Thread by @bansisharma

1. In a Land of the Blind One-Eyed Man is King: Joe Biden Edition!

With all the unhinged positions taken by many of the Democratic 2020 contenders debating in Detroit, and despite his various gaffes, Joe Biden came across as the only half-way sane candidate polling above 2%.

2. Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren are insanely doctrinaire, neither having any familiarity with math. Proposing policies that require more than doubling the size of the federal govt outlays, with U.S. being 22 trillion dollars in debt already, borders on clinical insanity.

3. The only other candidates polling above 2% are Joe Biden and Kamala Harris. Kamala Harris gained prominence in the previous debate by pulling out the race card and beating Joe Biden over the head with it, and quite unfairly at that. Joe was woefully unprepared for it.

4. Yesterday, it didn't go so well for Harris. Even Biden, still inadequately prepared, made a mincemeat of Harris's position. On matters of substance, she is nothing but a hollow drum.

5. Joh McCormack, in a National Review piece, describes how badly Kamala Harris stumbled in the second debate, starting with her lackluster opening statement with the "we are better than this" theme.

6. Biden landed some solid blows against Harris’s health-care plan by pointing out that it doesn’t take effect for ten years, would cost $30 trillion over a decade, would eventually abolish employer-based insurance, and would require “middle-class taxes to go up, not down.”

7. “Anytime someone tells you you’re going to get something good in ten years, you should wonder why it takes ten years,” Biden said. “This is the single most important issue facing the public. And to be very blunt, you can’t beat President Trump with double-talk on this plan.”

8. “$30 trillion has to ultimately be paid,” Biden said. “I don’t know what math you do in California, but I tell ya, that’s a lot of money, and there will be a deductible. The deductible will be out of your paycheck, because that’s what will be required.”

9. “Let’s talk about math!” Harris replied. “Let’s talk about the fact that the pharmaceutical companies and the insurance companies last year alone profited $72 billion, and that is on the backs of American families.”

10. What Harris didn’t note is that if every dollar of that $72 billion were confiscated, it would pay for about 2.4 percent of one year of her plan. That’s probably why she began denouncing Biden’s plan as “immoral” (a popular dishonest trick) rather than talk about math.

11. Harris deftly attacked Biden on the issue of busing during the first debate. So CNN moderator Jake Tapper asked Harris, “Vice President Biden says that your current position on busing, you’re opposed to federally mandated busing, is the same as his position. Is he right?”

12. “That is simply false,” Harris said. But Harris failed to explain how her position on busing differs from Biden’s position today — something she has been struggling to do for the past month — and instead said that she would have voted differently back in the 1970s.

13. Biden was smart in his rebuttal. Rather than relitigate the 1970s, he pivoted to an attack on Harris’s record in California. He criticized her for failing to bring any cases as California attorney general to desegregate the San Francisco and Los Angeles public schools.

14. Biden also went after Harris for failing to provide potentially exculpatory evidence to prisoners that ultimately resulted in 1,000 of them being freed. “If you doubt me, Google 1,000 prisoners freed, Kamala Harris,” Biden said.

15. The Sacramento Bee: “Biden alluded to a scandal involving her office which resulted in more than 1,000 drug cases being dismissed. Tulsi Gabbard said Harris ‘blocked evidence that would have freed an innocent man from death row until she was forced to do so.’ Both accurate.”

16. Harris seems headed for being knocked out of the race. Initially I thought Biden might offer Harris a VP spot, but she seems to have damaged her relationship with him quite viciously. So, that is off the table.
It's mostly a race between Biden and the socialists now.

The End

Dana Milbank's high praise for Biden's performance:

"Joe Biden was brilliantly and gloriously adequate"

Funny because true. 😃😃😃

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