Debating the Debates

Unasked Questions

THE WAY IT IS

Well they certainly don’t look alike.

But here they are being compared as representatives of myth-tellers and populist embracers.

The tall, bottle-blonde, bronzed, red-tied real estate salesman and TV star for 15 years with the soft look and nasty-mouth and the slightly stooped, bald, angry professional politician looking for a fight with his fists pumping and his metronomic reciting of capitalist ills; two New Yorkers, one who left Brooklyn to find his political life in Vermont and ended up as a stand-alone U.S. Senator calling himself a Democratic socialist; the other who recently left New York for a tax haven in Florida after a lifetime in Queens and Fifth Avenue, turning to Presidential politics to build his brand and find more money for his real estate developments and ending up President of the United States.

Almost the same age but not looking it…one became the star of the 2016 Presidential debates; the other is the star of the 2020 Presidential debates.

And what about those debates…never before has the Democratic Party presented a singular line-up of essential liberals self-dividing themselves as moderates or progressives. Not a genuinely conservative voice among them. And for what?

What have they accomplished? They slowly came around to simple-mindedly arguing about Bernie Sanders and his aggressive approach to changing the economics of American life by taking from the rich to fuel medical, educational and societal programs that he sees as a better America and as his key to being elected President of the United States.

At first it seemed that he would share the stage with Elizabeth Warren. She seemed to know what he doesn’t…how to do it… as she remained as tough sounding in her way as Bernie did in his. But no, she began to see the light about an abrupt change that would never be politically acceptable and she backed away a bit. Sadly she has not had the political wisdom or strategy to use the debates to show us the Betsy from Norman, Oklahoma who spends hours talking to and taking selfies with thousands of people at her every campaign stop.

As for the moderates, unless we look carefully at their websites, the debates have brought us little about their policies …other than that they oppose the radical changes being driven by Sanders and explained with facts, figures and plans to pay for them by Warren.

And so – without any specific knowledge yet about how Michael Bloomberg’s money will change the landscape – the man now at center stage is Bernie Sanders.

UNASKED QUESTIONS

So let’s start with Bernie in a review of why certain issues get lost in the helter-skelter of debate formats and the madness of trying to learn things in one and a half minute bits and pieces, with moderators in little or no control and issues repeated over and over again with little new or enlightening but for personal jabs about past lives and statements…having little to do with now or tomorrow.

Always remember that TV exists to entertain, amuse and sell us things…not to teach us and help us learn.

Why then has no one on stage asked Bernie how he expects to initiate Medicare for All when he and many of us know that the entire Congress- House and Senate – has been purchased by the health insurance and pharmaceutical industries.

This is not about Democrats and Republicans. They are all takers. Before Obamacare the US Senator taking the most support from these industries was Charles “Chuck” Schumer; second to him – Hillary Rodham Clinton.

Schumer was totally silent during Obama’s struggles to include a ‘public sector’ to compete with the private insurance industry. When the Senate Majority Leader from Nevada Harry Reid. told him that the Senate would pass nothing with such industry competition within it, Obama settled for coverage of those with a preexisting condition and the Affordable Care Act was passed. Once he made that agreement, Schumer was suddenly right there every day to make certain he got the support he needed to pass that legislation…legislation the Industry approved.

So with that history as but one example, who in the House and Senate will vote for Medicare for All? Nobody asks.

Let’s look at Bernie’s army of young people who quite simply love this fighting, rambunctious political ideologue who is no more a socialist then they are. But he talks such wonderful ideology to them and they love him so much that they don’t even mind that it is the same speech he gave in 2016, with just some new statistics to emphasize his point.

When he mentions these legions of supporters and says that they will bring out more voters in this coming election than America has ever seen, no one has bothered to ask him this:

Why did 40% of your supporters vote for Donald Trump in 2016 giving him the edge in two of the three States that gave him an Electoral College victory?

And this question:

Why is it that today only half of your supporters indicate that they will vote for another Democrat if you are not nominated? Will the rest vote for Trump again?

Some critical newspaper columnists suggest that Sanders supporters are ignorant of any historical data that illustrates how what sounds so good may not even be doable.

We suggest that someone should remind moderators and competitors that Sanders supporters are not traditional Democrats or even Democrats at all…but simply enthusiasts who love to see this guy out there tirelessly fighting a system we all know needs very important changes. They think he is ‘authentic’ because no one else does it his way; none of them see what Sanders refuses to admit…that what sounds good and means good doesn’t always find a way to even exist.

And so to another unasked question: on 60 Minutes when Sanders praised the Castro regime for providing Cuba with an affordable educational and healthcare system that genuinely helped this poverty -stricken nation – one ruled by bad people which had become a haven for Americans looking for cheap sex – why didn’t Anderson Cooper ask him how Cuba actually paid for such a stunning development? Maybe he didn’t know that Cuba received $50 million dollars a month from Russia for decades just so it could exist. Without that money Castro’s regime would have collapsed.

We have focused on Bernie because we’ve arrived at a turning point in the nominating process for Democrats. By the time you read this Super Tuesday will have come and gone and after 14 States vote we will see what and who is left. Sanders will clearly be. But how many others will continue because they have the money to do so? We will know whether Michael Bloomberg has succeeded in buying his way into what might be a brokered convention with no one winning on the first ballot…and Bernie clearly in jeopardy in a second ballot dominated by more than 700 Super Delegates nominated by the Democratic Party establishment.

And so to another unasked question: While Bloomberg’s past problems have been discussed – his attitude about pregnant employees, his essentially poor handling of Stop and Frisk, etc. no one has asked him to explain his own statements that he failed in his efforts to fix education in NYC; that while he built some affordable housing, why he totally ignored the horrors at NYCHA where half a million New Yorkers suffered daily. He hired good people. He brought bike lanes to New York – but what else?

SEEKING THE ANSWER

The Democrats will find a nominee. Maybe Amy Klobuchar will succeed in her attempt to become the VP selection.

But in the end millions of concerned, attentive Americans anxious to be the citizens America needs, will be left wondering can this nominee overwhelm the power of a man who knows exactly how 65 million people feel about him – those with money who appreciate what he has done and those without who need his promises to find them work by keeping brown people away.

This is a man who believes that one term Presidents are failures and that to lose this election will mean failure…an existence he cannot bear.

For now, there is one question that has been asked over and over again: can any of these Democrats win in November?