[Six, count-em: six, pieces on last week’s Democratic debates. Listed in chronological order, two of them before the second debate, three during the second debate, and then an official Examiner editorial afterwards. Follow the links embedded in the headlines, for the full articles.]
Debate format hurts thoughtful, long-shot candidates: Long-shots in presidential debates deserve as much speaking time as front-runners. And the viewing audience deserves more chance to hear them…. [But] The media already use their gatekeeper roles to stack the deck in favor of candidates who are favored either by conventional wisdom or by the buzz within the media’s own echo chambers. …
Questions I would ask at tonight’s Democratic debate:
Here’s what I’d like to see the moderators ask tonight:
If market forces, more options, and greater transparency don’t work in the healthcare system, how do you explain the significant drop in drug- and other health-related inflation since the Trump administration began its rulemaking encouraging market forces, more options and greater transparency?
To steal a question my colleague Tiana Lowe asked on Twitter: The United States comprises 4% of the world’s population but produces 44% of its medical R&D. How do you replace that after you’ve ended our for-profit healthcare system?
… [And many more….]
Democrats are demagogues on health care:
It’s time to stop letting insurance companies and pharmaceutical companies be punching bags for cheap-shot demagoguery from Democratic presidential candidates.
It’s also time that the demagogues stopped making the asinine assertion that Republicans actually “want” to “take away” people’s healthcare, as if half the country takes joy in seeing people suffer.
Memo to these economic illiterates who repeatedly blast the “profit motive” of the corporations: It is that profit motive that drives research and development of life-saving drugs. It is that profit motive that creates efficiencies that actually keep prices down and quality up…..
Booker’s position on crime is a crime against common sense:
Cory Booker is attacking Joe Biden for that latter’s record on criminal justice, and Biden isn’t adequately defending that record. In truth, Biden should be bragging about it — and also correcting Booker’s falsehoods about it…. To the extent the 1994 bill reflected Biden’s work (it was actually the work of many, many hands), Biden should be boasting about it. The goal of the bill was to make U.S. streets safer. It did. Much, much safer. Between its grants for the hiring of more police officers and its tougher sentences, it kept bad guys off the streets. That’s what it was designed to do, and it worked. …
Gillibrand’s identity politics is racially offensive:
The identity politics so promiscuously practiced by the Democratic presidential candidates leads to remarkably racialist, if not racist, assumptions. Witness a statement made in the Democratic presidential debate by Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand of New York.
Gillibrand specifically said that because she is a “white woman of privilege,” she can go to suburban areas and sell them on liberal candidates and priorities in ways that dark-complexioned candidates such as Sens. Cory Booker and Kamala Harris cannot….
EXAMINER EDITORIAL — Democratic doomsayers:
To hear most of the Democratic presidential candidates is to wonder if their role model growing up was Chicken Little.
In a time of unprecedented peace and prosperity, arguably at the height of America’s power and inarguably at the height of her wealth, they all yell that the sky is falling, while demanding radical solutions to protect the nation from the dragons in their minds.
Sen. Bernie Sanders asserted in Tuesday night’s debate a need to “transform our economy and our government.” Bill de Blasio went further, calling on his listeners to “restructure society” itself…
