Thoughts on Watching The Democratic Debate With NYU Students

After watching the second of the late July debate with a bunch of Trump supporting Libertarians on the Lower East Side, I watched tonight's debate with Democrats in The Village most of whom were from nearby NYU.

Because of the preponderance of NYU students I could not hear most of the debate although it did get better during the last hour or so. They were there to drink and hang around with friends. That's fine, but it isn't conducive for choosing a candidate. With that being said, I think they've already decided. Elizabeth Warren received the loudest pop of the night while Joe Biden was lustily booed. They cheered Julian Castro when he scolded Biden for saying he couldn't remember what he said two minutes ago. It's safe to say that if Biden is the nominee these folks aren't voting.

Aside from Castro, the other candidates weren't as aggressive in going after Biden as they did in July. I think they recognize doing that doesn't help them. Did anybody help themselves tonight? Amy Klobuchar turned in her best performance and lives to fight another day. Beto O'Rourke was helped by being in his home state and seems to have refound his voice with gun control in the wake of El Paso. Cory Booker, Pete Buttigieg met expectations, but so did Warren and Bernie Sanders. Andrew Yang was part motivational speaker, part game show host with his offer of Democracy Dollars. Kamala Harris was more relaxed. Harris was probably relieved she didn't have to face Tulsi Gabbard again.

As for Biden, it was his best debate performance. He stuck to his guns. Although when asked why he didn't support reparations instead of talking about teacher pay he should have said why the first black President didn't support reparations.

In the grand scheme of things though what they said really didn't matter. A New York Times reporter approached me and asked what I thought of the debate. I replied, "They spoke a lot, but they really didn't have much to say."

The candidates will have ample opportunity to say even less on October 15th & 16th at a yet to be named location in Ohio. Unlike tonight, the next debate will have at least 11 candidates as billionaire Tom Steyer has qualified for the debate. I will probably skip those debates as both the ALCS and NLCS will be underway. It also might explain why no network has agreed to cover those debates as of yet.