Round Three Democratic Presidential Debate Post-Mortem

By the time I got home the debate had already started. So I missed all the stuff about single-payer health care. My impression of the third Democratic presidential debate is pretty much in line with the main write-up in The New York Times by Alexander Burns and Jonathan Martin (see "Sanders and Warren Battle Accusations of ‘Fairy Tale’ Promises as Intraparty Rift Flares"):

DETROIT — The leading liberals in the Democratic presidential primary, Senators Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren, strenuously fought back on Tuesday against accusations of making fanciful promises and imperiling the party’s prospects against President Trump, as a group of moderate underdogs sought to slow their momentum in the second round of debates.

Which is an antiseptic way of stating that doomed also-ran candidates at 0-1% in the polls -- people like John Delaney, Steve Bullock, and John Hickenlooper -- relentlessly attacked the two leading progressives -- Sanders and Warren -- in a kamikaze mission. It had the feel of a setup, much like the spotlighting of Cory Booker in the first debate last month. The corporate overlords of the mainstream wanted to take a shot at curbing the leftward bent of the party, and they used the junked, disposable politicians on the stage to do it.

It failed spectacularly. Delaney, Hickenlooper and Bullock came off as scolding bosses. Elizabeth Warren had the biggest "gotcha" line of the night when she said to Delaney:

“I don’t understand why anybody goes to all the trouble of running for the president of the United States just to talk about what we really can’t do and shouldn’t fight for,” Ms. Warren said to applause. “I don’t get it.”

Thankfully we've seen the last of these shameful corporate lackeys. Unless some sort of donor bot can be designed by New Knowledge, there's no way that someone like a Steve Bullock is going to be invited to the debate next month.

The fundamental problem that the corporate minders of the mainstream have is that they are trying to promote allegiance to a system that has been thoroughly repudiated and is broadly unpopular. Calls for incrementalism, calls to "go slow," sound like exactly what they are -- class warfare. Not really something that is going to resonate with the "unwashed."

Bernie was the big winner. He was terrific. Warren got a little mussed up this go-round, but she won all her scrapes. Another big winner was Marianne Williamson. Possibly the largest applause dispensed by the Detroit audience was when the pop spiritualist spoke about African-American reparations. I hope she makes into the September debates.