 Well the third 2020 Democratic Party primary debate is now officially over and Boy was that a long debate that was honestly difficult to get through and I have a lot of thoughts about that debate But most of it is negative like I think I'm gonna spend the most amount of time during this video complaining because there were so many issues both in terms of The debate format and also with the candidates as well I don't necessarily feel like there really was a breakout winner I don't think there was a definitive loser Maybe besides Joe Biden, but we'll get into all of that All I know is that a three-hour long debate is very difficult to get through if you know, we're not really Having that much fireworks if we're not focusing long enough on certain subjects And if the candidates are just outright lying about policies, but before we get into the specifics Let's just go to some numbers first of all when it comes to Twitter followers and growth throughout the duration of the debate Andrew Yang gained the most with 7,566 new Twitter followers Elizabeth Warren came in second with 4,000 Buddha judge in third with 4,000 Beto O'Rourke in fourth with 3,000 Sanders with 2,000 Harris with 2,000 Booker with nearly 2,000 Klobuchar with 1,000 Castro with 1,000 and Joe Biden with the nearly 1,000 new Twitter followers to see how that looks in terms of relative growth You still see Andrew Yang with the largest gain now in terms of Andrew Yang even though he had the least amount of talk time Which we'll get to he was the most searched candidate After the debate with Joe Biden and Elizabeth Warren actually coming in second place Bernie Sanders not really being searched to see Joe Biden search that much I wouldn't necessarily view that as a positive for Joe Biden It was mostly due to some of the things that happened throughout the debate that were embarrassing now when it comes to total minutes Of course Joe Biden predictably came in first with 17.4 minutes Warren in second with 16.5 minutes Cory Booker in third with 14.7 minutes Which is actually a little bit unfair seeing that other candidates who are polling higher than him didn't get as much time to talk Sanders in fourth with 14.1 minutes Harris in fifth with 13.7 minutes Buttigieg with 11.4 Castro with 11 Klobuchar with 10.4 O'Rourke with 9.3 and Yang with 7.9 Now halfway throughout the debate It was not looking too good for Bernie Sanders in terms of talk time Because even if he's in second place, he barely got more time to speak than Andrew Yang, which is absolutely Absurd now overall to kind of give you a sense of what this debate Felt like to me I want to go to a tweet from friend of the show Matt Binder who says this debate is the worst of them all so far We went from the zero percenters in the polls debating with the top tier candidates to just the one to five percenters Debating amongst each other while the moderators just leave the top candidates out of the convo Completely and I totally agree with that So let's just get to some of the things that stood out to me first of all And the most troubling for me from the standpoint as a Bernie Sanders supporter is the fact that he Sounded like he needed a drink of water and a cough drop You can just tell that he was campaigning too hard His team has got to suspend the campaigning events at least like three days before debates Because even though we all know that this is due to him speaking you lose your voice That's just natural the media is not going to be that kind to him They're not going to say oh well, you know, this is understandable. He's talking a lot. He lost his voice They're going to be looking for reasons to attack him during these debates This is his time to shine and unfortunately I think that that was a big hindrance when it comes to Joe Biden There was a moment in this debate where I kid you not it looked as if he had dentures in his mouth that were about to fall out Now I don't know what that was But I mean clearly he stumbled to make any point He was certainly more aggressive this time, but that doesn't necessarily mean that he was more coherent He still seemed belligerent He came across as someone who? Struggled to collect his thoughts. It was just overall another bad performance from Joe Biden I mean at this point it seems cruel To continue this like somebody's got to intervene and say Biden look you're just you can't you can't do this You're not stable enough on top of that we have the protesters interrupt the debate for about a minute minute and a half and their chance was Completely inaudible you couldn't hear a single word that they were saying it seemed like there are multiple people just screaming random things There was no cohesive message from the protesters So I'm not against protesting at the debate But if you're going to protest and chant something you all have to seemingly say the same thing so we can understand What you're saying there was Yang's big surprise that he hyped up that turned out to be him giving the freedom dividend to 10 families for a Year great idea probably should have done this earlier to demonstrate the utility of it Although I do get that you know he probably didn't have the money for it. So overall this debate was the worst by far Just compared to the other ones there was really no moment that stood out to me There was no one winner Everyone was just kind of in the middle and it's because you know the moderators they called on The zero to five percenters More than the top tier candidates and we all came to this wanting to see Bernie and Warren go up against Joe Biden But that didn't happen because Bernie Sanders didn't get called on nearly enough Elizabeth Warren to in fact throughout a really large portion of the debate Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren They just faded into the background and they were not being called on and they should have absolutely elbowed their way in But the moderators were also you know They share part of that responsibility think about this Bernie Sanders He has been graded as having the strongest climate change plan and when it came to the discussion about climate change He wasn't even called on Now in terms of winners and losers before we get to specifics I Do want to list the winners and losers. This is entirely subjective. I honestly I Don't think you can really make a strong case for anyone being an objective winner or Maybe an objective loser with the exception of Joe Biden. I think it's obvious that he is a loser here But I mean this was all over the place. This was difficult to pin down It's an incredibly subjective and I think you can kind of argue that any one candidate Won this and be relatively persuasive. So let's get to this Of course, you know Biden is a loser because everyone teamed up against him again Not to the extent that I had hoped for but nonetheless They still attacked Biden He was a target and he made a fool of himself as I stated and you know a lot of the things that he said Came off as incoherent. He referred to Bernie Sanders as the president at one point And he you know called Cory Booker a future president at the last debate So I mean it's just embarrassment after embarrassment contradiction after contradiction Which Julian Castro actually called out I think magically and then we had Amy Klobuchar Who as soon as she opened her mouth the momentum died? I mean the lack of energy was palpable and the one liners that she clearly rehearsed were Unquestionably the most cringe worthy moments of the night where you can actually make the argument that she was the biggest loser So she planned out and you could tell this was planned a line about Bernie Sanders I wrote the damn bill and she said yeah, well while Bernie Sanders wrote the bill I read the bill and then she kind of paused as if that warranted applause and NBC News made this creepy image of that and I like this This is awful. This is I don't know what to say about this another line throughout the debate that I wrote down that I Don't even know how to process it. She said you know that movie day after tomorrow It's today she said that with regards to climate change That person got the opportunity to talk about climate change Bernie Sanders did not Amy Klobuchar a complete failure This was probably her worst performance because at the previous two debates She kind of just faded into the background And then she didn't have the chance to really step out of the spotlight and make a fool of herself But this time, you know, since the focus was on the zero to five percenters one to five percenters. She did and she failed Now the way that I judged these debates are I have four different categories I have the winner category the good category the meh category and the loser category So in that loser category I place Biden and Klobuchar, although that's arguable I'm pretty set on keeping Biden in that loser category since he's slipping in the polls He really needed to have a good night and he didn't I'm not really willing to waver on that I'm pretty committed to Klobuchar being in that loser category Although when we get to the meh the good and even the winner category I think this is entirely subjective and I think that you could make the case that Maybe my assessment here is wrong. Maybe I'll change my mind after you know sleeping on it But this is difficult for me. So in the meh category I placed two individuals Kamala Harris and Andrew Yang now the reason why I placed Kamala here is because she absolutely needed to have a good moment She had momentum after that first debate because I think that her performance was phenomenal But she lost that momentum after the second debate when as we all know Tulsi Gabber demolished her and she needed to use this debate to recover Tulsi's not here So nobody will probably be as harsh on Kamala as Tulsi was So this was the opportunity for her to recover. Did she recover? No, I don't think she recovered I think it was Kyle Kalinsky to his credit on Twitter made the point that it's clear She's listening more to strategists because she's talking about these personal stories She's coming off as less authentic more rehearsed and it's just bad You know, I think that this was the one moment where she could have had redemption and she didn't have it Andrew Yang I I'm not committed to keeping him in the meh category You can move him to good and I'd say, you know what? I agree with you I think that that's fair I'm putting him in the meh category because he hyped up his announcement and It fell flat and then after that He essentially faded into the background for a large portion of the debate like Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren But he never kind of recovered from that he was just in the background and then he had some really weird moments in the debate where he said Come to America where the water is great. I mean to say this at a time when there are water crises happening You know Flint still doesn't have clean drinking water Not the best look doesn't necessarily show that you are, you know, aware of what's happening Also, he had a question about charter schools I actually did not know that Andrew Yang supported charter schools and when he was asked to kind of defend this He had a poor defense. So overall not a great performance I will say that Yang did better in the sense that he diversified his platform seemingly Where, you know, he didn't take every question and tie it to UBI, which I think is important But at the same time Yang, I don't I don't fault him entirely For having a relatively arguably poor debate performance because he was just ignored I mean think about this He is polling higher than Julian Castro, Amy Klobuchar, Corey Booker And in some polls Pete Buttigieg and he got less time to talk than all of them Not necessarily because he wasn't speaking up enough, but because the moderators had no interest in hearing from Andrew Yang So in part, that's why I don't necessarily Want to place him in that mech category because you know, maybe he would have performed better But I will also say that his energy seemed lacking when you compare, you know, this to his performance at that second debate I think he did a phenomenal job he shined, but here I just feel like You know his energy level it was down more and when you couple that with the moderators clearly not really caring about him It just it wasn't great for Andrew Yang It wasn't great But you know, I don't necessarily think he has to worry because he's rising in the polls Gradually so he's moved himself from someone who's like a one percenter into the mid-tier and that's great for him So, you know, this wasn't make or break from for Andrew Yang, you know But you know his performance it didn't leave a lot to be desired. Now. Here's where we get to the tricky part The good category. This is entirely arguable in this category. I place Beto O'Rourke, Pete Buttigieg, Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren Now the one person who I really think you can kind of argue against being in this category is Pete Buttigieg You can move him to the Mac category and say Mike you're wrong He shouldn't be in the good category move him to you know, the the Mac category downgrade him and I'd say I think that you're probably fair to say that because He did have some really embarrassing almost cringe worthy moments So when there was this debate about health care, he tried to step in and talk about oh well You see, you know, I'm above the fray and you know, this is why people hate politics This is a primary. This is a debate stop. That's embarrassing It comes off as disingenuous and really Pete Buttigieg to me is disingenuous Although I will say he pulls off what I think Joe Biden and Amy Klobuchar want to pull off albeit more successfully He comes across as the centrist and more, you know reasonable moderate candidate Better than they do but he's trying to present himself as a progressive The problem is every time he opens his mouth You just see the energy die and nothing he really says is revolutionary And I think that his time has kind of passed he had his moment where he was on the spotlight and he was the media darling I think his time is going to pass. I think that that new spotlight will be dedicated to someone like Julian Castro Possibly Warren is kind of the media darling currently, but we'll see Okay, the next person better or work, you know watching the first Third of this debate. I was expecting to place him in the winner category Which is a little bit weird because better or works performance in these debates has been abysmal But he actually did a relatively good job. He was strong. He said yes, we're gonna take your AR-15s He's just opening himself up to attacks from Republicans But you know what kudos to him for being bold, you know, this gun buyback program If you're going to have it it can be optional for, you know weapons that aren't meant to kill fucking dinosaurs But when it comes to AR-15s, I absolutely think that that gun buyback Should be mandatory because you are not allowed to own tanks. We're not allowed to own nukes We shouldn't be allowed as citizens to own weapons That can kill lots of people that are designed to kill lots of people so kudos to him He also got credit from Biden and Kamala Harris for his response to El Paso and He came off as slightly less Rehearsed this time But again, you can place him in the meh category because he faded into the background for the rest of the debate So again, this is all entirely subjective when it comes to Bernie and Warren. I Place them in the good category And for a moment, I thought should I put them in the meh category? But I'm not going to do that because even if they weren't cold on that much They did get more talk time towards the end of the debate and every time they opened their mouths They made phenomenal stellar points like Bernie Sanders He he has this tendency to really shift the direction of the conversation in a really positive more Substitive way where he talks about the issue in a more systemic way He touches on the broad causal mechanisms that lead to these problems in the first place And he does this in such a brilliant way that even if he had his raspy voice, you know You can't help but think man would a solid point This is so refreshing and there were moments where he did hit Biden relatively hard He kind of took an indirect shot at Warren by saying I'm the only person on this stage who voted against all three of Donald Trump's military Bills, so he had his great moments. This certainly was probably His poorest performance out of all three debates thus far But saying that he still did a good job Even if he just didn't have the time to talk Elizabeth Warren as well. She did a good job She hasn't really performed poorly in any of these debates thus far But I think that like Bernie this was probably her weakest performance, you know in comparison with the other debates So let's get on to the winners category and here I have two individuals one of them is absolutely Arguable Cory Booker. I put Cory Booker in the winner category basically for one reason he had the second or third most talk time on I'm already forgetting the statistic and He's pulling at like what is it two three percent? He's pulling lower than Andrew Yang But he still managed to get a lot of talk time and the way that the moderators Responded to him the way they kept calling on him repeatedly. It really gave Americans the sense I think possibly that he was a leader, you know, he spoke confidently about a lot of things I don't know. This is arguable though. I'm not really committed to keeping him in the winner category There's one person who I absolutely feel like they really gained the most and they were at the lowest position So they needed to have a good performance and they did that person and who I think overall is the biggest winner Probably is Julianne Castro. Now Julianne Castro He almost didn't make it into this debate and you could very well make the case that he should not have been in this debate. It should have been Tulsi Gabbard even possibly Marianne Williamson because you know There's not as much grassroots support behind him as there are for these other candidates with that being said though He targeted Joe Biden and that absolutely helped him out tremendously You know, there were no really gigantic moments where there was fireworks but if I had to say there was one it probably was you know, the numerous exchanges between Julianne Castro and Joe Biden and Polling so low you have to use these debates to propel your name Because you may not qualify for that next debate in October And I think he did enough to where he could get a boost in the polls This could have been his breakout performance his breakout moment. Will that translate in the polls? I don't know. I mean when you look at the Google trends, he wasn't the most googled candidate Andrew Yang was even though You know Julianne Castro Didn't have or doesn't have still very much name recognition Usually the candidates who get those boosts in terms of followers and Google searches are the ones Who had the most again who had the least amounts of name recognition, you know The Tulsi Gabbards the Marianne Williamson's the Andrew Yang's of the world So you would would have expected if this debate was solid enough for Julianne Castro Him to kind of be included there, but he didn't have much new Twitter followers He wasn't really searched so there's just not a lot of momentum for him And I think that part of the reason why that is the case is because he does come off as the typical rehearsed Politician and he's against Medicare for all. He's not very progressive But towards the beginning of the debate in his opening statement. He tried to present himself as someone who's progressive and He's not he's not very progressive his record in Obama's administration is actually not great It's it's poor you could argue. So that's basically my take again This is entirely subjective and I think that if you challenge me on some of these I Would think that that's fair because I'm kind of wavering on some of these and my opinion could change You know tomorrow the next day a week from now because this debate was all over the place basically everyone had You know a performance that kind of blended together in my head. There was no breakout start. There was no You know main moment where you could point to and say that was awesome There was none of that there was no excitement for this debate and the one moment That really got me worked up was at the beginning when they started this debate about health care And it's infuriating because we always see this and it's not changing. We always see a debate between the Corporate financed candidates where they essentially repeat the same talking points from the health insurance industry and then The progressives are forced to respond to them, but these are lies They are lying to you and it's infuriating that we have to rehash this same debate every single time But I mean that's unfortunately What's going to happen? You had Joe Biden forget Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren's names. He also forgot I'm assuming Pete Buttigieg his name at one point Bernie Sanders said that you know even if Joe Biden is arguing that the cost of Medicare for all will be 32 trillion the status quo Will actually be higher. He you know called out the advertising of the health insurance industry Elizabeth Warren made a solid point that nobody really likes their health insurance They like their doctors and when Bernie Sanders talked about how you know, we pay More per capita than other countries for worse results Biden said well, this is America and then Bernie chimed in and shot that down It was just a really bad line from Biden. So overall when it comes to health care I do still think that Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren they did have the edge Although I will say this when it comes to Elizabeth Warren She finally released her health care proposal on her website and it seems to defer from Bernie in some areas For example when it comes to mental health care It seems as if she's allowing a role for private health insurance with regards to mental health So I don't know we need her plan to be Scored by advocates and activists of Medicare for all but you know for purposes of this debate The strategy of her and Bernie Sanders teaming up it is important I think because they have to take down Biden until they take down Biden I just don't think that Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren have any real reason to direct their fire against each other because he is still the biggest Threat but that's really the one specific issue that I wanted to touch on moving on to you know Just some random moments for the night Kamala didn't have you know, the worst night ever I wouldn't say that she's a loser like she was after that second debate But she had a moment where she said look Joe Biden instead of saying no we can maybe say yes We can something to that effect. I'm paraphrasing. I thought that was a good line We had Elizabeth Warren talk about corruption Bernie Sanders then expanded that conversation Because Elizabeth Warren talked about you know, the reason why there's inaction with regard to gun reform is because of Corruption Bernie then brought in that conversation out I will say I don't agree with Bernie Sanders and his stance on the filibuster And I don't know why he's being so stubborn here But this is something that I certainly want to try to move him on because I don't I don't like his stance I don't like that. He's not willing to get rid of you know, the filibuster now Thankfully he has been open about using budget reconciliation to pass policies like Medicare for all but just get rid of it I mean Republicans they don't play by the same rules. So why would you impose? You know this arbitrary rule on yourself. It's kind of like asymmetric warfare And you are choosing to give yourself an additional disadvantage when you know all bets are off Republicans are gonna play dirty. So you should play dirty, too So that's the one thing that I disagree with Bernie about going through my notes here The question that Jorge Ramos posed to Bernie about socialism was embarrassing because first of all Bernie Sanders I don't believe he's a true socialist. He describes himself as a democratic socialist But in actuality he is a social democrat. He believes in a mixed economy capitalism plus socialism Public and private. That's what Bernie Sanders is Jorge Ramos is smart enough to know that so to say that what he's proposing Is to make us similar to Venezuela or to force Bernie to differentiate himself and his ideology from Venezuela and Cuba is Embarrassing for Jorge Ramos like you expect better from Jorge, but that was a terrible question do better Jorge Additionally during the climate change discussion that all works at something that really stood out to me He said that we need to get to net zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2050 Now let me remind you last year the IPCC said we have 12 years to act. It's almost been a year So we have 11 years to act He is saying that 2050 is When we get to net zero I've got really really bad news for you, buddy. That is not going to suffice So that was embarrassing, but overall I just want us to all step back and Ask ourselves this question because this is a question that I think will be important in gauging Who who was successful throughout the course of this debate? Did the needle move? Substantially at all for anyone or you know just in general for this democratic primary process And I would argue for the most part No, if we're going to see any change the only thing I would suspect is That Julian Castro maybe gets a boost But again, I'm not entirely certain that that will in fact be the case because even though I think he had the biggest Breakout moment of the night and the strongest performance overall I don't think it was as big as Kamala's performance in that first debate when she went after Joe Biden So I don't necessarily know that his good performance will translate into better polling Now in terms of what will continue to happen throughout the course of this primary process I believe that Joe Biden will continue to go down Elizabeth Warren will probably continue to rise. I think that her and Bernie did enough to maintain I don't think that this debate did enough to really move any one candidate off course or onto a better Trajectory with the exception of Julian Castro, but if I had to guess Probably not too much. So what I'm trying to say is this debate Effectively was useless. It just wasn't great. I had problems with the format They didn't touch on a number of really important issues. They didn't touch on women's rights They didn't touch on LGBTQ rights They didn't spend nearly enough time on climate change foreign policy was really a quick Superficial discussion about Afghanistan, but nobody really had the opportunity to lay out a more broad vision When it comes to foreign policy, nobody was asked about whether or not they're against US imperialism Overall, I just I don't feel like this debate was very substantive and I don't really think it was substantial enough to move the needle in Anyway, and again Julian Castro may be being the one exception So I really hope that the next debate is better more exciting. That's my take on the debate. This was all over the place It's very difficult to pin down a really, you know a Concrete winner and a loser, but I'm gonna say Castro winner overall Biden loser overall But I'm I'm curious to know what you guys think