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O.K., I watched the debate today, night two anyway, the one with Sanders.
I’d been hearing a lot of people say that Kamala Harris stole the show, and I must admit, she did great.
Perhaps, as a Bernie supporter, I should step back and be supportive, because she whacked Joe Biden up the side of his old man head real good. She said “I don’t think you’re racist” but everything after that was pretty much “You’re a racist” and his answer pretty much confirmed it.  “I never objected to busing, I just objected to busing mandated by the education department.”  Oh.  Maybe he thought we were talking about public transportation (which I’m all for, btw) or the kind of buses that take tourists around.

He’s not going to drop out of the race tomorrow, but if he had any dignity he would.  He sure didn’t pick up any support.  So, that’s a good thing.
What I find disturbing is how many of my Facebook friends are suddenly big Kamala fans.  Did they forget that she tried to keep a man in prison even after he’d been proven not guilty?  Did they forget she lets the cops turn off their body cams?  Should we forget that her office actually issued a statement that they needed to keep people in jail, so the private prisons wouldn’t be deprived of a labor force?  Basically, as A.G., she was sort of a Dolores Umbridge type, but with fewer moral reservations.
It’s disturbing to see how many people can shift so quickly.
One nice speech, and all the horrible shit she’s done is forgotten.

Admittedly, I did not watch the debate live.  There are these things called time zones, and I didn’t feel like staying up until the early morning hours just to watch it alone.  I still haven’t seen it, had kind of a busy day, so I’m piecing it together from what people are saying.  I will try to find time to watch them both this weekend.
Of course all my Tulsi friends are saying she totally crushed it, eliminated some guy named Tim Ryan and destroyed his career, and established herself as a major candidate.  I hope it’s true but some of my other friends are saying she just did all right, or ‘she is weird and talks like a robot,’ which I kind of knew what the woman meant but since I actually  like Tulsi’s calm, methodical, and cautious way of talking, I don’t see it as such a scathing comment.
As for the Ryan thing.  Yes, Tulsi did make him look like a bit of an idiot for not knowing the difference between the Taliban and Al Qaeda and having zero clue why we are even in Afghanistan, but in today’s political climate, it takes more than being completely wrong and embarrassingly uninformed to derail someone’s political career, so we’ll see.
Also, even if she ended his campaign, he was one of the fringiest of fringe candidates.
Then there’s the spike in Google hits, which was recorded by FiveThirtyEight.com.  It was quite amazing.  Tulsi Gabbard was the candidate most people were googling during the debates  BY FAR.  Now, part of this, no doubt, is because she’s been the candidate, up till now, that the mainstream media has tried the hardest to ignore.  Well, maybe that will end.
And the Drudge Poll, which showed that their readers thought Tulsi Gabbard won the debate.  She was more than 11 points ahead of Elizabeth Warren.  Of course, that needs to be taken with a grain of salt because, you know, Drudge readers, but it is a sign that Tulsi Gabbard can appeal even to right wingers, and thus will do great among independent voters, both left and right.
No other candidate can say that, except maybe Bernie Sanders.  He’ll speak tonight.

About a week ago or so I wrote down some predictions about the upcoming presidential debates, which basically amounted to “Don’t expect any real surprises.  Don’t expect any game changers.”
I’d like to revise that.  Now, it could be I’m letting my inner conspiracy theorist get the better of me, and it could be a bit of wishful thinking on my part, but there is a real chance that Biden could be out after the first couple of debates.
Not because he’s a gaffe machine.  The press brushes over that lightly, and many find it an endearing quality.  He’d be president Yogi Berra.
It’s not even the fact that a lot of his “gaffes” aren’t gaffes at all, but his actual policy positions.  These debates aren’t going to probe anybody’s policies too deeply, unless they are named Sanders or Gabbard.
It’s not even his long history of horrible decisions in government.  That’s already out there, we can debate it forever on Facebook, and on our Bernie Pages, but the average voter, the ones we need to win, doesn’t have time for all that.
It’s that he looks old.  Up till now, he’s been doing lots of fundraisers, behind closed doors with his rich donors, and not so many major rallies.  Same as with Hillary Clinton, he’s trying the ‘keep out of sight and let the media do all the work.’
He hasn’t been completely invisible.  You occasionally see him speaking to a group of people, and saying embarrassing things.
And, to me, he looks wan.  A drained and bloodless old man.  Of course, he and Bernie are roughly the same age, but Bernie looks robust, and vital.
We’ll see how the two of them look side by side.  A good make-up job could save Biden, but I suspect a lot of the audience (watching at home, not the rich pricks who are paying $4,500 for a ticket) will see the two old men standing side by side, and think “Bernie could whip his ass.”

Bernie Sanders could present a thorough, foolproof plan to provide housing, clean water, and electricity to every person on Earth, in a clean and self-sustaining ecosystem, in which all the happy, organic farms are linked to gleaming, bustling, crime-free metropolises by networks of electric trucks and buses, plus high speed rail, immortality, and colonies on Mars, and people would raise objections.
It’s just what people do.
There seem to be 3 main objections to his plan to forgive student debt.
The first is the most easily dismissed.  “I paid off my student loans.  This isn’t fair to me.”  One of the first things I learned in AA is “You cannot change the past.”  Bernie Sanders is trying to help people who need help now.  He cannot bring back your lost years and your lost dollars.  He cannot go back in time to kill Hitler and prevent the holocaust.  I’m sure he would if he could.

Would finding a cure for cancer be unfair to those who’ve already died of cancer?  Will bringing about racial equality be unfair to all those who have already been shot dead by police?  Well, of course it would but we cannot change the past.

Objection #2 is “Why should I have to pay for it?”  I tried pointing out that since this is a transaction tax on Wall St., it won’t affect us average folks at all.  I soon found out that there are those among my friends and family who see themselves on the other side of that line.  One objected to the tax because he has a $100,000 tax portfolio.  “Well, good for you,” I thought. You can let it ride and pay nothing, for now, or you can cash in and it will cost you $500 (which is 0.5% of $100,000)

It’s sort of like when Bernie announced his tax plan, with a 4% increase on incomes over $250,000 a year.  It sounds reasonable to me, that’s a lot of money, but I was surprised at how many people I know didn’t consider it a lot.  “If you live in New York (or California) it’s not that much,” was a common refrain.  I don’t object to people being a little bit rich, especially if they are friends of mine, but I don’t think Bernie’s taxes will break you, either.  Bernie’s programs will help the economy, overall, so you will still prosper.

Objection #3 is “He’ll have a hard time getting it passed.”
Well, of course he will.  When a teacher stands in front of a room on the first day of school, he or she knows full well that 75% of those students are dumb as rocks and will never learn a damn thing.  A doctor begins every surgery hoping to save the patient, even though he or she knows that occasionally a patient will die.  When a rookie boxer steps into the ring and the odds are 10-1 against him, he still fights to win.  That’s the Rocky story.  Bernie is Rocky.

Now, of course this is not just a strategy.  This is a bill which will give debt relief to about 45 million people, the promise of a better college education for countless millions of people, some still children, some not yet born, and a big stimulus to the economy, and Bernie has always been about helping the people.
But, I think it’s also brilliant strategically, and he may have just won the election.  45 million Americans is the estimate I saw of how many Americans hold student debt.  Most of them will now vote for Sanders.  Even if someone only owes 5 or 10,000, having that slate wiped clean would help them a lot, and they’d probably be willing to say “You know, he’s not really that old” and jump right on the old bandwagon.  Might even bring a few of their relatives and friends on board, too.

So, we’re up to 60, 70 million voters right away.  New voters, some of them.
He has clearly explained how he’s going to pay for it, which is part of the beauty of Bernie Sanders.  He explains these things, his plans are simple, and they make sense.  Elizabeth Warren also has a plan, but it only covers people under a certain income level, and doesn’t do away with the debt entirely, and it’s not nearly as easy to explain, or understand.
How he’s going to pay for it is a transaction tax on Wall St.  0.5%  So, if you buy $100 worth of stock, you pay a 50c tax.  If you buy a million dollars worth of stocks, you pay a $500 tax.  It’s still reasonable.  It’s not going to break anybody.  And, if it slows down the rate of trading on Wall St., maybe that’s a good thing, too.