Democratic Debate Dec. 19,2015

I still do not understand why the question of unions has not emerged at any of the debates.  Be that as it may, and I mainly blame the moderators for not raising this question, only Bernie Sanders has spoken out about the importance of building the trade union movement in restoring some level of income equality. In any case, the Democrats projected a measure of hope for the future, unlike the Republicans who, catering to fear and ignorance, want to cut spending for everything but building up the military.

I still see the major differences between Sanders and Clinton in Sanders advocating a single-payer healthcare system and tuition-free state colleges.  Clinton (apparently) wants to build on Obamacare and keep college tuition, though with some vague suggestions of how to do it without student debt.  I do think that Sanders needs to come up with a very detailed plan about how to finance the single-payer system.  Huge profits are currently going to health insurance companies, as employers pay as much as $15,000 a year to insure their employees while the insurance companies, in a clear conflict of interest, avoid paying claims whenever they can get away with it.  I do think the money going to insurance companies, along with the tax on speculation advocated by Sanders, would effectively finance a single-payer system.  Clinton has not stated clearly why she is opposed to a single-payer system (if she is, in fact) though it is clear that donations she receives from drug companies are a factor.

Sanders and O'Malley also disagree with Clinton about tactics in the Middle East; they both believe that the toppling of dictators has produced unintended consequences and contributed to the rise of Islamic terrorists.  There has been something of an assumption that once dictators are removed there will be a happy democracy voted in.  This has not been generally the case.  As Sanders said, "Clinton is happy to get ride of Qadaffi without worrying enough about what comes next."   Sanders voted against the Iraq war, which he sees as contributing to chaos in the Middle East.

As part of his single-payer healthcare plan Sanders want to treat drug offenders, not incarcerate them; as he says, "addiction is not a criminal act."  He also wants to considerably extend mental health assistance, which is mostly absent from insurance plans.  My take on this debate is that Sanders has specific ideas to improve education and healthcare and to put the brakes on the increasing inequality while Clinton speaks mostly in generalities and of allowing everyone to live up to "their God-given potential."

Republican Debate: Dec. 15, 2015

Ho Hum.  This time the potential candidates tried to outdo themselves and each other with warmongering and saber-rattling.  Ted Cruz wants to carpet-bomb in Syria and earlier said he wants to bomb ISIS "back to the Stone Age,"  an expression used by Curtis Lemay when he was George Wallace's running mate, referring to the Vietnam war.  Donald Trump went the furthest, saying he would target the families of terrorists, under the questionable theory that terrorists may not care about their own lives but do care about their families.  Everyone seems to have forgotten about Vietnam and even Iraq in their ideas about a Pax Americana.  Carly Fiorina wants to listen to the advice of the generals who have shown time and time again their inability to understand the wars we fight.  Of all the candidates only Rick Santorum was willing to make an attempt to understand ISIS and what it is doing.  I suspect that this is, to some extent, because his own theology is so conservative and misogynistic but he did at least make something of an attempt to put the situation into context, a context that goes back to the French and English imperialist division of the Middle East after World War I.

All the candidates want to return to a mythical time when the United States ran the world and vanquished all its enemies.  When Chris Christie mentioned the shutdown of the Los Angeles school system he talked about the safety of  all "the mothers taking their kids to school and all the fathers going off to work" as though this were still the 50's!  The candidates want to build up the military (though they all said they would not reinstitute the draft, probably because 18- year-olds vote now) and at the same time cut taxes and balance the budget; only Rand Paul pointed out the contradiction there.  Everyone wants to "secure the border" and only Rubio would consider a path to citizenship for illegal immigrants, though he said that was far in the future after many other things were dealt with. The candidates seem to have made an agreement that when they mention how ineffective they think Obama is that his name should always be coupled with Hillary Clinton's, guilt by association. And each candidate had some sort of slogan they repeated, from Fiorina's "take America back" (it's unclear what that means) to Chris Christie's "I was a federal prosecutor," i.e., mine is bigger than yours.