Last night I watched the Democratic Debate.  I’ll include my own opinions later, but to start, I have part of an excellent analysis and the complete video clip, so you can watch it, if you haven’t already, judge for yourselves.  Vote Blue No Matter Who!

Elizabeth Warren 7.5/10

Gail Collins (9/10) — Great at bringing things back to the corruption issue and talking about being a public school teacher.

Ross Douthat (6/10) — Another solid performance overall, but she lost the opening exchange on health care and disappeared entirely for the first hour.

Maureen Dowd (6/10) — More free stuff and Aunt Bee! Warren’s expertise is appealing in the age of Trump, though, like President Obama, she tends to lecture.

Michelle Goldberg (7/10) — She’s so good at this, but still hasn’t figured out how to address the anxieties a lot of people have about Medicare for All. And it was disappointing that she didn’t get to engage more with Biden, especially on issues like the 2005 bankruptcy bill.

David Leonhardt (8/10) — No Democratic politician today, on that stage or not, is better at communicating economic ideas. She makes them personal and political. Still she’s vulnerable on Medicare for All.

Miriam Pawel (9/10) — Consistently strong across a range of issues, unruffled by Biden’s attacks on health care, she got stronger as the debate went on — with points for fortitude and versatility.

Melanye Price (9/10) — She feels more emotionally authentic and accessible than any other candidate. She gets to the heart of things about educational costs and what it feels like to claw for opportunities when the odds seem stacked against you. While most of the candidates tonight seemed battle weary, she came off as roaring to fight more.

Mimi Swartz (7/10) — She did fine, and maybe that’s all she had to do.

Pete Wehner (5/10) — She was highly evasive on her health care plan and overall she was completely forgettable. Invoking Jay Inslee as a trailblazer mean you’ve by definition had a subpar night. After several good debate performances, she lost altitude in Houston.

Will Wilkinson (8/10) — She excelled in her allotment with a typical blend of folksy charm, masterful lucidity and passionate corporation bashing.

Tanzina Vega (8/10) — Warren may have a plan for everything but she continued to skirt the question about how much her health care plan would raise taxes on American families. But she is consistent, and at a certain point maybe Democratic voters will also agree that she “knows what’s broken” and “how to fix it.”

Inserted from <NY Times>

In their graphic (interactive there), the further to the right the candidate is The better they did.  So according to these journalists, on average,  Warren won going away, Harris was second, Booker was third, Buttikieg was fourth, O’Rourke was fifth, Biden was sixth, Sanders was 7th, all tightly spaced, Klobuchar was 8th, Castro was 9th and Yang was a joke.  I shared only the commentary on Warren.  Click through for the other nine candidates and to play with the interactive article.

I would have put Beto in third and Sanders in fourth.

Here is the full debate. It’s 2 hrs. 31 min. long.

Here is my final thought.  I think Liz needs to alter her interpretation of Medicare for All, because she will need the support of labor and less informed voters in November. Union members who have negotiated Cadillac health plans will freak, if those plans are threatened.  In addition, far too many voters are so poorly informed that they will vote against their self-interest out of fear.  I think that Liz should give people the option to opt out, if they want to keep their private plans.  Once they see how much better off people on the single-payer plan are, they will opt-in soon enough.

RESIST!!