Democratic Presidential Debate Panel Review and Criticisms Part Two
- ElizaSpeaks
- Aug 7, 2019
- 11 min read
Updated: Sep 3, 2019
By: H. Elizabeth Williams
August 7, 2019
Are you tired of the “unbiased” moderators of the latest Democratic Presidential Debate not giving all candidates equal time. Does it seem like they only favor the most popular candidates in the polls? Too distracted by the obnoxious arguing and no one actually answering the question and rambling on about how they’re gonna stop Trump?
Same.
I put together a cheat list of all the presidential candidates so it’s a bit easier, because if you’re like me you have no clue who to vote for.
Why? Well because first off I can’t even take these debate answers seriously since all they do is kiss the ass of voters. They’ll agree to everything without question just to get the vote and if one candidate on the panel tries to challenge that they’re racist or something. If you watched the first debate when Joe Biden looked around at all the raised hands before raising his own, it proves my point.
Now don’t get me wrong, I love the diverse panel and that there are strong outspoken women on stage to challenge their male opponents. But, I want actual answers. I don’t care how you’re going to stop Trump and I don’t care about the beef you have with the opponent next to you. Grow up and tell me how you’re going to fix our country.
So, here’s part two of my cheat sheet:
Kamala Harris
Career:
CA Senator
Former CA Attorney General
Healthcare:
Supports ACA.
Medicare For All.
Supports access to contraceptives within insurance plans.
Climate Change:
Supports Paris accord.
Supports Green New Deal.
Civil Rights:
Supports LGBTQ+ rights.
Criminal justice: wants to lower recidivism rate.
Pro-choice.
Restore voting rights act and stop voter suppression.
Guns:
Felons/mentally ill shouldn’t be able to obtain guns.
Background checks.
Against arming teachers.
Economics:
Raise minimum wage to $15/hr.
Equal pay for women.
Fewer tax cuts to the wealthy.
More workforce training.
Foreign Policy:
Concerned about North Korea.
Against trump’s trade war with China.
Against US helping Saudi Arabia intervene with Yemeni civil war.
Immigration:
Re-examine ICE.
Supports DACA.
Co-sponsored Reunite Act.
Opposes border wall.
Education:
Student loan forgiveness.
Supports public colleges being free.
Fun facts:
Quickly drew notice for her tough questioning of Mr. Trump’s cabinet nominees — and later, his Supreme Court nominee Brett M. Kavanaugh.
SIGNATURE ISSUES: Unveiled middle-class tax cut legislation last fall, and has championed a liberal civil rights agenda in the Senate.
Criticism: Was tough on crime as attorney general and many POC’s went to prison, California is known for racial divide in criminal justice system. Also, hasn’t taken a clear stance on some issues such as felons voting.
Michael Bennet
Career:
Moderate democrat known for seeking compromise.
CO Senator who has served in Congress since 2009, former Superintendent of Denver Public Schools.
Healthcare:
Medicare For All.
favor a public option for health insurance called “medicare X.” (It is considered a more moderate alternative to Medicare for All, as it does not eliminate private insurance).
Education:
Quality education for every American.
Simplify the financial aid process.
Alleviate student debt.
Helped overhaul the No Child Left Behind Act and passed an amendment to reduce the Standardized testing reporting requirements for schools, which had been widely criticized.
Economics:
Seeking Child Tax Credit to support low-income families.
Keeping American farmers in the conversation.
Hold China accountable for unfair trade practices.
Foreign Policy:
Strengthen partnership with longtime allies.
Support for a measure that would grant temporary protected status to Venezuelans that have fled to the United States.
Opposes Saudi Arabia support.
Immigration:
Co-sponsor of DREAM Act.
Does not support decriminalizing the border
Member of Gang Of Eight in 2013
Civil Rights:
Reverse the transgender military ban.
Pro-choice.
Supports LGBTQ+issues.
Climate Change:
Favorable towards addressing the problem.
Helped establish a new senate special committee on the climate crisis in March.
Fun facts:
Is best known for being a part of the so-called Gang of Eight, a bipartisan group that crafted a comprehensive immigration reform bill in 2013.
SIGNATURE ISSUES: Has called for modernizing the economy in fields like artificial intelligence and increasing infrastructure spending.
Bennet was raised in Washington, D.C., but born in New Delhi, India, where his father served as U.S. ambassador.
Criticism: He stated in his campaign that he intends to “protect all Americans from discrimination, whether based on race, gender, sexual orientation, or disability.” In 2010, Bennet said he supported same-sex marriage but believed it should be decided by the states. In 2012, he voiced his full support for same-sex marriage. So, there’s a little flip flop there. Just wanted to point that out.
Joe Biden Sr.
Career:
Former Vice President during Obama’s term.
A Washington veteran who spent decades as a Democratic US senator.
Has run twice for President.
Climate Change
Demands action to combat climate change.
Supports paris accord.
Economics:
Promote the middle class.
Raise the minimum wage.
Supports reducing non-compete clauses to expand opportunities for workers to seek fair pay, and increasing tax credits for low-income families.
Education:
Free public college (including community college). Universal Pre-K.
One of the first democrats in recent years to advocate for free public education.
Guns:
Ban assault weapons and high-capacity magazines.
Universal background checks.
HealthCare:
Fix Affordable Care Act.
Biden has not yet articulated a comprehensive health care platform.
Civil Rights:
Advocate for Violence against women act and preventing sexual assault.
Actively involved in the “It’s on us” campaign to prevent assault on college campuses.
Oppose abortion bans but have no policies.
Supports LGBTQ+ issues.
Immigration:
Voted for Secure Fence Act in 2007.
Created DACA with former President Obama.
Biden has rejected giving drivers' licenses to undocumented immigrants as recently as 2007.
Foreign Policy:
Supports international alliances like NATO.
Voted in favor of the Iraq war in 2002, but later opposed President George W. Bush’s troop surge, and in 2006, co-wrote a five-step strategy to pull U.S. forces from the country.
Fun facts:
In September 2015, Biden celebrated New York state raising the minimum wage to $15 an hour, even as the Obama administration pushed to raise the federal minimum wage to $12 an hour.
In 1986, he introduced the first ever climate bill to establish a task force on the issue.
SIGNATURE ISSUES: Restoring America’s standing on the global stage; strengthening economic protections for low-income workers in industries like manufacturing and fast food.
Criticism:
Despite his long record supporting gun control measures, Biden voted in 1983 for the Firearm Owners Protection Act, a bill that allowed firearms dealers to sell guns through the mail, online and at gun shows.
Spoke out in support of survivors during Brett Kavanaugh trial, but Biden has also faced criticism for his handling of the 1994 Supreme Court confirmation hearing for Clarence Thomas, who had been accused of sexual harassment by Anita Hill. (Biden at the time was the chairman of an all-white, all-male Senate Judiciary Committee.) Biden voted against Thomas’ confirmation, and has said he regrets how he handled the hearing. He’s also been accused recently of making unwanted physical contact, such as hugs and kisses on the head, with women. In a video statement on Twitter, Biden agreed to be “more mindful” of women’s personal space in the future.
Throughout his time in office he’s switched his views and that’s always something to look out for when wondering who to vote for.
Personal criticism: He needs to stop touching women and giving them "surprise" massages. It's gross and uncomfortable.
Andrew Yang
Career:
Founder of Venture for America, Manhattan Prep CEO, Stargiving.com VP.
Former Corporate Attorney at Davis Polk & Wardwell.
Healthcare:
Expand mental health services.
Medicare For All.
Climate Change:
End tax breaks for fossil fuel companies, and tax carbon emissions.
Supports carbon capture and geo-engineering.
Direct EPA to collaborate with private companies and local governments on innovative solutions to climate change.
Civil Rights:
Supports LGBTQ+ rights.
Criminal justice: reduce incarceration rates in the US.
Pro-choice and affordable contraception access.
Guns:
Has a detailed plan to create a new, multi-tiered licensing system for firearms similar to the different levels of automobile licenses.
Require universal background checks.
Supports Federal weapons buyback program
Yang wants to create uniform federal safety standards and incentivize gun manufacturers to innovate new gun safety technology.
Economics:
Create a universal basic income.
Supports IRS having to reimburse relocation expenses for people who have to move to find jobs.
Supports 10% added value to big corporations.
Foreign Policy:
Supports NATO.
Would create Secretary of Cybersecurity.
Immigration:
Supports an "eighteen-year" path to citizenship for undocumented immigrants without criminal records who have lived in the United States for long periods of time.
Supports DREAM Act.
Education:
Supports universal early childhood education.
Wants two-year community college education free or extremely low-cost.
Increasing school teacher pay.
Fun facts:
He says he rebranded universal basic income to the "Freedom Dividend" because it tests better with conservatives.
Criticism:
Anonymity: Yang is not well-known and will struggle to drive the conversation.
Inexperience: He has not worked in government before.
Cory Booker
Career:
First African-American NJ Senator; former mayor of Newark.
Rhodes Scholar and Yale Law School graduate.
Hunger-striking city councilman.
Economy:
Supports $15 minimum wage and guaranteed jobs.
Support paid sick leave.
Opposed giving Obama administration fast track trade authority during early negotiations of the Trans-pacific Partnership.
Hasn’t commented about Trump's re-negotiation of trade deals with Canada and Mexico.
Immigration:
Supports DACA.
Helped introduce Keep Families Together Act.
Guns:
Require background checks.
Ban assault weapons and high capacity magazines.
Sponsored legislation to ban bump stocks.
Healthcare:
Backs “medicare for all” and importing prescription drugs.
Had previously defended the Affordable Care Act.
Civil Rights:
Advocates for criminal justice reform.
Would make lynching a hate crime.
Ran free clinics to help Newark residents expunge their criminal records.
Pro-choice.
Support LGBTQ+ issues.
Transgender troops should be allowed to serve.
Co-sponsored employment non-discrimination act.
Foreign policy:
“Re-examine” relationship with Saudi Arabia.
Critical of military action in Syria.
Voted against arms sales to the kingdom in Saudi Arabia.
Voted against a hasty withdrawal of troops from Syria and Afghanistan.
Education:
Specific vision for improving education that includes charter schools and merit pay for teachers.
Simplify the financial aid.
Provide relief for teachers who have student loan debt.
Expressed need for U.S. Department of Education to protect students' civil rights.
Climate Change:
Booker sees climate change as a "pressing economic and national security crisis."
Member of the Environment and Public Works Committee.
Recently signed on to endorse the Green New Deal.
Fun facts:
Would be one of the most gifted orators in the field, running on a politics of uplift that could recall President Obama’s 2008 campaign.
SIGNATURE ISSUES: Has been one of the leaders in the Senate on criminal justice reform, but his appeal would most likely center on his call to unify the country.
Criticism:
Booker has said his support for the LGBT community has evolved over time. In a column he wrote for Stanford University’s newspaper in 1992, Booker said that he once “hated gays.”
Bill de Blasio
Career:
Mayor of New York City — elected in 2013
Former Regional Director at the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development; school board for Brooklyn School District 15 and head of Hillary Rodham Clinton’s 2000 U.S. Senate campaign.
Healthcare:
A national single-payer healthcare plan. Universal healthcare.
Support paid sick leave.
Climate Change:
Reduce carbon emissions.
Supports Green New Deal (especially for New York City).
Civil Rights:
Supports LGBTQ+ rights.
Pro-choice.
Criminal justice: ending stop and frisk.
Guns:
Partnered with the NYPD to direct resources towards reducing gun violence in neighborhoods with the highest rates of shooting incidents and stopping gun trafficking.
Require universal background checks.
Economics:
Put working people first.
Supports the Paycheck Fairness Act and the Amateur Sports Act.
Proposed a "Fair Fix" tax plan to tax New York's wealthiest 1% of residents.
Foreign Policy:
Links international issues with climate change and immigration.
Forcefully spoke out against the Trump administration's ban on immigration for people from majority-Muslim countries in 2017.
Immigration:
Backs protection for undocumented immigrants.
Debuted a program to grant New York City ID cards to undocumented residents to allow them to access city services.
Education:
Supports universal pre-k.
Supports education reform.
Fun facts:
De Blasio was actually born Warren Wilhelm Jr., but later changed his name to match his mother's maiden name.
Criticism:
De Blasio has been accused of caring more about building a national profile than running New York City effectively.
His mayoral campaigns became the focus of federal investigations in response to his fundraising practices.
Julián Castro
Career:
Former mayor of San Antonio.
Stanford University (BA); Harvard University (JD).
Former cabinet secretary (Housing and Urban Development) in the Obama administration.
Climate Change:
Rejoin Paris accords.
Work with businesses to increase reliance on renewable energy voluntarily.
It is not clear if Castro supports a carbon tax or “cap and trade” policy to reduce carbon emissions.
Education:
Universal pre-k.
Provide two free years of higher education.
Gun control:
Require universal background checks.
Ban assault weapons.
Longtime gun control advocate.
Healthcare:
Medicare For All.
Civil rights:
Abortion should remain legal after 20 weeks.
Gay marriage is a protected right.
Transgender Americans should be able to serve in the military.
Foreign Policy:
Withdraw us presence over a planned period of time in Syria.
Strengthen ally relationships.
Immigration:
Proposed attaching ankle monitors to undocumented immigrants as opposed to detaining them en masse.
Opposes expansion of border walls.
Supports decriminalizing border crossings.
Economics:
Strongly supports expanding trade deal and renegotiating NAFTA.
Pushing for economic equality .
Fun facts:
Julián Castro is seeking do what no Democrat has done in ninety-six years: win the party’s presidential nomination without first having been either a governor, senator, or vice president.
Castro is a Roman Catholic who supports legal abortion access and gay rights
While he was mayor of San Antonio, the local utility committed to close a coal plant and embrace a 20 percent renewables goal.
SIGNATURE ISSUES: Has emphasized a platform of universal prekindergarten, “Medicare for all” and immigration reform.
Criticism:
Anonymity: has a lower profile compared to some other running democrats.
Past Progressive backlash.
He hasn’t made a habit of weighing in on Middle East policy, arms-control agreements, or trade deals. That makes it hard to say how his views might evolve in the months to come. He all but ignored foreign policy in his presidential announcement speech.
Tulsi Gabbard
Career:
Congresswoman from HI.
Army National Guard Veteran.
Climate Change:
Mandate an end to the use of fossil fuels for electricity by 2050.
Ban fracking.
No stated position, but proposed a bill in 2017 to transition to 100% renewable energy to generate electricity by 2035.
Education:
Tuition free community college for all and tuition free public university for most families (For students whose families make $125,000 or less per year. The plan would pay for that tuition by imposing a new tax on stock and bond trades.)
Guns:
Ban assault weapons.
Require universal background checks.
Closing “gun-show loophole.”
Healthcare:
Medicare For All.
Co-sponsor of “The expanded and improved medicare for all act.”
Doesn’t want to eliminate private insurance.
Civil Rights:
Pro-choice.
Supports LGBTQ+ issues.
Ban discrimination based on sexual preference and identity.
Opposes attempts to bar transgender Americans from the military.
Foreign Policy:
Withdraw from Afghanistan and Syria.
End U.S. support for Saudi-led conflict in Yemen.
Strongly opposed TPP.
Criticized Trump’s trade war with China.
Immigration:
Support Keep Families Together Act.
Supports DACA.
"We need to stop using immigrants as tokens in a political game and start talking solutions — funding to process asylum requests & targeted aid to address the decades of US intervention that contributed to the collapse of the countries they are fleeing."
Economy:
Taxes increased for wealthy.
Slammed Trump’s tax reform bill.
Fun facts:
Supported Bernie Sanders in the 2016 primaries.
SIGNATURE ISSUE: Opposition to American military intervention overseas, including in countries like Syria.
Criticism:
Has apologized for her history of anti-gay statements and her past work for an anti-gay advocacy group, but the fact still remains.
Has drawn condemnation for making a secret trip to have a meeting with Syria’s president, Bashar al-Assad, whose regime has been accused of using chemical weapons against civilians.
She voted with congressional Republicans on an Obama-era bill that would place "extreme vetting" measures on Iraqi and Syrian refugees.
Kirsten Gillibrand
Career:
3 term Senator from New York; former congresswoman.
A campaign-volunteer-turned-successor-to Hillary Clinton.
Climate Change:
Create a cap and trade commodity market for carbon emissions.
Ban new drilling on federal lands.
Signed onto Green New Deal.
Rejoining Paris accords.
Education:
Make public higher education debt free.
Make child care more affordable and accessible.
Guns:
Ban assault weapons and high capacity magazines.
Universal background checks .
Supports closing the gun show loophole.
Civil Rights:
Reform handling of sexual assault in the military and on college campuses.
Co-sponsored the “campus accountability and safety act.”
Pro-choice.
Gay, lesbian and transgender Americans should be allowed to serve in the military.
Supports same sex marriage.
Healthcare:
Co-sponsor of the “Medicare for All Act.”
Opposes private health insurance.
Reduce maternal mortality rates.
Penalize pharmaceutical companies for dramatically increasing drug prices.
Economy:
Renegotiate NAFTA.
Supports levying a new financial transactions tax. Strongly opposed the 2017 GOP tax cuts.
Strengthen unions.
Universal paid family leave bill.
Supports implementing a federal jobs guarantee.
Immigration:
Eliminate ICE.
Supports DACA.
Decriminalize the border.
Foreign Policy:
Withdraw from Afghanistan.
End U.S. support of action in Yemen.
She opposed Trump's withdrawal from the Iran nuclear deal.
Fun facts:
Gillibrand made a name for herself in the Senate as an advocate for victims of sexual assault.
Became the first 2020 candidate to release her 2018 tax returns and called on her opponents to do the same.
Criticism:
Conservative track record: Received an A rating from the NRA in 2006, but stated she was wrong and representing an entire state that includes urban communities with more gun violence pushed her to support more gun control measures.
Al Franken: Some Democrats are upset that Gillibrand moved to oust Franken from the Senate without a public hearing.
Staff sexual harassment: One of Gillibrand's staffers resigned over the handling of a sexual harassment complaint against one of the senator's closest aides, showing her office to be at odds with her public persona as a champion of sexual harassment victims.
Jay Inslee
Career:
Governor of Washington State
Former Congressman
Climate Change:
Reverse climate change.
Lower carbon emissions.
100 percent clean energy.
Economy:
Free trade.
Increase minimum wage.
Equal pay opportunity act.
Opposes the Trump administration’s trade policies.
Healthcare:
Move towards Universal Health Care.
Backed Affordable Care Act.
Civil Rights:
Pro-choice.
Supports LGBTQ rights.
Against capital punishment.
Guns:
Supports gun control.
Opposes arming teachers.
Voted for federal assault weapons ban.
Immigration:
Supports DACA.
Last year, Washington led a group of states in successfully suing the Trump administration over their ban on people from certain Muslim-majority nations entering the US.
Foreign Policy:
Syrian refugees welcome.
Voted against the Iraq War back in 2002.
Education:
Opposed diverting public school funding towards privately-owned charter schools.
Fun facts:
A few days after the mass shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Florida, Inslee personally confronted Trump on gun safety issues at the White House.
SIGNATURE ISSUES: Has made climate a centerpiece of his agenda as governor and as a national figure, campaigning widely in the midterm elections on a message of creating renewable energy jobs.
Criticism:
Anonymity: Inslee isn't a nationally recognized name in a very crowded Democratic field.
Age: A recent poll found 43 of Iowa's 76 Democratic county party leaders say they want a young candidate to be their nominee.
Sources (There's a different article for each of these candidates, but listing them all would be a waste of time. Just Google (Person's name) and then PBS/Axios/or Business Insider): https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2019/us/politics/2020-presidential-candidates.html
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