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Democrats Debate Issues No One Cares About And Policies No One Wants

September 14, 2019 - 7:00am
Top-tier Democrats at Thursday's debate
Top-tier Democrats at Thursday's debate

Well, the first rule of Thursday night’s Democratic debate was a first in the history of the Republic: ABC asked Democrats to refrain from swearing during the three-hour event.

The network seemed particularly concerned about former Texas Rep. Beto O’Rourke, who has been dropping the F-bomb to express his anger about gun violence, but we think it was Bernie who got off the rails first. When speaking of his Medicare for All bill the old Socialist warhorse said, “I wrote the damn bill.”

Unfortunately for him, he set up Sen. Amy Klobuchar, a Medicare for All skeptic to say, “While Bernie wrote the bill, I read the bill.” She emphasized the tens of millions of people who would lose their private insurance under the plan. “I don’t think that’s a bold idea; I think that’s a bad idea,” Klobuchar said.

But speaking of Beto, he weirdly continued basing his campaign on white guilt, saying the true founding of our country was the date that the first slave came to America. We say weirdly, because in the FiveThirtyEight/Ipsos poll* conducted this week, only 3 percent of respondents said racism was their top issue in the Democratic primary.

But that didn’t stop Pete Buttigieg from pandering as well by saying we essentially live in two different countries because of the harm systemic racism does to African Americans.

Of the 3 percent of respondents to the FiveThirtyEight/Ipsos poll -- 110 people -- who said racism was the most important issue in the Democratic Primary, the respondents were pretty divided about which candidate they thought was best on the issue: 21 percent said Sanders, 20 percent said Biden, 19 percent said Harris, and 12 percent said Warren.

Meaning, the pandering is getting Beto and Mayor Pete exactly nowhere.

But lack of measurable impact didn’t drive the candidates away from talking about issues no one cares about and pushing policies no one wants and that was ultimately the overarching theme of Thursday night’s debate.

A good example of this was the time spent on gun confiscation. A recent Quinnipiac poll found that mandatory buybacks of assault weapons are supported by 46 percent of Americans and opposed by 49 percent.

In the FiveThirtyEight/Ipsos poll conducted this week, only 4.2 percent of people said gun policy was the most important issue to them in the Democratic primary. Among the 162 respondents who said gun policy was the most important issue to them, Beto was number 4 at 12.9 percent, garnering less than half of Joe Biden's support on the issue.

Not only that, but gun control is a very weak motivator in the Democratic Primary; over half of Democrats and independents surveyed in the USA Today-Suffolk University poll said they could back a candidate with different views on gun control if they agreed with them on other policies.

Interestingly, immigration, another favorite topic for Democrat candidates, was behind gun control as an issue for Democratic voters.

In the FiveThirtyEight/Ipsos poll cited above, only 3.3 percent of people said immigration was the most important issue to them in the Democratic primaries.

And Bernie Sanders at 25.2 percent and Joe Biden at 21.4 percent were the only candidates who beat “someone else” on the issue.

Meaning that, standing as he does at 4.2 percent, Julian Castro’s bashing of Biden and demanding open borders is getting him nowhere among Democratic primary voters.

What’s more, in a January 2019 poll done by the Winston Group, a GOP pollster, 49 percent of national registered voters thought that the Democrats were for open borders, meaning Castro is hurting the entire Democratic brand for the general election.

The Democrats also spent an inordinate amount of time on education – a policy area with relatively little (thank goodness) federal responsibility and an issue that was tops for just 2.5 percent of Democratic voters in the FiveThirtyEight/Ipsos poll we’ve been using as our benchmark.

But the real place where Democrats pushed hard on policies no one wants was on health care.

According to the Gallup Organization’s August survey, health care, at 6 percent, is down in the middle of the pack of what they call “non-economic” issues. What’s more, according to a Kaiser Health news poll, only 39 percent of Democrats and Democrat-leaning independents want Medicare for All, compared to the 55 percent of Democrats and Democrat-leaning independents who prefer to “build” on Obamacare (the Affordable Care Act).

And, according to a 2018 Gallup Organization survey cited by FiveThirtyEight’s Maggie Koerth-Baker, solid majorities of Americans rate the coverage (69 percent) and quality (80 percent) of the healthcare they personally receive as "excellent" or "good."

Indeed, at least three in four Americans have consistently rated the quality of their healthcare positively, ranging from 76 percent to 83 percent, over the past 18 years. Smaller majorities have described their coverage as excellent or good since 2001, ranging from 63 percent to 72 percent.

What’s more, as Nate Silver pointed out in a July 25, 2019 article, Medicare for All isn’t all that popular, even among Democrats.

“Medicare for all, that is a national health insurance program for all Americans that replaces private health insurance” was seen unfavorably by 54 percent of respondents in a Marist poll conducted July 15 through 17, 2019.

And it was seen as a bad idea by 31 percent of Democrats, and 33 percent of those who identified as liberal or very liberal!

It is also worth noting the same poll found only 39 percent of independents support Medicare for All.

As Nate Silver pointed out back in July, there’s more to winning elections than just picking whatever policies happen to poll best, but judging by the time Democrats spent last night talking about and pushing issues no one cares about and policies no one likes they are going to have a tough time beating Donald Trump, a president who is in almost symbiotic synchronization with the ideas and attitudes of his base.

*We chose the FiveThirtyEight/Ipsos poll as our benchmark because it is an unusually detailed look at the attitudes of Democratic Primary voters and the FiveThirtyEight team does an outstanding job of putting it in context," said Silver, editor in chief of the website FiveThirtyEight.com.

ConservativeHQ.com is the online news source for conservatives and tea partiers committed to bringing limited-government constitutional conservatives to power.

Comments

This is what the Democrat party is, lunatic fringe idiots and fools. Everyone should know this by now.

Naturally, so-called "conservatives" would peddle this kind of fantasy malarkey. And these same "conservative" geniuses have also given us Donald Chump Trump, Moscow Mitch, Billy Barf Barr, Little Willy Kavanaugh, Lindsay Graham Cracker and a whole host of other "conservative" superstars ... guided, of course, by the NRA, Sean The Roofer Hannity, Tucker The ****** Carlson, Junky Jeannine Pirro and other super-mentors of the "conservative way". Any questions?

A more idiotic bunch of lunatics this world has never seen.

Well we certainly wont see any "Republican" debates, since Trump owns the party and even though there are several well qualified opponents, (Weld and Sanford) Trump is scared to debate them. An easy prediction: just like Trump said he would release his tax returns and didn't, said he would answer questions of the special prosecutor and didn't, we can rest assured he will chicken out of debating the eventual Democratic nominee, even if it's angry Bernie, or the past his expiration date Joe Biden. Pocohantas would tear Donald to pieces and take that miserable yellow scalp!

Once again, the Democrats have revealed themselves as the foolish disconnected wing-nuts that they are. If they want to get serious, first they must disband the Democrat party and form a new replacement. Until that happens, they're all just bizarre members of a freak side-show circus act.

You gotta be kiddin' Bobbie Babe! You think that the ... "bizarre members of a freak side-show circus act" ... are "Democrats"? Even Fox News can't make the "freak side-show circus act" going on at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue look "good"! Ha, ha, ha. Wow!

Um bah ga doi

Nice piece of selective facts. 3% of what people most want is still needed to be debated and anyone voting should want to know policies on......…....And just because only 3% rate it top means little too as many it could be the 2-3rd choice and I'm going to need many choices that I agree with, not just the top, showing just how shallow, biased this article is......…...…….One only needs to look at the polling here Chump is down 15 points to Biden and others beating him by 5-11 points.. ……..Of course it helps Chump is running over12k lies so far dude...…......…..What does it say about supporters of this corrupt immoral mental midget of a man?........nd w still have 15 months for him to screw up more pizzing more people off shrinking the repub party to 25% already as the decent leave in droves...………...And what about the $1T deficit now in a great inherited economy and that is only for 11 months!!!!…….

Lmao Trump has already won. Your hatred and misinformation will never help you again

Trump didn't "win". His opponent got 3,000,000 more votes than the racist, draft-dodging, Trump The Chump got. And, it's a pretty legitimate response for intelligent, reasonable, and responsible people to "hate" a racist, liar, cheater, and draft-dodger. Trump will lose in 2020 by a landslide ... by millions of more votes than he lost by in 2016.

If you take a close look, you'll find that not only does Adolph Rodham Hitlary not live in the White House, but she isn't allowed anywhere near it. :-)

The recent "Democratic Circus" left me with a feeling that NONE of the participants have genuinely 'thought through' a comprehensive plan to do ANYTHING except allow more illegals to enter America, and to raise our taxes to provide HEALTHCARE to ALL. Healthcare is NOT a birthright - At birth, all 'new humans' should get the best care to ensure early development... but LIFELONG HEALTHCARE? ~N~O~ . Sorry 'crats, you have no one who can do ANYTHING better than Trump!

Silly.

Maybe you don’t care about children being slaughtered in their classrooms by lunatics armed with weapons of war, but we do. Maybe you don’t care about people treated badly and denied opportunities because of their race, but we do. Maybe you don’t care about families losing everything they worked for because a baby got sick, but we do. And we will crush you.

Who is we? 1. The only reason any kids are shot in schools is because “gun free zones” only apply to those with the first opportunity to stop these lunatics. 2. President Trump’s policies have lead to the lowest unemployment and poverty rate in history for minorities. Under Obama poverty, food stamp usage and government dependency increased. 3. “ Medicare for all” will cause our federal budget to increase by 200%. That sick baby with millions in medical costs will die before the parents get through the government red tape required for his care to be approved. Tax revenue will triple to cover costs. The top 10% already pay 75% of the taxes and are the the Democratic donors. You think they will pay for it? WRONG!!!!, you and I will along with paying for 20 million Illegal Aliens and tens of millions more that will flock here for “free stuff” with open borders. You and yours are insane and brainwashed by the media.

we already have the highest budget deficits in history, that's right history, why not put it to good use somewhere for people, rather than just giving tax breaks back to Amazon, GE, Microsoft, GM, etc. who paid zero taxes last year. Meanwhile, we all had to cut checks to the IRS. That's right, the budget deficit this year alone is expected to shatter $1 trillion dollars, that's in one year. 1 yr., 1 trillion plus. Trump campaigned on eliminating the federal deficit in his first term. instead, he is poised to leave the largest deficit in history...by far! Meanwhile the market and 401k's are tanking and you are all cheering, weirdly ironic...

The market is doing just fine, and you're a left-wingnut lying fear monger.

You should try out for a spot on Fox News ... or maybe to become a writer for Lush Limbaugh! (You should maybe cut back on the fruit cake, though!)

BOOM! Preach it, Kevin!

You are in serious need of medical counselling and medication "Mike O'Dowd" before you consider "crushing" anyone... and you can start by "taking your problem" to your Pastor...

You are the one needing mental health help dude. Not unlike Chump.His pastor would agree 100% with him. WWJD? …......…........ How about the Pastors in La or Charleston? ………... Or other Jewish, Christian, Muslim and even Sikhs , one of the most peaceful people, kind, generous, welcoming, on earth, because some dimwitt thought they were Arab...……….They would all agree along with most every religious leader in the world, and against people like you...…………......All because they can get a war weapon............……..Now think of those people you know, how many should never be allowed within 10' of gun...…......…. And yesterday a 3 yr old shot herself because of too many weapon...…...…...All because there are 10x too many guns out there......….....The cure is limit to 6 rounds as if you can't do it in that amount, you shouldn't own a gun...…..And a $50/yr tax, not unlike a car tag will bring the reduction needed while those actually needing the guns assuming they are mental, etc competent, to have them...………….Right now the gun you are most likely you be killed by is the family gun, most likely get stolen or found by toddlers to teenagers and accidently or on purpose kill people. ........Sorry but free reign on guns is coming to an end, deal with it is time to stop the slaughter. ………………..And as Parkland showed, even good man, cop, with a gun 50' away doesn't help when they find out they are cowards as many find out when actual time to use a gun for defense or to save others.

Seek help. Seriously.

Seriously Jerry, if all you can say is ignorant misinformed bullscat, then it's better if you say nothing at all.

Biden's experience is best characterized by FDR's Vice President, John Nance Garner: "The Vice Presidency is not worth a bucket of warm piss". (and Biden is the leading Democrat contender for President in 2020????... GO FIGURE ! ) WOE BE UNTO US !

The Democrats (finally realizing their collective "mental breahdown", and the "Hillary trigger" cause for this illness), have once again "SENT IN THE CLOWNS"! [[There is NO CURE,...it's the "terminal 'WHIG political party' "circling the drain" curse]]-[[Just ask "Ole Honest Abe"#16]]

C-Breeze, is that you? I'd know that syntax anywhere. Maybe both parties are about to disappear. Yours is already gone, submersed into the Trump party of belching smokestacks, uncountable falsehoods, and playground name-calling! And yes, the Chinese are going to take your lunch money. Enjoy!

Plenty of the less-dumb dummies who voted for Trump in 2016 will either vote against him or not vote at all in 2020. Doesn't matter who the Democrats select as the opposition - Trump and his cult will lose by a significant margin and if Texas and Florida should vote Democratic (a possibility based on current polling), that will likely be the end of the Republican party - period.

And Hillary has a 98% likelihood of winning again. Uh huh...

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