June 27 2019 Democrat Presidential Primary Debate 1, Night 2 ANALYSIS!

By LUDWIG VON KOOPA - A very painful experience. But at least it was energetic.

Welcome to KoopaTV's coverage of the first 2020 Democrat presidential primary debate... night two! (Read the analysis of night one's debate here.)

This time, the competing Democrats are Marianne Williamson, John Hickenlooper, Andrew Yang, Pete Buttigieg, Joe Biden, Bernie Sanders, Kamala Harris, Kirsten Gillibrand, Michael Bennet, and Eric Swalwell. Fortunately for my sanity, these candidates were collectively more energetic than the first night, and the two hours of misery actually went by a lot faster. You know, in feeling-time. Not literal time.
 
(If you need an explanation about these debates or who the candidates are, check out our brand new 2020 Presidential Debate Coverage Index.) 

They covered a wide range of topics including why President Donald John Trump is bad, climate change, abolishing private health insurance, children in cages, getting rid of guns, and busing racial minority children everyday for hours to get to and from school decades ago. All while discriminating against the elderly.

Who dominated tonight's debate?

Joe Biden tallied up the most speaking time, followed by Kamala Harris and Bernie Sanders. https://t.co/0T1PjBsGYV pic.twitter.com/q2Lckad0XI

— NPR Politics (@nprpolitics) June 28, 2019

I'll discuss each candidate's performance individually, just to establish a baseline of all of the participants. Without further ado:

Marianne Williamson

We get to start off the analysis was someone who is clearly a joke candidate. Marianne Williamson is basically a 1970s hippie running for president. She spent her very limited time in the debate discussing love, and how people's perspectives on healthcare are wrong. In fact, the healthcare industry in the United States is the sickcare industry, because it only puts effort in when you're sick, not healthy. I thought ObamaCare was supposed to help remedy that, but I guess I'd rather be sick than Obama.

"Mr. President, if you're listening, I want you to hear me, please. You have harnessed fear for political purposes and only love can cast that out."

Watch Marianne Williamson's message to President Trump in her closing statement #DemDebate2 pic.twitter.com/MpJp9ya5yx

— TODAY (@TODAYshow) June 28, 2019

We're giving Ms. Williamson the Cute award for being utterly ignored during the discussion on immigration and CHILDREN IN CAGES when she raised the point about how no one is talking about the root cause of the problem, being the poverty and bad conditions in Central America. Bernie Sanders later brought it up... and credited Joe Biden for starting the discussion on foreign aid to Central America. Not Williamson. (I don't recall Biden talking about it at all, actually.)

John Hickenlooper

All I knew about John Hickenlooper before the debate is that he's the former governor of Colorado, and he has a funny name.

I didn't know he talked funny, too. He sounds like comedian Joe Machi, who is often a guest on The Greg Gutfeld Show.

Despite that, Hickenlooper made some solid points. Well, he was really only up on the stage for one point, but that's enough for him to win the Smart award. John Hickenlooper believes that socialism is a bad direction for the Democrat Party to go. Americans don't like socialism. Humans don't like socialism. (If you're wondering, Koopas don't, either.) Unfortunately, the Democrat Party is too stupid to heed his words. At least KoopaTV is smart enough to pass them on to you.

Hickenlooper also claims to be a scientist. Something about fracking science. I wonder if that'll hurt his reputation among Democrats.

Andrew Yang

Andrew Yang gets the unofficial award for the most disappointing debate performance. Here I thought he'd be my second favourite Democrat of the twenty participating in these debates.

To be fair to Andrew Yang, you can see at the top of the page that he got, BY FAR, the lowest speaking time out of anyone in these debates. That's not just because he's meek and inexperienced. NBC actually cut off his mic when he wasn't asked a direct question (which was two questions in two hours). That's significant because other candidates can just interrupt and interject at any time when they feel like it, with their mics that are always turned on. Not Yang.

He's proof that these debates are completely rigged, and NBC is FAKE NEWS for suggesting that they're trying to get fair to every candidate. They have every reason to want to shut Yang up. He's fairly intelligent (I thought he'd be a shoe-in for the Smart award), thinks outside-the-box, and doesn't follow Democrat conventional thinking. But unlike Marianne Williamson, he could be an actual threat to the candidates the media wants to win if he were allowed to get his messages out there.

Andrew Yang gave answers about his signature Universal Basic Income plan... and then an answer about how Russia is a much bigger threat than China because Russia interferes in the elections (implying China doesn't?) and the United States should play much nicer with China and drop the tariffs and stuff. For someone who is Taiwanese and should have a natural animosity towards Mainland China, Andrew Yang has the totally wrong ideas on foreign policy an has no idea what he's talking about. You can tell he's running for president only because he's interested in the domestic agenda.

I can't give him a Smart award for downplaying China and making Russia out to be a bigger threat than they really are.

Mr. Yang definitely needs to be more assertive in future debates. If you look at his recent Twitter posts, you can tell that he knows he didn't do well in the debate, and he's taking it rather harshly. I like that he's being authentic with his followers and sharing how he actually feels instead of some focus-tested phony-ness.

Pete Buttigieg

Pete Buttigieg actually sounded rather reasonable for a while. His college tuition plan ISN'T making college free or cancelling student debt, which is the right position for all kinds of supply & demand and moral hazard reasons. He doesn't want Medicare-for-All either, just a public option. Though in practice, that means he wants the public option to be subsidised to the point where consumers naturally choose the government insurance over private insurance, until the public insurance becomes a de-facto monopoly. I'm not sure if that'll actually work, but at least he doesn't want to legislatively ban a whole industry from the country.

Buttigieg actually played up his being-in-the-military credentials to sound reasonable on guns and responsibility, and his mid-west credentials by saying that Democrats don't have to keep bashing rural American farmers as problems, but rather as helpful to combat climate change with efficient soil management. Good stuff.

But then Pete Buttigieg went into this bizarre speech about how Republicans, who allegedly are the political party of Jesus Christ, can never claim any moral authority now or in the future because Republicans support locking kids in cages. That's dumb. It's based on a totally false premise.

That said, KoopaTV will elaborate more on this kids-in-cages topic in a future article. For now, marvel how Pete Buttigieg throws away his objectivity for an applause line, which is becoming a pretty common thing in these debates:

Joe Biden

It is the earnest opinion of KoopaTV that Joe Biden is being underrated by the pundits.

In fact, you may possibly interpret him as our favourite candidate from this debate, since he's winning TWO awards: Tough and Cool.

Joe Biden is Tough because he totally resisted Crybaby Kamala in her efforts to depict him as a racist or something, with her emotional appeal on Joe Biden's record on opposing busing black kids for hours to go to a school in a place they didn't live. Not only was her appeal purely based on emotions and fake tears and not policy, but it was totally distortive of what Joe Biden actually did. Without even trying to act understanding or consoling of Crybaby Kamala, Joe Biden calmly and logically dispatched her claims.

How well did that play to a Democrat Party that runs on emotions and identity politics, as opposed to facts? Probably not well, but I consider it Tough.

Joe Biden also, at the same time, basically said Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. got him to be a public DEFENDER, and not a prosecutor.

Exact quote: 

“Mischaracterisation of my position across the board. I did not praise racists. That is not true. Number one. Number two, if we want to have this campaign litigated on who supports civil rights and whether I did or not, I'm happy to do that. I was a public defender, I didn't become a prosecutor. [glares at Kamala] I came out and I left a good law firm to become a public defender when in fact my city was in flames because of the... uh... the assassination of Dr. King.”

This was Joe Biden's Cool moment, and absolutely invoked the pro-defence attorney philosophies of Ace Attorney.
Of course that'll play well on KoopaTV! (Also, your obligatory videogame reference for the article.)

Bernie Sanders

Bernie Sanders is a very known quantity by now. We know what he stands for and what he thinks (and how passionate of an angry old man he is), but he comes across as less unique compared to 2015–2016 because the Democrat Party has shifted dramatically in his direction. However, unique to this campaign appearance is that slick comb-over look he sported in this debate, which earned Bernie the Beauty award.

Bernie is looking better and better as he ages.
And he's showing his patriotism by reflecting American flag colours in his glasses!

Kamala Harris

I already discussed Kamala Harris's awful... I mean, “brave” fight with Joe Biden in his section. I'll just say, for the rest of the debate, Kamala Harris was constantly peddling out-right falsehoods and gibberish. When asked if Democrats should have to explain how to pay for their policy proposals when they make them, she gave a non-answer (aka “no.”)... not that she herself gave any substantive policy proposals. I don't think she understands policy.

For example, Kamala Harris believes that the unemployment figures are low because people are ACTUALLY struggling in this economy, and the numbers are inflated because average Americans need to work three jobs just to survive. ...That's ludicrous. (And not how the unemployment rate is measured.) Her ignorance fits well with her earlier comment about how she thinks tax refunds work.

She also made the same stupid comment that Inslee made last night that President Donald John Trump is the biggest geopolitical threat of the United States. And offered a rehearsed line about how the American people don't to see politicians having a figurative food fight on stage (everyone talking over each other because the moderators are incompetent), but Americans want to know how the Democrat politicians will put food on their table. First of all, the beauty of America is that unlike in the socialist countries that Democrats like Kamala Harris want America to emulate, the government doesn't have to hand out food in bread lines and whatever to everyone. People are generally well-off enough that they can freely go to the store of their choice and purchase the food of their choice. Second, Kamala Harris obviously doesn't think about the meaning of her rehearsed lines, because she later engaged in the same behaviour she was admonishing others for doing. And she routinely went over the time limits set by the moderators. Not that they enforced it for Kamala Harris, since she's the media's favourite candidate right now.

She's stupid, willing to race-bait, and willing to say anything for attention. That makes her perfect to fight President Donald John Trump, in the eyes of the media and her fanbase in the Democrat Party. Her supporters are as stupid as she is, by the way. I've interacted with some on social media. Among other things, they believe that the amount of time someone has to speak makes no impact on a debate. When given pushback, I got blocked. Yiippeee. 

Kirsten Gillibrand

How did we go from Tulsi Gabbard in this spot in Night 1 to the likes of Kirsten Gillibrand in Night 2? Massive degradation of quality. Gillibrand is pretty much a generic woke leftist witch. She thinks she's better than you (hence her pointing her finger/pen at people), and seems really excited about offensively taking the message of baby-murder out to the American people. She seems to have the impression that all America's women care about is being able to murder their own spawn. She's incoherent and has no purpose running. Next.

Michael Bennet

Actually, I should've saved incoherent and having no purpose for running as commentary for Michael Bennet. Even after he got a disproportionate amount of questions from the moderators relative to anyone in the media wanting him to win, I still don't know what his candidacy is about. I just know that he strikes me as someone that's probably retarded, just based on how he talks.

There's something really weird about how the Coloradans in this debate are talking. He actually had a Rick Perry moment where he was supposed to list three countries that President Donald John Trump “attacked” on his international G-20 trip, but forgot the third one. Unlike Rick Perry, at least he didn't spend a minute trying to remember.

He also equivocated President Donald John Trump's border policy to the Holocaust, so... screw him. Idiot. At least fellow Colordan Hickenlooper sounds funny BUT made solid points. Bennet contributed nothing but strife and stupidity.

Eric Swalwell

Eric Swalwell is the Democrat equivalent of Marco Rubio. He sounds exactly like Marco Rubio in terms of his speech pattern and tone. He has the same “I'm a young person and old people are useless” attitude. (To be exact, he repeatedly kept saying “pass the torch” throughout the debate, including on climate policy?) Except he's addicted to ending the Second Amendment. At least Rubio is a National Rifle Association tool.

I think Eric Swalwell might be my least favourite candidate out of both nights. He's not a serious candidate and he's just here to start fights, much like Bill de Blasio. But he takes himself seriously for some reason. And he's insufferable to the point where it's not at all funny.

He better not qualify for future debates.

Rankings

To summarise, here are the Super Contest winners for each category for this second debate:

• Beauty: Bernie Sanders
• Cool: Joe Biden
• Cute: Marianne Williams
• Smart: John Hickenlooper
• Tough: Joe Biden

Ludwig should go to sleep and get himself psyched up for the Super Smash Bros. Ultimate tournament tomorrow. Check out that comments section to read how well Ludwig did in it after it happens! As for THIS comments section, let Ludwig know your impressions on the debate(s).


More on kids in cages here.