With all the rancor in politics these days, the CNN/New York Times Democratic debate on Tuesday night delivered a rare moment of comity: Twelve Democrats agreed, apparently without compensation, to appear in a Donald Trump ad.
Other points on which the Democrats came together in peace and harmony:
-- Trump should be impeached.
-- Abortion is great.
-- Obamacare sucks.
At least we’re all finally agreed on Obamacare!
Obamacare has given us a system -- to quote Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont -- “which is dysfunctional, which is cruel, 87 million uninsured, 30,000 people dying every single year, 500,000 people going bankrupt for one reason, they came down with cancer.”
None of the Democrats disagreed with Sanders’ description of health care in American today, although they have slightly different solutions.
I don’t mean to be rude, but I thought Obamacare was supposed to fix health care.
Millions of us were thrown off our health insurance plans by Obamacare, and now I find out that it didn’t even make things better for anyone else. The government intervenes, everything goes to hell, then Democrats cite the hell they created to demand another massive government intervention.
The motto of all socialist schemes should be: “This time, it will be different.”
The Democrats' universal answer to the drug problem -- which is actually a “Mexico Is on Our Border” problem -- is to say they’d go after the pharmaceutical companies and then, in the next breath, demand that we legalize drugs.
In the midst of their crusading anger at the pharmaceutical companies, not one Democrat mentioned Purdue Pharma. You know -- the primary culprit in the prescription drug epidemic, at least according to dozens of state attorneys general and hundreds of private lawsuits accusing the company of aggressively marketing OxyContin and hiding its addictive nature.
It would be like vowing to go after “middle-aged men” to stop underage sex trafficking on Orgy Island -- but not mentioning Jeffrey Epstein.
The Democrats are furious with pharmaceutical companies, “wealthy corporations” (Sen. Elizabeth Warren’s phrase) and “the rich” (any guy with an alarm clock). But not with a specific multibillion-dollar company that makes OxyContin, and the kazillionaire family that owns it, the Sacklers.
Speaking of which, last year, Beverly Sackler, the recently deceased matriarch of the company, made political contributions to both Sen. Warren, D-Mass., and Sen. Cory Booker, D-N.J.
Some poor medical researcher working to find a cure for cancer will have to pay -- but the Sacklers get off scot-free.
Another big policy disagreement concerned guns, specifically: Do we allow people to turn in their guns voluntarily or should the government confiscate them?
As with liberals’ comical inability to tell an AK-47 from a semiautomatic, the gun facts flying around Tuesday night were not always well-researched. Beto O’Rourke said, “This is a country that loses 40,000 of our fellow Americans every year to gun violence.”
Wow. Not even close. According to the CDC, the number was less than 15,000 in 2017.
To liven things up, at one point, a smug Pete Buttigieg snapped at O’Rourke, “And I don't need lessons from you on courage, political or personal.” This was in response to remarks not at all about Buttigieg’s courage. That’s gonna get old, fast.
Vice President Joe Biden bragged that he was “the only one on this stage who has taken on the NRA and beat them, and beat them twice. We were able to get assault weapons off the streets ...”
Yes, and in direct response to that assault weapons ban opposed by the NRA, Republicans swept Congress in the very next election, winning control of the House for the first time in nearly half a century.
If you weren’t alive that glorious autumn evening in 1994, it was better than the November 2016 election. All night, there was breaking news, as one powerhouse Democrat after another lost his seat to a Republican. Every 15 minutes the GOP would set some new, jaw-dropping record. Thomas Foley, D-Wash., became the first speaker of the House to lose his election in 134 years. Republicans marched through the South like William Tecumseh Sherman, finishing off the “southern Democrats.” Tennessee went all red, with Republicans replacing the Democratic governor and two Democratic senators -- including the Senate seat previously held by Vice President Al Gore. Not one Republican incumbent lost his seat.
Please, Joe, promise to “beat” the NRA again!
BUTTIGIEG: “No, this is really important, OK? On guns, we are this close to an assault weapons ban.”
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