In the weeds....

we need a little more light

     After four nights of "debates" some thoughts emerge.

• By next summer when the Trump campaign and the Democrat candidate's organization meet to discuss a debate format they should agree to avoid inviting any networks to the planning discussions.

      The Fox "Town Halls," the MSNBC Nights of Ten and the CNN Debate are not working nor are they helpful. The Fox sessions have been the most revealing. The CNN outing was  particularly goofy.

      The CNN questioners came off as more interested in provoking confrontation and argument rather than exploring issues and leadership qualities. The questions were contrived and off the point. They may think setting up "battles" and provoking challenges will hold audience, but they do little of value. And sadly most of the candidates took the bait. We are a culture showing signs of intellectual decline. 

       

• Most of the questions were framed about issues that exceed Presidential mandate or control. 
• Health care for example is the province of the legislative branch. A President may help shape his or her party's position, but the House and the Senate write the law and the President approves or not. LBJ exercised some influence over Medicare but he was a powerful legislative force, the likes of which no longer exist. Obamacare was the work of the House and Senate. Getting into minutia is meaningless, but it gives the candidates a chance to argue with each other.
• Ditto immigration policy. A President's view is not unimportant, but any meaningful immigration reform will come from Capitol Hill. Does the candidate have an idea about how to fix the problem? Hear it and move on, the specifics, the details will be something other than what any of the candidates say.
• US voters like to probe and poke Presidential candidates, but often a President's major action is in reaction, to legislation more more likely to events at home and abroad. It's good to know the measure of a candidate's mettle, but there's been more peripheral and contrived controversy in what we've seen so far. It's resembled a cattle call.

the democrat road show

    The Democrats have shown they have a wide range of candidate philosophy, from moderate right to progressive.

     Who speaks to and for voting constituencies that will control the election outcome? The long political season will help to shake it out.  

       

    Joe Biden is the target now. With his decades of service his long record is being picked apart by Harris, Gillibrand  Booker, De Blasio, and others. He has what they don't, poll numbers. As the Front runner he's a target, but that's lame politics and dangerous. 
     What debaters say now could make it a challenge to take back and/or support the eventual candidate. Taking each other apart is off target, off message, damaging, and not helpful. It is a silly sport.
       All of the Demos want improvement in the health care system and want to stop Trump's destruction of what is left of the Affordable Care Act. They argue about how to do it. A legislative process will deliver the specifics, but viewers are being given a chance to see the wide range of Democratic thinking and that maybe helpful, to a point. 
      Elizabeth Warren keeps telling us she has a plan. They all should and it would be more helpful to hear those plans than the kind of wonky food fight we've seen so far. More intelligent and less confrontationally contrived questions would help.
     

a long way up

    I heard a long time Washington insider, a veteran of Capitol Hill, campaigns and the media say if there was truly a leader of the Democrat Party, she or he would get all of the candidates in the same room and remind them the person to defeat is Donald Trump and the message should be to the public, not to play act in some silly charade game like the TV debates have been.

     Two long shots have sounded wise and for the most part stayed out of the tit for tat food fight.  Tulsi Gabbard and Pete Buttigieg have appeared to be thoughtful and less combative, though Gabbard hit Harris hard on Health Care.

Interestingly, they are both military veterans and have been tested by more than political bull shit. 

    

     If I were advising a candidate I'd tell them their core audience should be working women with children and the overlay would be 18 to 45 year old working people. The outer core of voter would be women 45 plus. 

     Those groups are both urban and rural.  I may be entirely wrong. I've been covering politics since 1964 and my hunches have been both spot on and dead wrong. My gut tells me women voters are the jackpot in 2020. And, according to the Sevareid rule, I reserve the right to change my mind. 

     See you down the trail. 

WHO HAS AN EYE ON WHOM?

FACING IT

      A chilling seasonal premise-a year to the Presidential election.

      Maybe sleeping gas or sleeping pills are in order, for the candidates or perhaps, mercifully, for the rest of us.  

      These self named debates are a joke. At its inception, it is an attempt by networks to instigate a food fight. The more friction and raised voices, they assume, the better the ratings. Maybe I'll take an early vote and turn them off, until someone hosts a real debate that goes beyond verbal japes and well rehearsed sound bites. There's a lot of substance to explore. Sad it is not being done. It should be. Presidential elections are for adults.

I SEE YOU

   A couple of interlopers, looking at goodies in the garden but from the wrong side of the fence.

Got my eye on this…

   …should be in a salad, soon!

BIG SOUND

   7:30 AM on the tennis court, heard something for the first time there-the surf. The courts are a long way from the beach, but the big blue was pounding with such vigor, the roar carried for miles.  

    "You'd think a freeway was nearby," quipped one of the players.

big noise at low tide

  
    Parting thought on the "debates." They were good debates and insightful, when the League of Women Voters organized and sponsored them. They were designed to illuminate. These recent exercises are more about entertainment and gotcha…would like to see the political media of '60-80's back on the scene. Substance mattered. 

    See you down the trail.

CURRENTS OF THOUGHT

OPEN QUESTIONS

     ARE THE DEBATES WRONG?

     These may not be original musings, but they are relevant.  Anything that gets the candidates thinking and talking in front of a live format is revealing and a lot better than packaged and paid advertising.  But--  I wonder if we didn't cross a Rubicon when JFK and Dick Nixon opened the era of television campaigning and debates.  Charisma became a factor in Presidential Campaigns. Looks, style, manner and "appeal" became "values" by which Americans rate and choose their chief executive. Though it is more sinister than that.

     I know 2 or 3 men, who have played on the national and international stage and who were involved in the presidential sweepstakes who could have made good presidents, but they lacked something- media gloss and sizzle. Probably brighter and deeper thinkers than most of their peers, their intellect and experience got trumped by media appeal.

    Jim Lehrer tried to open a format to allow Obama and Romney to present and counter with some depth, but still the rigidity of debate forces the contestants, and we viewers, into an artificial frame of scoring points by attack,  defense, or presenting a zinger. The goal is to beat the opponent, as if that determines how a man or woman would serve.

     Perhaps the evaluation and revelatory outcome helps us to better understand and to decide, but it all seems like it is spawned from the same mind set of a Super Bowl, or World Series-winner take all.

     The Presidency demands more than presentation or debate skills.  Perhaps helpful in some way, it is still an example of the disconnect between the business, and now industry, of elections and the real job of governance.

    We can count on the media yak hacks to be pumped up

on scoring the next rounds, as though it means something.

     THE SEASON HAS OPENED

   Today delivers the first measurable rain of Central California's "rain season." 

    After an extraordinary year in 2010-2011, last year was under average, so we celebrate each drop.  Though, this is a dicey time of year.  Grape growers and vintners are someplace along in harvest and too much rain at the wrong time is bad news.  Stay tuned for an update from Wine Country where

EVERY DAY IS NOT ROMANTIC

     We may romanticize the life of a winemaker, but do so

at the cost of overlooking how hard is the work.  Case in 

point-during harvest there is an endless list of things to do.

One item is just keeping the equipment clean.  Here we see

premier wine maker John Munch and a colleague doing just that. 

A PARTING THOUGHT

    I had a relative who used the old bromide "There's a place in hell for people like that!"  I don't want to open a theological debate or a discussion about judgement, BUT as I read about the Taliban attack on a teen female who had been an advocate for full educational rights for girls, that old saw came back to mind.  Along with words like, idiots, cowards, ignorant, stone age ass holes and evil.

    Truth is, full equality for women in Islamic nations could do more to remove those evil mullahs and imams and their influence of ignorant fundamentalism than anything else.  Oh, a lake of burning sulfur comes to mind as well!

     Really hard to bring yourself to forgive someone like that isn't it? A struggle!

    See you down the trail.