11:00PM Harris was a winner. Buttigieg was a winner. Biden was a wash. Sanders was a loser. Yang was a loser. Williamson was a joke.
10:58PM “May God protect our troops”…and thus concludes 4 hours of debates between 20 of 24 candidates to take on Trump in 2020.
10:56PM Sanders is a one tune fiddler: It is the same thing over…and over…and over again. Big bad Wall Street and corporations and billionaires are to blame for all of society’s ills.
10:53PM Welfare for politicians: Gillibrand proposes “publicly financed elections.”
10:50PM Swalwell: Washington is made of the rich and disconnected.
10:45PM Biden claims that Bush asked him to get combat troops out of Iraq, and pledges to pull combat troops out of Afghanistan.
10:42PM Candidates are having difficulty with the concept of “one or two” words.
10:40PM Biden endorses the idea of a mandatory buyback of assault weapons. He further endorses the concept of requiring all guns to be “smart guns” which only their owners could fire. He may come to rue the day he endorsed these ideas.
10:37PM Bernie is outmatched and outclassed in 2020 crowded election field. He is hardly standing out from the field. He’s tripping over his words and barely stringing together complete sentences. He has a handful of tired and stale Marxist phrases that he returns to. Politics aside, Sanders is faring poorly in this debate. Both Biden and Harris are far more composed and graceful. Buttigieg is masterful.
10:35PM Swalwell has no plan (or rather doesn’t want to discuss the details) for actual confiscation of “all assault weapons in America.” His plan would appear to set up a series of violent and dangerous confrontations with what the Democratic Party terms “gun nuts.”
10:30PM As we head to a commercial break, the bigwigs at the DNC are surely considering what they can do to make sure that Williamson never appears on the debate stage again. Her presence is a most unwelcome distraction.
10:28PM Sanders: “We need a political revolution…people can stand up and take on the special interests.”
10:26PM Tulsi Gabbard is apparently the favorite candidate of the dreaded “far right”, which has been manipulating online polls to boost her candidacy.
10:22PM “Guaranteeing everyone a government job” and “socialism” will not solve the big problems in our society: Hickenlooper.
10:19PM Harris claims climate change is a threat to our existence as a species.
10:17PM “Medicare for all guarantees the right to every woman in this country to have an abortion if she wants it”…Bernie Sanders.
10:15PM Maddow lines up Roe v. Wade question for the candidates. Sanders invokes the “Constitutional right” to abortion.
10:13PM The sequester was a great deal for McConnell and a terrible deal for the American people, according to Bennet.
10:10PM Bernie is really limited as a candidate. It is the same soundbite over and over again…”We need a candidate who will stand up to powerful interests.” Sanders is a lackluster public speaker and hardly an intellect.
10:08PM Biden claims he did not oppose busing in America, but busing “ordered by the Department of Education.” Here is a pivotal moment unfolding in the progressive/establishment showdown. Harris may be overplaying her hand a bit.
10:06PM Biden has a problem with his busing position.
10:05PM The gloves come off. Biden takes on fire from Harris, over his opposition to school busing in decades past.
10:03PM The Eric Logan case involves a black man shot to death by a police officer in South Bend. The officer was responding to a report of a car burglary in the area, and claims that Logan pulled a knife on him. Perplexingly, the officer did not have his body cam on during the incident.
10:00PM At the halfway point, Buttigieg seems to have the momentum. He tees off with the first question, regarding policing in his town of South Bend, Indiana.
9:53PM Russia has “been laughing their asses off” about hacking us. Yang has been a non-factor in the debate over the past hour. The night isn’t going spectacularly well for him.
9:52PM Bennet claims the border wall is a symbol of “nativist hostility.”
9:50PM Kamala Harris: I told sheriffs in California that they did not have to deport illegal immigrants.
9:48PM The Democratic Party goes all in on an “open borders” immigration policy. Borders are not real. Immigration law doesn’t exist. And “illegal immigration” is a misnomer.
9:47PM People who committed a major crime, and immigrated illegally to the United States, should be deported.
9:45PM Biden sidesteps the question on whether he would make it “legal” to illegally immigrate to the United States. 8 out of 10 candidates on the stage pledge to ignore America’s immigration laws.
9:43PM Marianne Williamson argues that the migrant children at the US/Mexico border are victims of “kidnapping” and “child abuse.”
9:40PM Unbelievable. Kamala Harris publicly encourages migrants from Central America to pay a “coyote” to immigrate into the United States. The Democrats criticize Trump for trampling the “rule of law.” Harris is making a mockery of the rule of law.
9:38PM Harris pledges to protect DACA recipients. She has nothing to say, however, about rewarding parents and families who broke the law, or the incentives this provides for future illegal immigration. Based on crowd response, Harris appears to be winning the night thus far.
9:34PM Providing healthcare to illegal immigrants is the humane thing to do, according to Joe Biden. They also allegedly contribute to the longevity of the Social Security system. He claims we should also jail executives in the pharmaceutical industry for misleading on the opioid crisis.
9:32PM All 10 candidates state that their healthcare proposal will provide coverage for illegal immigrants.
9:31PM Bernie says that under his plan, people will go to any hospital or doctor they want. How exactly is that going to work? Someone earning 30k a year is going to show up at the Mayo Clinic and get instant treatment?
9:30PM Medicare for All, Medicare for All Who Want It, or Building on ObamaCare…these are the ideas that the best and brightest minds in the Democratic Party are proposing.
9:27PM Marianne Williamson, by far the most unknown candidate on the stage, finally gets her first question. Williamson is out of her depth.
9:25PM Lines being drawn between Sanders and his brand of “democratic socialism” and the rest of the field. Only two candidates, Sanders and Harris, call for abolishing private insurance.
9:10PM Bernie concedes his plan will raise taxes on the middle class.