Who's Afraid of Democratic Socialism?
George Stephanopolous.Screen shot / YouTube
You knew it was going to be a long night when ABC's George Stephanopoulos
spent the first 11 minutes of the February 7 Democratic presidential debate
directing a discussion about how risky it would be to have a democratic
socialist at the top of the ticket.
After asking Joe Biden about the "risks" of nominating Bernie Sanders (or
Pete Buttigieg)-setting Biden up to make his central campaign claim of
electability-Stephanopoulos asked Sanders "why shouldn't Democrats be
worried," when Donald Trump "certainly thinks this label socialism will
work" in defeating him?
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After Sanders' response, Stephanopoulos asked the field, "Let me just ask,
is anyone else on the stage concerned about having a democratic socialist at
the top of the Democratic ticket?" Though Amy Klobuchar was the only
candidate to raise her hand, he proceeded to turn to each remaining
candidate to discuss socialism and electability.
Delving momentarily into policy, sort of, by asking Buttigieg whether
Sanders' "healthcare plan can bring people together," and allowing a few
more responses, Stephanopoulos turned back to non-policy issues with several
questions about experience, this time focusing on Buttigieg.
In other words, the first half hour of the debate was almost entirely given
over to non-policy sparring over electability (including the bogeyman of
socialism) and experience.
Asking candidates to attack each other over electability or experience is
one of the least useful ways to run a debate. Electability is a meaningless
concept beloved by journalists who fear candidates who stray from the center
(FAIR.org, 10/25/19); its ultimate test is not whether another candidate (or
journalist) deems a candidate electable, but whether that candidate polls
well and wins elections. And the candidate whose electability is most often
questioned, Bernie Sanders, just won the popular vote in Iowa, and has
consistently polled ahead of Trump in one-to-one matchups. (As Matthew
Yglesias pointed out in Vox-1/31/20-this is true even if the polling
question includes Trump calling Sanders "a socialist who supports a
government takeover of healthcare and open borders.")
ABC's Linsey Davis factchecks Pete Buttigieg in real time.
ABC's Linsey Davis factchecks Pete Buttigieg in real time.
Experience is at least somewhat more justifiable as a non-policy topic of
interest, but simply asking opponents whether a candidate has the experience
necessary to lead is lazy and rarely productive. As a rare example of a much
more revealing way to talk about experience, take ABC correspondent Linsey
Davis' question to Buttigieg about his oversight of South Bend's criminal
justice system, in which disparities between black and white marijuana
possession arrests increased during his tenure. When Buttigieg asserted that
"the overall rate was lower than the national rate," Davis corrected: "No,
there was an increase. The year before you were in office, it was lower."
Her refusal to let Buttigieg deny his record stands in stark contrast to the
way moderators have repeatedly let Biden get away with denying his record on
Iraq (FAIR.org, 1/9/20). In last week's debate, Biden once again lied about
his Iraq vote, saying: "I trusted George Bush to keep his word. He said he
was not going to go into Iraq. He said he was only using this to unite the
United Nations to insist we get inspectors in to see what Saddam was doing."
Biden's latest version of his Iraq revisionism should have been particularly
easy for his questioner (David Muir) to debunk, given that the Iraq War
authorization vote came two days after Bush's infamous "mushroom cloud"
speech, in which he laid out to the public why all efforts short of military
action were likely to fail and announced that "Saddam Hussein must disarm
himself-or, for the sake of peace, we will lead a coalition to disarm him."
But, whereas pressing candidates on their judgment and record would be a
helpful way to get at the issue of experience, moderators instead seem to be
mostly content to ask candidates to attack each other on the issue.
In total, ABC gave over more than a quarter of their prompts to non-policy
issues (22 of 82), primarily these questions of electability and experience.
International issues were the second-largest category (15), followed closely
by governance and race (13 each) and the economy (12).
ABC's David Muir and Elizabeth Warren
ABC's David Muir once again pressing Elizabeth Warren to promise to continue
the 18-year-long war in Afghanistan.
Of the international questions, several were about military, and ABC
repeated its hawkish September debate performance (FAIR.org,
9/13/20)-including asking Elizabeth Warren almost exactly the same question
she was asked in September. At that time, ABC's Muir asked her, "Would you
keep [your] promise to bring the troops home starting right now with no deal
with the Taliban?" When Warren answered in the affirmative, Stephanopoulos
jumped in to make the correct answer clear:
Top US leaders, military leaders on the ground in Afghanistan, told me you
can't do it without a deal with the Taliban. You just said you would, you
would bring them home. What if they told you that? Would you listen to their
advice?
ABC's inability to accept Warren's answer was made even more apparent when,
in their second debate, Muir asked her virtually the exact same question:
Senator Warren, you recently said, quote, "We have one general after another
in Afghanistan who comes in and says, 'We've just turned the corner,' and
then what happens? It's all the same. Someone new comes in and says, 'We've
just turned the corner.' You said, "So many say it. We're going in circles."
We were on the ground in Afghanistan and Iraq in recent months, and the
generals told us that the US needs some US presence on the ground, US
special forces some presence to go after ISIS and the terrorists. If you're
commander-in-chief, would you listen to the generals, or do they fall into
the category of the generals you've mentioned before?
Muir continued to train fire on Warren's antiwar positions, giving the floor
to Biden next:
I want to take this to the vice president, because you have said of Senator
Warren's comments before, that the United States should get out of the
Middle East, you have said, "I quite frankly was surprised that I have never
heard anyone say with any serious background in foreign policy that we
should pull all troops out of the Middle East." Is Senator Warren wrong on
this?
Muir likewise put a hawkish spin on his questions about the assassination of
Iranian General Qassem Soleimani, setting the stage with this question to
Buttigieg, which made no mention of international law, and followed the
corporate media line that there was no doubt that Soleimani deserved to die
(FAIR.org, 1/9/20):
While there is still debate about whether or not there was an imminent
threat, there is no debate about whether or not Soleimani was a bad actor
who was responsible for the deaths of many Americans. Given what you know
about Soleimani, if your national security team came to you with an
opportunity to strike, would Soleimani have been dead, or would he still be
alive under your presidency?
Once again, the climate crisis got short shrift at five questions (6%);
while some candidates, like Sanders and Steyer, tried to bring climate into
other questions, ABC asked about only one environmental issue-the USMCA
trade agreement-essentially pitching it as climate vs. jobs:
I want to turn to climate change and jobs here in America. President Trump
just signed the United States/Mexico/Canada Agreement, many call it an
updated NAFTA. But it does include incentives to make cars here in North
America, and it does open Canadian markets for American dairy farmers.
Senator Sanders, as we sit here in New Hampshire tonight, both New Hampshire
senators, Maggie Hassan and Sen. Jeanne Shaheen, supported this, calling it
a real win for workers and for farmers. You voted no, because you said you
believe it takes us back years on climate. Were the senators from New
Hampshire wrong?
In terms of how often each candidate was given the mike, Sanders and Biden,
as the top-polling candidates, got the most speaking opportunities. But
although Warren had twice the popular support as Buttigieg at the time (an
average of 15% vs. 7.3%; see RealClearPolitics.com for all February 7
polling averages), he was given the floor 13 times to her 11. Klobuchar,
despite averaging only 4.3% support in polls, got the same 11 chances to
speak as Warren, and Tom Steyer, at 2.3%, only got one fewer at ten. In
keeping with media's marked lack of interest in hearing Andrew Yang speak
(FAIR.org, 1/4/20), he came in far behind the rest, with seven, though he
polls almost as well ( 3.8%) as Klobuchar.
Julie Hollar / FAIR
