Re: 2020 Democratic Challengers Vi: The Undiscovered Country
With my town of Westerville, OH hosting the next Democratic debate, the Mrs. and I took advantage of an opportunity to attend the Ohio Democratic Party State Dinner ($250 got you a seat on the floor for the rubber chicken dinner while $20 got you a seat in the bleachers with all the free popcorn you could eat). Five candidates gave their stump speech: Mayor Pete, Amy Klobuchar, fellow BG Falcon alum Tim Ryan, Tom Steyer, and Andrew Yang. Julian Castro was supposed to attend but his plane was late. My wife is a Mayor Pete supporter and he was impressive, but I was most impressed with Yang and Ryan. Klobuchar sounded like she was on CSPAN and the content wasn't any more spectacular. Steyer was all over the place. Here's what resonated with me about Ryan and Yang:
Ryan - "Yeah, I support all the standard stuff about healthcare, yadda, yadda, but all that's just symptoms of the problem. You want to make a difference? Fight for a $30/hr wage, not $15. That will solve all these other symptoms." I like that, but he was a tad lacking in details about how to pull that off. What stuck me was that if any of the other candidates not in the room are pushing this, it's not resonating with me.
Yang - "You think manufacturing job loss is a problem? Wait 'til further technological disruptions like driverless trucks put 3.5 million truck drivers out of work along with the choke-n-pukes that support them. Amazon collects billions of revenue from Ohio that used to go to local business who paid taxes. And Amazon isn't paying local taxes (or sponsoring your kids soccer team). Answer -- pay everyone $1k/month." Not sure I buy the solution; I'd heard this in various forms prior but it was pretty cool hearing it live and in context. The other interesting thing he said is that Trump correctly identified the problem but his solutions are all wrong (build a wall, etc.).
Quote of the evening was from Yang: "The exact opposite of Donald Trump is an Asian guy who loves math." One other observation was the limited amount of Trump bashing. With a ballroom full of believers everyone on stage apparently assumes the obvious.
I wasn't sure what to expect going in but was very glad we went. Enjoyed the evening and the popcorn.