The Debate That Never Was

The Debate That Never Was
The View from the Middle

If you are anything like me, you tuned into the Democratic debate to hear about their plans to make our lives better. The economy is good. How can the Democrats make it better? Immigration is a mess. What is your plan to address this crisis? Healthcare is a complicated issue. What are your plans to improve access and quality while reducing costs? Instead we were all subjected to a combination auction, foreign policy pipedream and a utopian dream fest.

The auction started immediately with the first question to Bernie Sanders, and Bernie made a super-strong first bid. Bernie offered up free, universal healthcare, free college and the forgiveness of all student debt in America. Wow! I don’t even remember the question, but Bernie was determined to buy as many votes as possible with his first salvo. My first thought was that we need a spending clock at these debates so that we can keep track of how much of our money these purse-snatchers are squandering. Because, as I’ve said a thousand times, OUR GOVERNMENT HAS NO MONEY. Please remember, whenever Bernie or anyone else uses the word “free” they are taxing you to pay for it.

Not to be outdone by Bernie, Joe Biden said, “I’ll call your free college and raise you universal pre-K.” Kamala Harris then declared, “I’ll see your free college and Pre-K, and raise you $500 a month guaranteed income for anyone making less than $100,000 a year.” Not to be outdone, Andrew Yang proclaimed, “I’ll call all of that and raise you $1,000 a month for everyone over 18.” By this time the spending clock would have been smoking, with sparks flying and flames would have been coming from your wallets. But the final bid was a group bid as every candidate on the stage promised free healthcare for illegal aliens. The spending clock just exploded.

I don’t know what these guys and gals were smoking, but as soon as the auction ended, the foreign policy pipedream began. First, most of the candidates suggested that our country’s biggest geopolitical foe today is Russia. To paraphrase Barack Obama, “guys, 2008 wants its foreign policy back.” For those who were able to admit that China, Iran and North Korea are our biggest adversaries, their plans to address these challenges were farcical.

Pete Buttigieg is going to go to China and simply convince them to give up their plans to dominate the world, and us, economically by 2025. Yah, like that’s going to happen. We have, in effect, been trying to do that for the last 40 or 50 years and it hasn’t worked. They lie, cheat, steal our intellectual property, manipulate their currency and severely restrict our participation in their markets. They respect strength and exploit weakness. Talk is cheap and weak and that’s Pete’s plan.

Kirsten Gillibrand has a similar plan for Iran. She’s going to go to Iran and convince them to be good and kind and care about their own citizens and their place in the world community as they scream, “Death to America and death to Israel” in her face. Maybe she’ll try sending over a few more planeloads of cash that they can use to fund those sweet guys in Hamas and Hezbollah. Take another toke on that pipe, Kirsten. Iran would chew you up and spit you out. At least none of these people even tried to suggest a plan for that nut bag in North Korea. We should all just hope that the sanctions now in place will bring him to a real bargaining table.

And then the Utopian dream fest started. First, every one of these people would sign us up for the Paris Climate Accord immediately. Yes! We’ll give the 140 developing countries (which includes China, Russia and India) in the agreement about a half a trillion dollars a year and we can trust that they’ll manage it properly because of this non-binding agreement. And the tides will recede and the sun will shine (but not too much) and we won’t have any more hurricanes, tornadoes or floods. Dream on, and read my article on this agreement written in June of 2017.

Many, if not all, of these candidates also support the Green New Deal, which is more fantastical than a Disney movie and of course they will wave a magic wand and eliminate all prejudice in America, including their own. Maybe they’ll pass a law that says it’s illegal to discriminate against people because of the color of their skin or even their sexual orientation. Wait a minute. Didn’t that already happen? We need more than Utopian dreams. We need solutions, and we didn’t hear about any of those last night.

You know that the debates were a catastrophe when even the mainstream media dared to criticize them. Joe Scarborough even went so far as to call them “a disaster”. I actually hope that the Democrats wake up and start offering some real solutions to the problems we face. I want to hear them. If they don’t, there may be more crickets in the audience by the last debate than humans. WE HAVE 11 MORE OF THESE!!!