THE 2/19/20 DEMOCRATIC DEBATE: “HEY (MIKE), DID YOU GET THE LICENSE NUMBER?” “LICENSE NUMBER?” “YEAH, THE LICENSE NUMBER OF THE TRUCK THAT HIT YOU.”

2/20/20

Until last night, I had given up on listening to the Democratic debates.   After listening to the first few, yours truly grew tired of the incessant screeching and bellowing about how misogynistic, racist, plutocratic, and just downright awful our country has become.   However, with Mike Bloomberg making his Dem debate debut, and with a few friends’ urging me to watch, I decided to take in this latest approximation of participatory democracy and have come up with several thoughts:

• ·         A resume and a pile of spondulicks do not a good candidate make.   For proof of this, consider John Connally in 1980, who entered the GOP contest with the big money and a huge political pedigree behind him before being pounded into irrelevance in one of the first (if not the first; memory is failing me here) debates of the season by Ronald Reagan.    Also consider the highly qualified, but nearly completely tone-deaf, Mitt Romney, defeated convincingly, if not resoundingly, in 2012 by Barack Obama.  More to the point, Mike Bloomberg looked as bad as everyone said he did last night.   In addition to being demolished by his fellow Dems, most notably, but not exclusively, by Elizabeth Warren, he seemed to be channeling a bizarre combination of Elmer Fudd and Mortimer Snerd.  This is indeed regrettable, because Mr. Bloomberg is a man of intelligence, accomplishment, and compassion.   He would probably make a good president.   And so would have John Connally and Mitt Romney.   But politics is more than a rare combination of management and leadership skills; it is also a matter of showmanship and likeability (See a later bullet point.)   And Mr. Bloomberg, at least judging from this debate, has neither.   Perhaps debates don’t mean that much; yours truly suspects they don’t.  So maybe Mr. Bloomberg can recover.   But he was just awful last night.

·         There seems to be a battle within the Democratic Party between the crazies (Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren) and the relative moderates (Mike Bloomberg, Joe Biden, Amy Klobuchar, and Pete Buttigieg.)   And I hasten to add here that “moderate,” like most terms in finance, economics, and politics, is a relative term, but I digress.   The fundamental question confronting the Dems is whether they want a revolution or whether they just want to get rid of President Trump and return to a more “normal” state of affairs, whatever that is.   Those who want a revolution would support one of the crazies.  Those who prioritize normalcy and getting rid of Mr. Trump would logically support the relative moderates.  If one considers the pre-debate combined polling numbers of these two groups, it would appear that the two camps are about evenly divided.   However, those polls have been taken among Democratic voters.   If one expands the polled universe to include all those who have not firmly decided to vote for Mr. Trump, i.e., to independents and to Republicans who are, er, hesitant to vote for the President, one suspects that those desirous of normalcy and getting rid of the President would triumph over the revolutionaries by a landslide.  The conclusion is that, since elections are not decided by Democrats alone but by the wider electorate, the Dems should nominate someone from the relative moderate camp if they hope to win this election.    One wonders, however, if they can take sufficient control of their emotions to make such a reasoned choice; see PRESIDENT TRUMP CANNOT WIN, BUT THE DEMOCRATS CAN LOSE, IN 2020.

·         Some of the experts, mostly, but not exclusively, from the GOP side, contend that, due to the divisiveness of last night’s debate, the big winner was President Trump.    They are wrong.  Senator Sanders did his Party a great service last night, a service that was formerly performed by Senator Warren when she was the front runner, to wit, Senator Sanders makes the rest of the candidate, except for Senator Warren, look sensible.  In fact, there were even some cheers from the crowd when, for example, Mr. Bloomberg pointed out that the Party could not win by running a socialist like Mr. Sanders and when other candidates pointed out that the programs championed by Mr. Sanders and Ms. Warren were simply unaffordable and not beneficial for large groups in society, such as those who are happy with their existing health insurance arrangements.   One got the sense that the 2020 Dems were either maturing into a party that could govern, rather than rabble rouse, or were cleverly hiding their socialistic impulses in order to get elected.  While I’m hoping for the former, the larger point is that neither could have been accomplished without Senator Sanders’ unwitting, yet tireless, efforts.   When you combine the growing at least perceived sensibleness of the Dems with the huge audience last night’s debates attracted, the Democratic Party was the big winner last night…unless the post-debate polls show Senator Sanders gained strength from his performance last night, and there was little in his performance to suggest such an outcome.

·         Senator Warren had her best debate of the season last night but, thankfully, it will probably not be enough to catapult her back into the first tier of candidates.   In the unlikely event, however, that she did gain considerable ground last night, the Dems would do well to consider that, if one looks at the history of presidential elections for at least the last 60 years or so, it has been the more likeable, or, as in 2016, the less unlikeable, candidate who has won.   The only exception to this general rule was 1968, when Richard Nixon, who looked like, and had the demeanor of, the bad guy in a typical Three Stooges episode, defeated the Happy Warrior Hubert Humphrey, but it was damn close and it wasn’t supposed to be.   One could argue that 1964 was also an exception; who liked LBJ?   But considering that Johnson’s fixers had the electorate convinced that Barry Goldwater was set to vaporize the world in a nuclear holocaust, LBJ was still the more likeable of the two.   If this general rule holds in 2020 and the Dems nominate Senator Warren, they don’t have a chance for reasons extending beyond her wacky ideology.

·         Finally, most of my readers are old enough to recognize the OGCR (According to my students, they love, but usually don’t get, “Mr. Quinn’s OGCRs (“Old Geezer Cultural References”)”) in the title to this missive.   At least I hope so.