I’ve made no secret of the fact I am not a fan of Tulsi Gabbard. Last night, in the Democratic debate in Atlanta, Georgia, she reminded me once again how easy it is to dupe people with bold statements that are unattached to reality. Last night, though, Tulsi might have taken the cake when she decided to go into a full-throated, sometimes deranged attack against fellow candidates. When candidates who have zero shot at the nomination get to take the stage, they aren’t there to win delegates. They are there to do one of three things: advance an issue or policy, audition for a position in a potential Democratic administration or finally to make themselves a voice the media wants to put on TV.
Too many of Rep. Gabbard’s comments were not about a reasonable debate, they were about attacks aimed at other candidates sometimes without a basis in reality, and sometimes based in projection and assumptions more than facts.
This is a problem in the way we handle I can get on stage and say buzzword phrases with almost no meaning or real plan behind them — because I don’t bother to come up with them — and can get a few people excited.
I oppose the global cabal in favor of war, the global military-industrial complex, the shadow men who hunt aliens. I will work to end cold wars and start investing in home.
With impeachment in the background, with concerns over the implications of an unstable American foreign policy, the decision to attack other candidates based on hypothetical “what they would do” is truly reprehensible. Rep. Gabbard sought to refer to other candidates in ad-hominem attacks, label their foreign policy without having read or talked to any of them, and to make bold assertions without a ton of actual, you know, facts.
This is a troubling standard regarding the purpose of the Democratic debate. Rep. Gabbard used historical comparisons to make implications about the field — without laying out the facts.
While pointing out US leadership who met with Russian leadership, Gabbard leaves out major facts — like the fact that in those cases, they were passed through the US State Department, advisors were involved, and everyone was informed. This is in stark contrast to her “seat of the pants” diplomacy that far more mirrors Trump than a person with an actual reasonable take on foreign policy.
The Guardian lays it all out:
Democrats were silent on Thursday as Tulsi Gabbard, one of the party’s sitting lawmakers in Congress, announced that she had met with Bashar al-Assad during a trip to war-torn Syria and dismissed his entire opposition as “terrorists”.
Gabbard, a Democratic congresswoman from Hawaii, disclosed her meeting with the Syrian president on Wednesday, during what her office called a “fact-finding” mission in the region.
…
Pelosi told reporters on Wednesday that she had no knowledge of Gabbard’s unannounced trip, which drew scrutiny over who arranged and paid for the travel.
“She hasn’t reported or brought anything to our office as far as I know,” Pelosi said at a press conference held before Gabbard’s revelation about her meeting with Assad.
These are key points. Rep. Gabbard decided to make pronouncements as to status as a terrorist or not by her own viewpoint, backing a dictator. She did so without getting the kind of advance work that is required to make these meetings successful. In her references to past successes, she brings up Kennedy’s 1961 Summit — but JFK himself told journalists at the time he wished he had been better prepared.
From Politico
“I never met a man like this,” Kennedy told Hugh Sidey, Time magazine’s White House correspondent. “[I] talked about how a nuclear exchange would kill 70 million people in 10 minutes, and he just looked at me as if to say, ‘So what?’”
“He just beat the hell out of me,” Kennedy told James "Scotty" Reston of The New York Times. “It was the worst thing in my life. He savaged me.”
The summit was viewed as a failure at the time. This is with available prep work and planning.
Rep. Gabbard’s former practices aren’t reflective of good governance. They are, however, reflective of a candidate who shares far too much in alignment with Donald J. Trump.
Maybe that’s why she didn’t join the Democratic caucus in denouncing Steve Bannon.
There is value in stirring up fear and conspiracies. You can get allies. When you vote with Democratic efforts a fair amount of the time, you can get cover.
If your goal in debates, however, is to build an audition tape for TV, well, there are far easier ways to do that.