2nd Democratic Debate

There’s a synchro here, but you have to keep reading because Rob added it at the end. I used Rachel’s photo because she was really  the star of the 2nd Democratic debate.

What a refreshing difference the 2^nd Democratic debate was from its Republican counterpart. The Republican format – with the silly kid’s table for those candidates whose poll numbers were low and then the real deal with a bunch of guys and one woman shouting at each other – was a carnival. The Dem debate in South Carolina, with Rachel Maddow moderating for MSNBC, was great. Rachel interviewed each candidate one on one for 30 minutes and I actually learned something about each of the three candidates.

Martin O’Malley, the former governor of Maryland, has been a progressive for most of his political career. He’s slick, smooth, smart, savvy, and has a record to prove it.  He can be funny, too. Rachel did an interesting thing where she had each candidate choose an envelope with some questions in it that were intended to reveal a bit more about who they are as people as opposed to who they are as candidates. One of the questions: What’s the most outrageous (or some other adjective) article of clothing you own? The response? A kilt that was given to him. O’Malley’s poll numbers, though, are in the tank and when Rachel pointed that out, O’Malley flashed a big politician’s smile and said he loves a challenge.

Bernie Sanders was the next candidate Rachel interviewed. It’s apparent that Sanders likes Rachel, that he opens up to her. Sanders is trailing Hillary Clinton by a huge margin in South Carolina. But out of the three candidates, he came across as the most genuine. Toward the end of her interview with him, she showed a photo of Sanders when he was in college at the University of Chicago in 1962. He was directing a protest about segregated campus housing. “What was that younger Bernie Sanders thinking at that time?” she asked.

And he told her what that protest was about and how he’d been marching for civil rights with Martin Luther King Jr., and it confirmed the sense I’ve always had about Sanders – he’s the real deal. There’s no super PAC money giving to his campaign. No Wall Street dudes. No corporations. More than 750,000 people have donated an average of $30 to his campaign. This is about as grass roots as you can get in this country. Sanders has drawn larger crowds than his competition wherever he has gone and it’s because his message resonates – that the economy in this country is rigged for the upper 1% and the middle class is basically getting screwed and that he would change that as president.

When Rachel asked Sanders what he would do about ISIS, I loved his answer. No boots on the ground. No war. Muslim countries in the mid-east need to step up to the plate as a coalition and not just depend on the U.S. as the world cop who will take care of it. He voted against the war in Iraq because he felt that Bush and Cheney and the rest of that gang were lying. Clinton voted for the war in Iraq – and has since apologized for that vote, but her apology doesn’t change the repercussions, that the entire region is now in chaos, with refugees pouring into Europe by the millions.

Sanders also talked about climate change – how real it is, that it’s a national security issues, that he doesn’t want to leave his seven grandchildren with a planet that is basically uninhabitable. In Iowa, he said, thirty percent of the power in that state is now generated by windmills. And I’m thinking, why isn’t the same true in Florida of solar power?

Then there was Clinton. Yes, she’s qualified. Yes, she’s smart and has a lot of foreign policy experience and yes, I would love to see a woman as prez. If she’s the nominee for the Democratic party, I’ll vote for her. She was engaging, on target, answered questions with great intelligence and knowledge. But my choice is Sanders and here’s why.

I sense Bernie is genuine, a real person and not a politician who has been subsumed by his public, political personality. Yes, he’s the oldest of the candidates, 74, but that also means he has the longest public voting record in congress and his record shows stunning consistency. This man’s stance against war, for civil rights, for equality across the board, has been unchanged throughout his career in politics. When he talks, I see passion fueled by deep beliefs. When Clinton talks, I see controlled passion deeply colored by ambition. When O’Malley speaks, I see a quick smile, a thoughtful frown, and political verbiage.

I think Sanders beat out the competition tonight. But the real star was Rachel Maddow. This woman holds a PhD from Oxford, is a lesbian and self-avowed flaming liberal, and should be running for president. Her interview format was terrific, her questions for each candidate were spot on, and the time allotted to each candidate actually provided viewers with information.

So let’s see, my ideal ticket would be: Sanders, Rachel or Elizabeth Warren in any combination. What a different country this would be with any of these 3 in charge. What a changed world it would be.

Here’s a good roundup.

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Trish wrote above that there was no synchronicity, but I stumbled on one, of sorts. Just before the candidate forum, we were busy cleaning two closets that we’d ignored for quite awhile. We were appalled by the dirt and dust and who knows what we found hiding behind the boxes on the floor. Yuck! Then, of course, there’s the possible symbol stuff— cleaning up hidden issues that we’ve buried in the closet or unconscious of our minds. I didn’t think about that until later, when I had a dream that night.

As we were finishing and the forum was about to start, Trish said, “I bet Hillary and Bill don’t do stuff like this.” It seemed an odd thought. I guess the idea was that they would have someone else do it. Her comment came into play in my dream.

We watched Rachel interview the three. She’s very good, but I was a bit disappointed that there no debating, just q&a. It was worthwhile, and Sanders came off a winner, as Trish said above, at least a winner on that night. I went to bed early and dreamed of a large dirty house, and there in the dream was, who else but Hillary with a broom cleaning up!

Dreams are usually about ourselves, not other people, but I couldn’t help thinking that Hillary might indeed be working on cleaning things up from the past to sanitize her campaign. After all, who doesn’t have a dirty closet hidden away somewhere waiting to be discovered? So it goes, as Kurt Vonnegut used to write when there was no need to say more.