isn’t what happened. She said that it is thegold standard.The areas she listed as having fatal deficiencies have actually been improved since the time she was championing the deal as Secretary of State.One can only assume she came out against it because the American workforce came out against it.She got away with it, reassuring wide-eyed dullards everywhere that she isn’t all that bad, they’re all just out to get her, everyone changes their mind. Her declaration that she didn’t take a position on Keystone until she took a position on Keystone is similarly misleading, as her and her team repeatedly hinted at their intent to support it with a distinct lack of subtlety until The People and their Ideas and Morals got in the way of her corporate puppetry.Contrary to her fallacious best-of-both-worlds claim, she takes a back seat to a great many people when it comes to progressive reform, including pretty much the entire Democratic Party, and most notably the man to her left, Bernie Sanders.
A disconcertingly sizable portion of the debate is Hillary and Bernie saying the same things with different terms and pretending they are arguing, with Bernie appealing to the revolutionaries and Hillary appealing to the defeatist-realists.In Hillary’s “I’m not a socialist” rant, intended to separate herself from crazy Bernie, she offers saving capitalism from itself as an alternative to socialism, which is what socialism is. Bernie isn’t talking about communism, he’s not talking about all property being owned by the state, he’s talking about laws that break up monopolies and programs like social security. The point of democratic socialism is to save capitalism from itself and allow a democracy to function fairly, regardless of personal wealth.
Bernie says to Hillary that America’s sick and tired of hearing about your damn emails, let’s talk about the real issues facing America.Hillary catches on that it’s comedy time, and sees the gaping hole when she’s asked if she wants to respond to Chafee’s incessant, anemic muttering about how her email scandals reflect on her ethics. She mustered all the humanity in her to respond simply, “No.”Adequate delivery, a real laugh-inducer.
Lincoln Chafee is asked why he voted to repeal Glass-Steagall; he says it was his first day and his dad had just died.
What’s being pointed out as Bernie’s big debate blunder is Bernie’s attempt at reconciling his representation of a rural hunting state with his concerns of unnecessary gun violence, as his votes on gun issues can seem somewhat contradictory if you’re not very smart. Bernie’s intention of bringing the nation to a consensus of not banning guns but making them safer is confusing to idiots who think the government will ban all guns and idiots who think the government is coming to take their guns.It also resulted in a miscommunication that Hillary has been deviously capitalizing on. Bernie, referring to the heated gun control debate happening in this country, said all the shouting in the world isn’t going to change anything.Some people thought he was referring to Hillary, who had just finished speaking calmly at a notably lower volume than the volume at which Bernie made this ‘shouting’ comment.Hillary has been using this misunderstanding on the campaign trail, making high applause jabs at Bernie’s supposed sexism and complaining about how men always think women are shouting.
Back at the debate, Hillary, in a half assed effort for easy applause, tries to paint Republicans as hypocrites, which is a very easy thing to do without having to rely on faulty logic and hope that no one is paying attention to what you’re actually saying, but she just can’t manage it.Luckily, apparently no one is paying attention.She argues that Republicans say we can’t spend any more money on big government, but yet the Republicans are spending money and using big government to defund Planned Parenthood.Ha! Gottem. A chorus of “woos!” abound. But, Hillary, the point of that action is to make government smaller and spend less money. That’s like saying quitting a job is hypocritical because you have to put in the effort of quitting in order to not put in the effort of working.She goes for the easy liberal kneejerk “woo!” with worse logic than the republicans use.Obviously Planned Parenthood should be funded and anyone who says otherwise has been misled by single-minded media propaganda, but that’s not the point.There are so many easy, obvious, legitimate ways to point out the hypocrisy of conservatives.Any analysis of that sentence and its reaction makes me embarrassed to be a liberal.I finally understand all those bucktooth complaints about these bleeding heart morons who are totally out of touch with the actual effects of law and order.It was an insult to reasoning and intelligence and everyone cheered because boo the republicans are bad I’m good go me.
Hillary starts getting desperate, and almost cracks about two thirds through the debate, breaking out in a collar tugging cold sweat and bursting out of nowhere something along the lines of “EVERYONE CHANGES THEIR MINDS!” That may be true, but none as often, and with as much timely political expedience.She is a poll-watching policy chameleon and she gets away with it with smiley smooth talk. Most people seem to be in denial, hearing what they want to hear and believing what they want to believe about Hillary Clinton.
Her answer to marijuana was most disappointing.How could any thinking person not have a stance on marijuana by now.Marijuana is medicinally useful, legalized weed is great for the economy, and there is no evidence of it being significantly harmful.You’re either unreasonably against drugs or you’re not.Children have been making fun of adults for taking marijuana seriously as a threat since the sixties.Everyone knows all the reasons it was made illegal were a bunch of horse shit.Bernie’s response to weed, although radical compared to the delusional stance of other politicians, is meek in comparison to what we’ve come to expect from him.He points out the grim oppression via marijuana law that’s been taking place in this country for decades; the systemic jailing of underprivileged young people of color who have no means for good lawyers.But he didn’t comment on the mere baffling absurdity that marijuana is even illegal in the first place. Bernie just filed a bill calling for the end of the federal ban on marijuana, which regrettably still gives states the option of keeping up this ridiculous oppression, if the state so chooses.
‘Marijuana laws are one of the reasons that there is, engendered, this lack of respect that cops complain about all over the country. When you get a whole generation that grows up as felons, and they know the law is ridiculous, and they’re told all this gibberish about it – it drives you crazy and makes your brain soft and your feet fall off – even the police know it’s a silly law. It’s time that we either bridge that chasm with some kind of realistic law enforcement, or else I don’t think it’s going to bridged in this country.We’re going to revolution.”
-Hunter S. Thompson, 1969
Ok Hillary is bragging that she went over to Wall Street and said “Hey, cut that out!” before the crash happened, which means what she did was entirely ineffectual. She then further misleads the American people by blaming the crash on “shadow banking,” because the giant real banks that caused the crash are paying for her campaign.
Polls of Bernie’s soaring popularity after overpaid pundits working for the same corporate illuminati that is trying to buy this election have already declared Hillary the clear winner have led many a leftwing nutjob to cry conspiracy and blame Bernie’s disparaging remarks on corporate media and the exorbitant Hillary Clinton campaign contribution by Time Warner Cable, which owns CNN, for this perceived dissonance in reaction between formal corporate media and social media.The more hesitant have accused pundits of merely being out-of-touch defeatists, picking the low risk option least likely to raise eyebrows, because anyone with as much outwardly passionate indignation as Bernie Sanders simply cannot win, he just doesn’t fit into the political mold.Hillary Clinton stayed calm the entire time and didn’t use curse words or speak with bursting immediacy. She didn’t say anything scary. In order to be taken seriously, Bernie has to smile and lie, speak vaguely and without emotion. He cannot be yelling about how this country is as bad as it’s been since the Great Depression.But, as the popularity of outsider anti-politician politicians is proving, whether it’s reality television personality Donald Trump, idiot-savant brain surgeon Ben Carson, or self-declared socialist Bernie Sanders, the mold is breaking.The people want something different.The old way is boring, and it doesn’t work. Something is happening here, but you don’t know what it is, do you, Mr. Jones?
Jim says the enemy he’s proudest of making is the guy he killed.
In conclusion, O’Malley proved himself to be a good bet for 2024, Jim Webb proved himself a soldier and potentially badass secretary of state with some opinions democrats everywhere would prefer he’d keep to himself, Chafee proved himself an insufferable weak-willed stuttering dweeb.It’s amazing he got all six Rhode Islanders to elect him, but he doesn’t stand a chance against people who can actually speak.He got the least speaking time out of everyone, but it sure felt like he got the most.I’d feel embarrassed for him if I wasn’t so mad at him for wasting my time. Hillary proved herself skilled at spinning questions and misleading the public for votes with a smile, and Bernie proved himself the only candidate deserving of any passionate support.
