Just Joe Biden and Bernie Sanders on the stage with no audience…
Joe Biden ALL but has the 2020 Democratic Presidential nomination wrapped up…
More than 150 delegates ahead of Independent /Socialist Bernie Sanders….
This Tuesday and next Tuesday’s primaries could put Biden more that 300 delegates ahead in the contest…
Sanders is polling behind Biden is the double digits in every state race for the next two weeks…
Tonights debate isn’t about Sanders winning…
He isn’t gonna magically change the race’s results…
The Majority of Democrats voting have expressed a want for return to some sort of normalcy in the countries leadership…
Donald Trump has ran to the right…
Bernie Sanders wants to run to the left….
And Sanders will have his effort to wrench a party he doesn’t actually belong to the left on full display tonight…
The NY Times piece below seems to be laying out a rational for Sanders to go on and not have it get personal as Biden seeks to unite the party for the run against Donald Trump…
Mr. Sanders, speaking after last week’s losses in Michigan and three other states, telegraphed his intention to press Mr. Biden hard on health care, climate change and income inequality, and reiterated that intention in an online chat with supporters on Saturday, vowing to “demand” Biden address questions about “the power structure in America.” Yet the actions of both men in the aftermath of Tuesday’s primaries — Mr. Biden set out a welcome mat for his rival rather than pressuring him to quit, and Mr. Sanders outlined tough terms for an eventual détente — also shed light on a personal relationship that has remained sturdy, amicable and functional, a far cry from the acrimony that defined Mr. Sanders’s relationship with Mrs. Clinton after their bitter duel four years ago.
This no-frills personal connection, aides to both men say, could become an important factor in quickly uniting the party to confront President Trump, despite the wide policy gulf between the moderate Mr. Biden and the progressive Mr. Sanders.
“I think both men know where this is likely going, and they both know how to approach one another,” said David Axelrod, a longtime adviser to President Barack Obama who worked closely with Mr. Biden in the White House. “Sanders, it seems to me, is a guy who wants to land the plane, and is asking Biden to show him some lights from the ground. There’s nothing personal standing in the way of them getting together.”
….
The two men have sparred, but not savaged each other, in previous debates. Mr. Biden recently told a person in his orbit that he thinks Mr. Sanders, while lacking an understanding of foreign policy, “is basically a good guy.” One longtime Biden staff member summed up the former vice president’s view in Baby Boomer cultural terms: In the mid-1960s, when both men were in college, Mr. Biden was a square, striving, law-school-bound ex-jock who would have seen Mr. Sanders as a noisy, strident, scraggly but basically benign campus archetype — “the hippie.”
Mr. Sanders, an independent from Vermont who caucuses with the Democrats, has privately praised Mr. Biden as one of the few establishment senators to make him feel at home during his first few months in the Senate. (Mr. Obama, by contrast, later suggested in a memoir that Mr. Biden behaved a little arrogantly when he first arrived in 2005.)
But Mr. Sanders has not been shy about highlighting their policy differences over the years, especially his opposition to the Biden-backed bailout of financial firms during the 2008 financial crisis and Mr. Biden’s initial support for the war in Iraq.
In brief remarks after his Super Tuesday defeats, Mr. Sanders slammed Mr. Biden on Iraq and on his support for “disastrous trade agreements” that he said had cost millions of jobs. “You cannot beat Trump with the same old, same old kind of politics,” he added. In subsequent days, he attacked Mr. Biden’s record on abortion, same-sex marriage and the former “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy.
Mr. Sanders’s aggressive approach has, at times, angered Mr. Biden, who felt that Mr. Sanders had not acted quickly enough to muzzle supporters who posted racist and sexist attacks on two female officials of a Nevada union for opposing Mr. Sanders’s signature “Medicare for All” plan in February. “Disown them, flat disown them,” Mr. Biden told an interviewer at the time. “It’s outrageous.”
But Mr. Sanders, ever the ideology-impelled candidate, has taken pains not to personalize the fight….
Note…
Some are questioning anymore debates due the Biden lead and the virus situation…
image…courthousenews.com
Former Vice President Joe Biden and Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) are seeking to contrast their leadership styles and crisis management skills with President Trump’s amid increasing fallout over the government’s response to the coronavirus outbreak.
Both campaigns have picked apart Trump’s response to the pandemic, including over the lack of testing, while also showcasing what a response from their administrations would look like if faced with a similar health crisis…
More…
…In a statement, the Biden campaign signaled that the former vice president is not planning on hammering away at contrasts with Sanders and instead wants to focus on Trump. Biden is “honored to share the stage with Sen. Sanders, who he considers a good friend and whose values and leadership he admires,” said Andrew Bates, Biden’s rapid response director.
For Sanders, the debate is also an opportunity to nudge Biden to the left, a familiar position for the politician who successfully pulled Clinton in his direction during his unsuccessful 2016 bid. Sanders sees the coronavirus outbreak as a red flag that America’s health care system is dysfunctional, and that the country needs “Medicare for All” and other liberal policies…
More…
Here’s the link for the 538 live feed for tonight’s debate…
So far the guys are NOT getting too feisty….
As expected….
Sanders is NOT going hard at Biden but IS trying to make sure HIS left leaning policy IS thrown at Biden….
Biden has already moved to the left in the last few days on Bankruptcy policy with Warren and a version of free higher education with Sanders…
Sanders IS pushing ideology …
Biden is pushing practically…..
The 538er’s realise that Joe Biden ISN’T trail blazer…
He’s compromiser that works to get stuff done…
Sanders has big idea’s…
But they have little support in Congress…
This IS Biden’s strength right now in the polling lead vs a Donald Trump
One WOULD think that with the virus thing and Biden’s YUGE lead in the polls?
This IS Sanders last time up at bat ….
The guys have turn to the past now to highlight their difference’s…
….
PERRY BACON JR.9:00 PM
On all of these issues (Social Security, college tuition, bankruptcy), Biden used to be more to the right (along with much of the rest of the party.) He has moved left. Sanders has always been left on these issues. So if you are judging Biden’s positions on issues right now, there is not that much space between him and Sanders. But it’s also likely that as new issues emerge, Biden’s instincts will be to take the more traditional-Democrat/center-left/Pelosi-type stance and the Sanders will land somewhere to the left of him. So if the left feels that Obama was too centrist when new issues emerged in his presidency (like the mortgage crisis), they are right to be skeptical of Biden in the same way. We kind of know what their instincts are — Sanders will be well to the left of mainstream opinion, and Biden will be left but not that left….
More….
GALEN DRUKE9:03 PM
Haha. One thing to remember about this debate is that, good or bad for either candidate, absolutely no one is going to be talking about it tomorrow….
More…
Half time….
I’ll probably come back to do the finish…
The debate REALLY IS meaningless….
Biden has the nomination and currently leads Trump nationally…
Sanders ‘s campaign has simply run out of gas and most of his supporters don’t want to believe it…
I understand….
It’s hard when u believe in a person and they just don’t make it….
Ok I lied…
While doing my bill list update for the month I had the live feed rolling….
The headline from the debate will be Biden has committed probably to a woman Vice President running with him…
Second headline is he will freeze deportations and only go for felons….
I hope this WAS the last debate…
The time for this stuff is over….
GEOFFREY SKELLEY10:06 PM
Sometimes debates can dramatically move opinions during a primary election. This was not one of those debates, and it might be the last one — we’ll see. It doesn’t help Sanders that his criticisms of Biden will have to break through during a period when media coverage will be framed almost entirely around the coronavirus. That part of the debate was less divisive, so if it’s covered, it shouldn’t do much to change minds. I thought Biden had a solid debate, too, and he avoided making the sort of mistake(s) that could’ve conceivably caused some voters to question their support for him.
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MICAH COHEN10:06 PM
It’s pretty amazing that the first two-person debate of the 2020 primary — winnowed from a field of 20-plus — felt in so many ways inconsequential. And I think it largely will be — Biden’s grip on the race just seems too tight.
But my one note of caution would be that the fact that this was the first two-person debate maybe introduces some extra potential power? IDK … maybe not. It’s sooooo hard to imagine this debate altering the trajectory of the race. At the same time, a lot of things have happened in politics — including in this race — that were hard to imagine.
538…
They all were “inconsequential “ in my opinion.
That is NOT what I would say for Mike Bloomberg….
His poor debate performances doomed his campaign…..
What did Bloomberg in was Joe Biden’s comeback.
His entire campaign was predicated on a Biden collapse.
When that didn’t happen it was over for Bloomberg.Had Biden collapsed Bloomberg would today be the alternative to Sanders.
The debates had nothing to do with it.
Trump said the debate was “very boring”.
Two public officials discussing how best to utilize science and health professionals to minimize the toll of a worldwide pandemic.
Sorry it’s not a cliffhanger from The Apprentice you friggin’ nitwit!
Make the entire Republican Party pay for this malpractice!
I’ll take boring over this chaos any day.
Joe looked great last night.
Cue the Hunter Biden hearings.
I can’t imagine who would give half a shit about Hunter Biden and the Ukraine now, but I also can’t imagine idiots who still think this pandemic is all the fault of “the media”.
If the GOPer’s go for Hunter?
Bloomberg’s people should thru with their threat to publicly go after Trump’s kids…
Yeah and putative Trumpist presidential candidate ,Sen Tom Cotton(In The Cult-Ark.) Tweeted ,in true Trump fashion, that when this is all over we will “hold accountable” those who inflicted this on the world?
What in the Hell is that all about?
If Cotton has some proof (beyond a typical mindless Right wing rage) about who needs to be held “accountable?” Im sure we would all be interested .
Until then, this seems like nothing more that an attempt to stir up the Cult who,according to recent polling, still believes this is no big deal.
Mitch McConnell has quietly asked conservative judges considering retirement to do so now while the GOP controls the Senate and White House.
In related news more polls show Mark Kelly leading by 6-8 points in Arizona over Martha McSally and Biden leading Trump there as well.