So Democrats had debate to night two last night again because of the number of candidates.
The second, yeah, you can
debate split into two nights.
I told you after the first night that the winners for me were the sort of growing Bernie
Warren coalition, both doing really well.
Some people thinking Bernie did better than Warren.
Some people Warren in better than Bernie, but significant consensus that they both dominated
that debate followed sort of hilariously in a way by Marianne Williamson who talked about
dark souls or dark energy or something like that.
But she actually did do better than everybody else on that stage other than Bernie Sanders
and Elizabeth Warren.
That was night one, night two last night.
It was much less clear who won per se, but I believe that the strongest into, uh, in
night two were Andrew Yang and Joe Biden.
Now I want you to just hear me out on this.
Okay.
This is, I know this is something that many in the audience aren't going to agree with.
Um, I believe that Joe Biden ended up doing well last night simply because the sustained
ganging up on him started to fall flat and fail.
Okay.
I don't like condescending to the audience, but I want to issue disclaimers.
I don't think Biden one because he said anything extraordinary.
I don't think Biden won in the sense that he appealed to actual progressive's Biden
is one of the more, uh, center left candidates onstage.
Not One of the more progressive candidates on stage.
But basically what ended up happening is that no one stood out in any reasonable way other
than Andrew Yang, which I will get to.
And Biden merely by sustaining attacked attacks, that became more and more a sort of flacid
for lack of a better term, ended up doing.
Okay.
So here's what happened in the first debate, not the first night of this debate, but I
mean in the first debate back in June, the most memorable what we call a kill shot moment,
which are these sort of gotchas that are only there really the only way to do well in a
debate who's format is so ridiculous and prevents any sort of that depth on issues.
The most memorable kill shot from debate one was where Kahmilah Harris one after Biden
over race related issues and case in point it worked.
She searched for points between debates the most of any candidate.
There were a couple of people who gained two points.
A Biden was roughly even Bernie lost two points.
So the candidates other than Biden came in last night, clearly planning to attack Biden
however they could as the old guard of the Democratic Party, which is sort of true as
not really progressive, which is absolutely true.
And at first it went okay, like there was a moment where New York City mayor, Bill de
Blasio started going after Biden and the attacks were pretty good and he got Biden in a situation
where Biden clearly didn't want to answer about a deportation under the Obama administration.
Then booker sort of jumped in and Cory booker and build a Blasio.
We're tag teaming Joe Biden and made him look not progressive, which he is not.
But then the attacks started falling flat and Kirsten Gillibrand for example, thought
she would jump in on the action and her attacks on Biden just did not work.
And Biden ended up looking sort of as the rational elder statesman that everybody around
was trying to attack.
Uh, when Kirsten Gillibrand sort of failed in her attack on Biden, Camulla Harris immediately
tried to jump in.
Her attacks also felt sort of fell sort of flat.
So as not progressive as Biden is, as much as he is not, you know, his politics are not
my politics.
I'm trying to tell you what I see as the attacks on Biden ultimately backfiring and leaving
Joe Biden looking stronger from having weathered what was clearly a decidedly joint effort.
Even if they didn't speak about it, everybody came in with the idea of most people on the
stage to attack Joe Biden and before you furiously email me, I'm not a Biden supporter.
I'm not saying I liked the policies he laid out.
He was talking about many issues in language that is almost the same as a moderate Republican.
Okay.
All I'm saying is he went in polling in first place.
If you're a casual follower of the Democratic Party and you see Biden look calm and collected
all, all admittedly low energy as well, while half the stage is just trying to attack Biden
instead of laying out their vision, I believe that it helps Joe Biden hugely.
Now, secondly, I believe Andrew Yang did really well and I know people will say, oh, but David,
you, you've talked, you've interviewed him and you clearly have some kind of bias towards
Andrew Yang.
My, my primary bias is towards Bernie and Warren.
In terms of my politics, I did not think Andrew Yang did well in the first debate.
He barely got a chance to speak and he did well last night despite, by the way, Yang
was the fourth in terms of polling on the stage last night.
And from the analysis I saw this morning, that producer pat sent me, he got some of
the least speaking time and yet he still did really well.
Andrew Yann gave a really good answer framing medicare for all as something that's good
for small businesses, which really reverses the Republican talking points on the issue.
He worked in his thousand dollar a month freedom dividends in a more natural sounding way than
usual.
One of the criticisms of Andrew Yang is he often goes to that, uh, freedom dividend in
ways seem very forced and they don't really land in a way that you would want.
He did much better on debt that he gave a really strong answer about reality TV politics
that the crowd love.
Take a look
here with makeup on our faces and our rehearsed attack lines playing roles in this reality
TV show.
It's one reason why we elected a reality TV star.
As our president
[inaudible].
We need to be laser focused on solving the real challenges of today.
Andrew Yang also talked about literally moving to higher ground because of climate change,
which is sort of imagery that provokes an urgency that a lot of other candidates failed
to provoke.
A lot of discussion about climate change, but a lot of the candidates rhetoric really
falling flat in terms of of pointing out that we are in a crisis.
Andrea can get really well there.
So if I step back and try to look at the two nights together, which is hard because you
don't have everybody on the same stage.
Bernie and Warren, I believe, are the big winners.
The strong progressive coalition, the left is an important part of the Democratic Party.
They crushed it on night one together.
Uh, on night two, I believe Biden by weathering increasingly flacid attacks against him, uh,
is probably going to at least sustain his polling.
Andrew Yang I would guess is going to pick up, uh, some polling.
Otherwise I don't think that the Zeros and ones really benefited from either night of
these debates.
My prediction would be in terms of polling and we'll maybe have some of that by Monday,
some of the zero and one support.
We'll start to just go away and consolidate around.
Bernie and Warren.
I think Biden will basically be unchanged and Yang will pick up a little bit now.
Serious question.
A bunch of people during my live stream yesterday on twitch at twitch.tv/david Pacman were saying,
we're asking whether I think any of the candidates are taking a pharmaceutical, you know, drugs,
uh, to calm nerves or whatever.
I actually, it is an open question for me as to whether at least some of the candidates
were on some kind of Downer or anxiety medication.
Um, I believe it was Michael Bennett who seemed kind of like Fred Willard in terms of delivery
the guy from a best in show very slow and, and very strange pauses.
Hickenlooper night one.
So I don't know, I'm curious what people think.
I can understand being nervous enough, uh, to reach for something to calm the nerves.
But there is something that kept coming up yesterday during my live stream.
Curious to hear from people about that.
We do need to get down to just one, one evening, one stage a by the third debates, uh, September
12th and 13th, or maybe just the 12th.
If there are a few enough candidates and we may be, uh, there are only seven candidates
right now who have met the requirements for the third debate.
That's Biden booted, Judge Harris, Sanders, Warren Booker and O'Rourke.
Andrew Yang had met it, but now some recent polls pushed him out.
We'll see if he makes it in.
There's still time for Julio on Castro and um, uh, potentially a Tulsi Gabbert to get
in on their, their, their on donors, but they're not really pulling well enough.
So the group will be smaller come, uh, September 12th.
But how much smaller still remains an open question.
Let me know what you think about who comes away.
The winners.