According to a post-debate assessment by The New York Times (see "Who Won the Debate? Internet Roundup From Campaign Experts") lo and behold! the neoliberals won! In particular, Kamala Harris' star shined brightly.
Plainly put, it's a crock of shit. One great satisfaction for me in the Democratic primary to date has been the completely unwarranted booming of Kamala Harris early on -- she was clearly the favorite of the oligarchs who govern the Democratic Party -- followed by her almost total disappearance -- Harris was polling in the sub-5% territory of fellow neoliberals Booker and Klobuchar prior to last night's debate.
The oligarchs tried to force-feed the whining, abrasive former California Attorney General to the Democratic voting public, and the voting public refused to eat.
It's been this resounding thud of Harris' candidacy that has led to all the somersaults in the primary so far. The entry of addled septuagenarian Joe Biden; the booming of the slick, soulless Buttigieg; the late entry of B-grade Obama Deval Patrick; and the menacing hover of a Hindenburg-size nuclear-tipped drone in the form of billionaire Mike Bloomberg.
Was Harris good last night? Yes and no. She got plenty of camera time and she spoke her lines, which I suppose is better than the last few debates where she was a total non-entity. The problem is with what she said. It was the same old focus-group-tested consultant-driven hooey -- much the same as Mayor Pete's shtick -- that makes a lot of noise but means nothing.
What particularly offended me was a line from Harris where she said something like, "Unlike some on this stage I'm not buried in the past. To deal with the pressing problems of today we need forward looking solutions." It was an obvious jab at Medicare For All. Basically Harris is implying that Social Security and Medicare are vestigial relics of the days before the golden dawn of neoliberalism.
Will Harris enjoy a bounce? If she does, it will be short lived and minor. The public is not buying what the neoliberals are peddling. Buttigieg is the sole remaining neoliberal identity candidate. And my bet is that his rise in the polls in the run up to Iowa and New Hampshire is a hallucination. As the female head of the union I work for boorishly commented pre-debate last night, "Most people don't even know he's gay, let alone married. Do you think Americans are going to put a man in the White House who is married to another man who will be First Lady? Not a chance!"
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