De­mo­c­ra­t­ic De­bates

Why Cover the De­mo­c­ratic De­bates?

This page started when I was hoping for live com­ments along with the NBC live stream— dis­abled on YouTube 👎. Take part in the live dis­cus­sion below, or find the sub­scribe button to get an email in­vi­ta­tion for l00sed.slack.com

For anyone who wants to know the tech­nical de­tails and stats for can­di­dates and de­bates, I just found an ex­tremely useful page on Wikipedia that has a ton of info on polls, sched­ules, etc.

Lastly, I came across a useful, in­ter­ac­tive 2020 Pres­i­den­tial Elec­tion Map on Po­lit­ical Wire— "one of the ear­liest most in­flu­en­tial po­lit­ical web sites".

If you want the latest po­lit­ical news and analysis in neat, man­age­able bits, then I re­ally rec­om­mend keeping tabs on this site by Taegan God­dard, or follow him on Twitter .

Episode 1, The Thun­der­dome

Episode 2, There Can Be Only Ten?

July 30th. The second round of de­bates will be hosted by CNN. Ac­cording to a story by CBS, can­di­dates must have ei­ther:

65,000 donors to their cam­paign, with at least 200 donors in 20 dif­ferent states, or ob­tain at least 1 per­cent in three polls rec­og­nized as le­git­i­mate by the com­mittee. If more than 20 can­di­dates qualify for the de­bate, the DNC has said it will choose par­tic­i­pants with a method­ology that gives pri­macy to can­di­dates meeting both thresh­olds, fol­lowed by the highest polling av­erage, fol­lowed by the most unique donors.

Making these mile­stones is ex­tremely im­por­tant if the can­di­date is going to suc­ceed! This is the second De­mo­c­ratic pri­mary de­bate (of 12 total). So far, only 14 can­di­dates have qual­i­fied in both areas. Sup­port your chosen can­di­dates and check back here on July 30th for live de­bate chat.

Episode 3, Qual­i­fying Rounds

July 31st. De­bate. De­troit. But will it re­ally happen? Who knows. The only thing that people can ac­tu­ally watch from the de­bate last night is CNN's own short clips and cov­erage. At least if I'd had a TV tuner when I was forced to watch the first two de­bates on MSNBC, I might have been able to view an of­fi­cial De­mo­c­ratic Party pri­mary de­bate without paying for cable.

At LEAST MSNBC had the cour­tesy to up­load the recorded de­bates to YouTube. This full cov­erage (em­bedded above) was recorded and up­loaded by a public cit­izen of the Web. If you find links to the full de­bate cov­erage, post them below! What else is the In­ternet for...?

Stay tuned for the second De­troit de­bate cov­erage tonight, and in­vite your friends to start a dis­cus­sion.

Episode 4, The Se­cret CNN De­bates Pt. 2

If ten or fewer can­di­dates meet the DNC's cri­teria, the next de­bate will be a one-night af­fair— set for Sep­tember 12th. I'm so thankful to the YouTube pi­rates who've recorded the de­bates and made them avail­able to a broader public. Poor VP Biden looked so upset as his fellow can­di­dates tore him up in the de­bates last night and the night prior; but he's still win­ning in the polls as the "most likely to take on Trump".

Ac­cording to an ar­ticle on the NYT web­site, "can­di­dates will need to have 130,000 unique donors and reg­ister at least 2 per­cent sup­port in four polls" by Au­gust 28th. So far, Biden, Booker, Buttigieg, Harris, O'Rourke, Sanders, and Warren have se­cured a spot; but Yang, Castro, and Klobuchar are be­hind. ABC will be tele­vising the Houston de­bates. Once again, stay tuned for livestream and in­vite people to the dis­cus­sion below! Thanks.

Episode 5, Who's Left for Houston?

A lot has hap­pened since the Houston de­bate. Bernie is out of the hos­pital after suf­fering a heart at­tack . He re­ceived two stents to re­lieve a blocked artery, but an­nounced that he's not giving up on his cam­paign.

Mean­while, former Vice Pres­i­dent Joe Biden has been strug­gling to de­fend him­self for al­legedly using the power of his of­fice to force out a Ukranian pros­e­cutor who was in­ves­ti­gating an oli­garch linked to Burisma , the Ukrainian en­ergy com­pany where Hunter [Biden's son] sat on the board.

Pres­i­dent Trump, who is now (more than ever) under threat of im­peach­ment , has been ac­cused of using his own po­si­tion as Pres­i­dent to per­suade Ukrainian Pres­i­dent Volodymyr Ze­lensky to in­ves­ti­gate the Bidens. It seems this was a move to throw shade on one of his biggest po­lit­ical op­po­nents in the up­coming elec­tion.

Lastly, De­mo­c­ratic hopeful, Tulsi Gab­bard threat­ened to boy­cott tonight's de­bate. She ar­gued that the cri­teria set by the DNC (in order to be el­i­gible for each de­bate) is ar­bi­trary and bi­ased; and that the de­bates are akin to a re­ality TV se­ries. I whole-heart­edly agree.

I want to say this was be­fore she met the re­quire­ments for tonight's de­bate... In­ci­den­tally, she has now met the re­quire­ments, and re­cently Tweeted that she will in fact be par­tic­i­pating in the de­bate (we'll see if the mod­er­a­tors ask her about this). It's good to have prin­ci­ples, but the re­ality is that skip­ping out on a tele­vised de­bate isn't going to get you elected. Sad, but true.

Tonight's de­bates are again hosted by CNN , and are sched­uled to begin at 8 ET. As al­ways, I in­vite you to leave your com­ments below and watch the de­bate along with me. I'll be heading down to Shadyside's The Urban Tap to have a drink while I watch on their big screens!

Episode 6, CNN: The Last Supper

West­er­ville, Ohio — CNN — 10/​15

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Part 2

Tonights de­bate hap­pens mid-im­peach­ment. Biden has been called out nu­merous times by Re­pub­li­cans in this and last weeks public hear­ings. Re­pub­li­cans say that Ukrainian Pres­i­dent Ze­len­sky's "favor" for Trump was jus­ti­fied.

That favor— which De­moc­rats are trying to prove was a quid pro quo for much-needed mil­i­tary aid— was de­pen­dant upon the Ukrainians in­ves­ti­gating Biden for using his po­si­tion as Vice Pres­i­dent to get his son Hunter a seat on the board of a cor­rupt Ukrainian en­ergy com­pany, Burisma .

I'm cu­rious to see whether or not other De­mo­c­ratic can­di­dates will try to throw shade on Biden, or if they'll use this op­por­tu­nity to seize on Pres­i­dent Trump's own cor­rup­tion. Re­gard­less, I'm sure the im­peach­ment hear­ings will be a major part of tonight's de­bate.

Episode 7, The Im­peach Pit-Fighters

At­lanta, Georgia — MSNBC — 11/​20

Re­cently, I started reading Joe Trip­pi's The Rev­o­lu­tion Will Not Be Tele­vised . In an early chapter, the vet­eran po­lit­ical cam­paigner re­counts his ex­pe­ri­ence man­aging the trail of De­mo­c­ratic can­di­date, Howard Dean.

As a young voter, I was mostly blind to the cut-throat po­lit­ical tac­tics at play in every major elec­tion. Even the smallest mis­takes are ex­posed and used against a can­di­date to make them ap­pear small, ridicu­lous, and in­ex­pe­ri­enced. Howard Dean's down­fall was the in­op­por­tune Dean Scream .

As Trippi points out in his book, Howard Dean re­ceived an in­or­di­nate amount of crit­i­cism over this mist­imed shriek. While such an act might have been over-looked with a lesser-known can­di­date, Dean was on the rise.

Sim­i­larly, I think Buttigieg has been an ex­cep­tion­ally pres­i­den­tial can­di­date. He's well-spoken and his policy isn't far from mod­erate. He's young and pas­sionate, and the other can­di­dates are be­gin­ning to no­tice him. I don't think the wine cave "scandal" will give them enough am­mu­ni­tion to put him to rest; but I think we'll con­tinue to see him come under fire.

Episode 8, Smoke-Filled Crystal Wine Cave

Sorry I was a little late with the post on this one! CNN has again de­cided that their "high­lights" is more di­gestible than the full de­bate. They have been kind enough to up­load it (split into four parts).

Trump was having a rally during the de­bate— prob­ably so his brain-washed Trumpers wouldn't get any bright ideas and see what the De­mo­c­ratic can­di­dates have to say... not that they had much to say.

Biden made his usual boomer/​cen­trist ap­peals. Tom Steyer is still rich enough to be a can­di­date. Buttigieg's wine cave wasn't as big a deal; but everyone still seems to hate him in­ex­plic­ably (prob­ably be­cause he's not an old fart).

The most Twitter-friendly ac­tion was when CNN called Bernie out for being sexist . Ap­par­ently he told Eliz­a­beth Warren that a woman could never be pres­i­dent. He de­nied it, Warren said it hap­pened, and much drama en­sued.

The drama has dis­si­pated some, but this could bring a real hurdle to Bernie and his cam­paign if given fuel. By this point, how­ever, most lib­eral po­lit­ical junkies are fol­lowing the Sen­ate's im­peach­ment hear­ings in­stead.

There was, how­ever, an­other in­ter­esting mo­ment when Hillary , a doc­u­men­tary "re­vealing mo­ments from never-be­fore-seen 2016 cam­paign footage", was re­leased. Hillary was put on record saying:

He was in Con­gress for years. He had one sen­ator sup­port him. No­body likes him, no­body wants to work with him, he got nothing done... He was a ca­reer politi­cian. It's all just baloney and I feel so bad that people got sucked into it.

The In­ternet quickly re­sponded, and #ILike­Bernie trended #1 on Twitter. Ad­di­tion­ally, his cam­paign started fun­neling in do­na­tions.So, ap­par­ently someone likes him...

Episode 9, Ei­ther Warren or Sanders is a Liar...

Des Moines, Iowa — CNN — 1/​14

Part 1
Part 2
Part 3
Part 4

You've prob­ably heard about the Iowa caucus. It was a com­plete de­bacle. As of yes­terday (2/​6), the As­so­ci­ated Press re­ported that they are "un­able to de­clare a winner in Iowa".

The Iowa De­mo­c­ratic Party used an app, built by a com­pany called Shadow, to re­port caucus re­sults. Ac­cording to the NY times : Shadow had less than 2 months to build the soft­ware, and it ended up de­liv­ering in­cor­rect tal­lies when caucus re­porters had dif­fi­culty down­loading the app.

In a tech­nical sense, I'm still having trouble un­der­standing what ex­actly went wrong. Who the hell is Shadow? And why the hell would they choose a name that reeks of Bond vil­lain? I posted to Hacker News and did some light dig­ging.

A Twitter thread by @rabble re­vealed some in­for­ma­tion about Shadow:

You can read the whole thread as a co­he­sive ar­ticle here .

It's easy for news agen­cies to dis­miss the nu­merous on­line con­spiracy the­o­ries , mainly: DNC med­dling to pre­vent electing a "de­mo­c­ratic so­cialist" as Pres­i­dent... That doesn't dis­miss the fact that we're be­gin­ning this elec­tion year in "a sea of doubt".

Shadow said in a Tweet, "We sin­cerely re­gret the delay in re­porting of the re­sults of last night's Iowa cau­cuses and the un­cer­tainty it has caused."

Ac­cording to the Times:

"Buttigieg's cam­paign paid $42,500 to Shadow Inc. for text mes­saging soft­ware in July. Other De­moc­rats, in­cluding former Vice Pres­i­dent Joe Biden, Sen. Kirsten Gilli­brand and the Texas De­mo­c­ratic Party, have con­tracted with Shadow for sim­ilar ser­vices, fed­eral cam­paign fi­nance data show."

Even if there was no ma­li­cious in­tent, it's clear that Shadow did not have the tech­nical or busi­ness ex­per­tise to ship an in­tu­itive and stream-lined product.

Since 2016, bad prac­tice and ma­li­cious in­tent in polit­cial tech has been an in­cred­ible threat to the United States and other na­tions. Our task to un­der­stand what is broken, dam­aging, overly com­plex— and what can be done to remedy the elec­tion process needs se­rious at­ten­tion.

On an­other note, Trump has been ac­quitted on all charges of im­peach­ment. It dis­ap­points me to say this, but this news did not come as a sur­prise.

The only Re­pub­lican who had the courage to stand up to Trump was Mitt Romney — which (un­sur­pris­ingly) quickly moved him to number one on Trump's hit list.

The Pres­i­dent's State of the Union ad­dress— and the Re­pub­lican self-grat­i­fi­ca­tion party that oc­curred later— af­firmed the truly frac­tured state of the "Union". Trump di­rectly mocked Rom­ney's vote, at­tacking him di­rectly for voting based on his faith.

In his State of the Union speech, he wove a fic­ti­tious story of a united, pa­tri­otic country— re­spected and ad­mired by the world. The tragic, ob­vious re­ality is that we are di­vided. Trump will not stop pro­moting a na­tion­alist agenda of "America alone" as long as he is Pres­i­dent.

Episode 10, Some­body Won Iowa

This was by far the most heated de­bate yet. By some mir­acle (no, wait, it's money) Bloomberg has ap­peared on the de­bate stage. He was, right­fully, bashed by the other De­mo­c­ratic can­di­dates for his in­fa­mous "stop-and-frisk" policy as mayor of NYC. Ad­di­tion­ally, Eliz­a­beth Warren showed her grit when she would not back down on Bloomberg's non-dis­clo­sure agree­ments with women he had pre­sum­ably har­rassed or of­fended in the past.

Shots were fired early in the de­bate be­tween Buttigieg and Sanders as well. Many of the mod­erate can­di­dates are trying their best to label Sanders an ex­tremist by calling him a com­mu­nist and a so­cialist. Bernie held his own by ad­dressing the cur­rent policy of the United States as: "so­cialism for the rich", and con­tin­uing to re­in­force his in­ten­tions to take the boot off of the working class.

In other news, Trump held his oblig­a­tory rally to pre­vent any of his MAGA drones from cul­ti­vating any po­lit­i­cally di­verse thoughts. He mocked the Iowa "app-oca­lypse" (which is fair), and called out sev­eral of the de­mo­c­ratic can­di­tates with his usual splash of Trump­isms.

Lastly, but not least, I think it's worth noting that the former de­mo­c­ratic hopeful, An­drew Yang, has taken on a po­si­tion with CNN as a po­lit­ical com­men­tator. He will be fol­lowing the de­bates, pro­viding in­sight from his own ex­pe­ri­ence in the race.

Episode 11, Can You Find Bloomberg?

This was an­other cringe-worthy de­bate ahead of the South Car­olina pri­maries. Joe Biden seemed con­fi­dent as ever that he would win in the state— spoiler alert, he did.

After that, the DNC sud­denly came down with Biden fever. The day be­fore Super Tuesday, Buttigieg and Klobuchar pro­ceeded to with­draw from the race and en­dorse Biden.

If you think that looks sus­pi­cious, I would agree. It's a pretty bla­tant at­tempt by the DNC to con­sol­i­date power against Sanders (and Warren). The only can­di­date who felt the need to stay in the race is former NYC mayor, Bloomberg (RIP).

As we head into Super Tuesday, we'll quickly see whether or not this tactic paid off, or whether the United States still be­lieves a de­mo­c­ratic-so­cialist is the best chance for a brighter Amer­ican fu­ture.

Episode 12, Feel the Jo­mentum

So much has hap­pened since the eve of the last de­bate. The voting pop­u­la­tion over 65 has felt the Jo­mentum. Ac­cording to a Vox ar­ticle 48% of 65-and-over voted for Biden.

Biden now has the en­dorse­ment of nearly half of the orig­inal lineup of can­di­dates. It wasn't okay for Buttigieg to take money from bil­lion­aires, but no one seemed to bat an eye when Bloomberg pledged his sup­port to Biden.

The mod­er­ates seem to have de­cided this race from the be­gin­ning.

Bloomberg did not per­form well on Super Tuesday— hope­fully to no one's sur­prise. After spending some of his pocket change ($620 mil­lion), he walked away win­ning over only the fair na­tion of Amer­ican Samoa.

If you have no idea where that is, nei­ther did I. Here's a little map:

In the con­ti­nental United States, COVID-19 has the na­tion in a panic— right­fully so.

The United States is woe­fully un­pre­pared for this virus. The Pres­i­dent has not suc­ceeded in building a uni­fied front. It wasn't until yes­terday (3/​13) that he de­clared a na­tional emer­gency.

Ap­par­ently the quar­an­tine of Italy and en­tire cities in China did not ring any alarm bells until now. In­stead of using his power and re­sources to as­semble a strategy, a pro­fes­sional com­mittee, to combat this pan­demic; he in­stead gloated on his per­sonal ex­pe­ri­ence and knowl­edge with dis­eases?

The ad­min­is­tra­tion has not taken this crisis se­ri­ously. They've seem­ingly made no at­tempt to safe­guard even their own safety by prac­ticing so­cial dis­tancing or seeking testing.

Ex­cited for this up­coming de­bate with Joe and Bernie. In a mor­bidly ironic way, I think Sanders now has an even more air­tight ar­gu­ment for Medicare for All. Hope­fully they do this de­bate with no au­di­ence... (they did).

As al­ways, CNN made the full de­bate ex­tremely ac­ces­sible to the public by split­ting it up into 6 parts. Enjoy.

Episode 13, The COVID De­bate

Wash­ington, D.C. — CNN — 3/​15

Part 1
Part 2
Part 3
Part 4
Part 5
Part 6