Armed with talking points straight out of the Democratic playbook in front of an audience stacked with low-information voters, the five 2016 Democratic presidential candidates took their places at the CNN-hosted debate. With no reasonable plans or explanations on how to carry out their illogical ideas, they did what they usually do: Blame Republicans.
After the candidates gave their opening statements, CNN host Anderson Cooper began with a question for former first lady, former senator from New York, former Secretary of State and frontrunner Hillary Clinton regarding her flip-flopping on certain issues. “Will you say anything to get elected,” he asked. Without actually answering the question directly she side-stepped into making excuses for why she changed positions, a craft she has perfected.
Cooper pressed the issue on the question of political expediency, giving her an example of how she had changed positions and asked “Do you change your political identity based on who you’re talking to?” Clinton firmly stated that she does not, but that she has a range of views rooted in her values and experience. However, one needs only to be reminded of the fake southern lilt she put on at a campaign stop in 2007 when she addressed a black civil rights group in Selma, Alabama to know that’s not the truth.
The next question was for Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders, who considers himself a Democratic Socialist. He was asked how any kind of socialist could win a general election in the United States. Sanders’ reply was that he would win by explaining what Democratic Socialism is. He plans to play the class warfare card by convincing people that it is immoral and wrong for the top one-tenth of one percent in this country to have as much wealth as the bottom 90 percent. He claims that the economy is rigged when 57 percent of all new income is going to the top one percent. Does he even understand that those in the top one percent are the ones who create jobs, create new markets and create opportunities to create new income?
Sanders also made the age-old claim that healthcare is a right and suggested that we should take a look at Denmark and Sweden on how to structure ours. Healthcare is not a right, but who can blame him for thinking that way? After all, he is a socialist. America is a capitalist country, though, and socialism has no place in our nation. He should go live in Denmark or Sweden if he doesn’t like our capitalist system.
Speaking of capitalism, Clinton stated she wants to save capitalism from itself. Actually, capitalism needs to be saved from Democrats and liberals who want to destroy it.
Taking jabs at Republicans was apparently fair game in this debate. That’s what happens when Democrats have no solid plan, idea or proposal to introduce to the American people. Instead of facing their own failures they gleefully blame Republicans. Hillary Clinton won top honors in this category with eight jabs of her own.
Former Governor of Rhode Island Lincoln Chaffey joined in on the fun by saying he didn’t leave the Republican party, the Republican Party left him. Very clever, but not so. The Republican Party never shared his views.
These candidates have all the wrong ideas for all the topics they tackled in this debate. On gun control Sanders said he supported a ban on assault weapons, wanted immediate background checks and wishes to eliminate the gun show loophole. Clinton thinks Sanders’ position is not tough enough. She feels we need to stand up to the NRA (National Rifle Association) and hold gun manufacturers responsible. Hold them responsible for what? They didn’t kill anyone. Martin O’Malley, on the other hand, is proud of his state for passing comprehensive gun safety legislation (which is a euphemism for gun control). Ironically, his state of Maryland has one of the highest crime rates for gun violence. Former Senator of Virginia Jim Webb actually made a good point on guns. On this issue he almost sounds like a Republican. Lincoln Chaffey said we need to work with the gun lobby and find common ground. He doesn’t make any positive suggestions, though.
There seemed to be an underlying theme in this debate that the Iraq war was started under false pretenses and that there was no evidence that Iraq President Sadaam Hussein had and was hiding weapons of mass destruction (WMD). However, the war was not started under false pretenses. Iraq did have WMD but they were transported to Syria before inspectors were allowed to investigate. Evidence later surfaced to prove it. But the Democrats and the compliant mainstream media don’t want to admit, accept or talk about that because it’s too good of a lie to tell to get them re-elected and back in power. They’re shameless, and by that I mean full of shame. In the end, people that bought into the idea that Iraq had no WMD were duped.
The candidates were each asked what they felt were the greatest national security threats. Chaffey contends that it is the chaos in the Middle East, starting with the Iraq invasion. O’Malley rightly cited a nuclear Iran with the threat of ISIS, and wrongly cited climate change. Clinton stated that it is the continuing threat of the spread of nuclear weapons that can fall into the wrong hands. Sanders answer was delusional. He feels climate change is our greatest national security threat. Why he wasn’t laughed off the stage is anybody’s guess. Webb split his answer into three categories. The long-term threat is our relationship with China, he said. The day-to-day threat is cyber warfare, and the military operational challenge is solving the crisis in the Middle East.
Clinton was questioned about her upcoming hearing involving her email scandal. She typically dismissed it as a Republican partisan vehicle, a witch hunt if you will, as an effort to drive down her poll numbers. She said she took responsibility (for using an email account) and although it was allowed, she admitted it was not the best choice. Desperate to change the subject she then went off on a tangent and suggested that what’s really important is making college tuition affordable, paying down student debt, getting everyone on healthcare and driving down the costs of prescriptions, all of which the government should have nothing to do with. When pressed further on the original topic she whines about the investigation costing $4.5 million of taxpayer money. Which seems hypocritical given her support for granting Planned Parenthood $500 million of taxpayer money.
The odd thing about this debate is that Bernie Sanders chimed in with support for Hillary Clinton saying Americans are sick of hearing about Hillary’s emails. He doesn’t speak for Americans, though, especially when four Americans died in Benghazi under her watch. Americans don’t have a right to find that out? I’m sure the families of those four Americans killed in Benghazi want to hear about her emails so they can get down to the bottom of it and learn the truth. It sure looks like the Democrats are in collusion and are trying to sweep this very tragic and important matter under the rug.
On the social justice front a question of race issues was brought up in the form of “Do black lives matter or all lives matter?” Although the correct answer is All Lives Matter, the politically correct answer was Black Lives Matter. Each candidate who answered that question undoubtedly answered politically correct. Sanders added fuel to that fire by stirring the racial pot and insisting that African-Americans know that on any given day they can be arrested without reasonable cause and end up dead in jail three days later. If that’s not racial pandering I don’t know what is. Additionally, he takes issue with the inmate population in America being larger than the inmate population in China. That, to him, is somehow unjust. In communist China, however, people are probably reluctant to commit crime lest they get their hands lopped off.
Martin O’Malley concurs with Sanders, telling the lie that as a nation we have undervalued the lives of black people. He points out that when he was running for mayor of Baltimore they were burying 350 young black men a year and claims that if it were 350 young white men a year being murdered we’d be marching in the streets and it would be a different reaction. It’s hard to buy that argument, though, when there are riots and looting by blacks when a perceived injustice occurs but no riots, no looting and no people taking to the streets when a black murders an innocent, unarmed white person. That’s not racist, it’s just a fact.
O’Malley goes on to say we have a lot of work to do to reform our criminal justice system and address race relations in our country. Okay, great idea. But if we’re going to have a conversation about race relations in our country it has to include addressing the absence of fathers in black households, the high rate of pregnancies to unwed black women, and the high crime rates among blacks, including black on black crimes. I would submit that this disparity isn’t due to poor race relations between whites and blacks, it’s due to the lack of accountability among many blacks.
When Hillary gets her chance to comment on this issue, what does she do? She again blames Republicans. Laughably she asserts that Obama has been a moral leader in this area and has done a good job putting an agenda in place only to be obstructed by Republicans. She maintains that we need to follow that agenda. Does anyone see a pattern here? Keyword: agenda. That should tell you all you need to know.
Another lie Clinton tells is that the economy does better when a Democrat is in the White House. That’s a total lie and she knows it. Responding to a question of how she can relate to the middle class when she and Bill Clinton are part of the one percent, she says that she and Bill have been blessed and wants everyone to have the same opportunities they have. I sure hope the Republicans challenge her on that obviously false statement. She and her party seem to forget that when the economy crashed in 2007 it was not due to President George W. Bush’s or Republican policies. The Democrats took control of both the House and the Senate in 2007. It was their policies that caused the economic crash.
How about this little gem? Clinton said, “I never took a position on Keystone until I took a position on Keystone.” That sounds a bit like something her husband said: “That depends on what the definition of “is” is. This fraudulent wordplay is just another Clintonian trick.
Democrats are big on giving things away whether it’s Obamacare, a pathway to citizenship or college tuition. It may not make fiscal sense as regards America’s economy, but it means millions of Democratic voters. Hillary Clinton wants healthcare for children, citizenship for “dreamers” (children of illegal aliens) and free in-state college tuition for illegal aliens. O’Malley raised her on giving in-state college tuition to illegals. His state already passed a state version of the DREAM Act. Jim Webb is okay with giving Obamacare and citizenship to illegal aliens as well. Bernie Sanders made it clear long before this debate that he wants to bankrupt the country by giving away college tuition. All this giving away stuff is just silly. Nothing is really free. Where do these candidates think all this money is going to come from to pay for all these utopian amenities?
The issue of so-called climate change was heavily covered. A video question from a young lady named Anna Bettis of Tempe, Arizona was the lucky one who got to ask about it. “As a young person I’m very concerned about climate change and how it will affect my future. As a presidential candidate what will you do to address climate change?” she asked. No doubt she’s concerned, probably because her government school teachers and liberal university professors told her she needs to be concerned about “climate change.” Therein lies the problem with academia today. Generations of students have been lied to and indoctrinated with misinformation. I’m convinced that many of our politicians are in on the hoax or are just plain stupid, including these Democratic candidates.
When posed the question O’Malley responded by saying he has put forth a plan to move America forward to a 100% clean electrical grid by 2050. Good luck on that one, Governor. Jim Webb is at least somewhat sane about energy. He takes an all-of-the-above position, including coal and nuclear. He doesn’t go so far as to admit climate change is a hoax, however. When it comes to Hillary Clinton, she perpetuates the lie and praises Obama as being a leader on this issue. Bernie Sanders is really out there when it comes to climate change. He sees it as a moral issue. He comes off as mentally unstable when he talks about it.
Anyone can see how vitriolic the Democrats are toward Republicans. Among the many jabs Hillary Clinton took at the GOP, one came when she was asked about mandated paid family leave. She blamed Republicans for being against it and further demonized the GOP for wanting to cut off funds in the amount of $500 million in taxpayer money to Planned Parenthood, the nation’s largest abortion provider and seller of dismembered baby parts. Sanders jumped on that train calling the United States an international embarrassment for not providing paid family medical leave. He also ripped on the GOP saying Republicans tell them they can’t do anything except give tax breaks to billionaires and cut Social Security, Medi-Cal and Medicaid. O’Malley is proud that his state of Maryland actually did expand those entitlement programs.
Paid maternity/family leave sounds wonderful but like so many other government entitlement programs, mandating companies to provide it is not the government’s place.
The first debate for the 2016 Democratic presidential candidates was jam-packed with nonsense, it’s hard to imagine a person could be so out of touch with what is truly best for America and Americans. A few good things did come out of it, though. Bernie Sanders gave the country a look at how utterly incompetent and clueless to reality he is. Hillary Clinton showed that her best debate strategy is to blame Republicans. Lincoln Chaffey and Martin O’Malley looked so out of place in that debate but fit right in to the Democratic Party and Jim Webb is not left enough to win the Democratic nomination. If Americans don’t want their country to continue to fail they’d better steer clear from electing a Democrat for president of the United States.
