Following the Tuesday evening debate, Google quickly assured us of the big national winner—Marianne Williamson. Williamson was “the most searched for candidate” following her warnings about “dark psychic forces” threatening the country. On Wednesday night, that level of insight was repeated with claims that Tulsi Gabbard had emerged from obscurity to become the most Googled candidate. What Google doesn’t capture is just how many of these searches started with “WTF is ...”
If it was just this pointless—and easily hijacked—statistic that was bringing these candidates to the fore, it would be shruggable. But following each debate, CNN and other networks were eager to have these “winners” appear where they could repeat their attacks and get a good dose of swooning from pundits.
Of the two, Williamson is not only the most entertaining, with her Goop-worthy persona, but her stated positions are also pretty standard progressive: a Medicare for All health care plan, decriminalizing border crossings, raising the minimum wage to at least $15, and supporting the Green New Deal. But she has said some very stupid things about vaccines—and not just once. Even her “apology” for this position only included walking it back to “Public safety must be carefully balanced with the right of individuals to make their own decisions." Which sounds a lot like still being anti-vaccine. Mix that with her dark psychic spiritualist woo-woo-ism, and there’s a good reason to think that she’s pretty much an inexperienced con woman following the Trump-worn path to either the White House or bigger book contracts.
In contrast, Gabbard has a long history of positions that aren’t just dubious, but hateful. That included supporting Mike Pence-style gay conversion therapy and claiming that gay marriage was only supported by a handful of gay-agenda extremists. She not only voted against gay marriage, but she even campaigned against civil unions. Gabbard has since apologized for those positions, but she hasn’t backed away from her friendliness with chemical-warfare fan Bashar Assad. She also hasn’t apologized for being one of the few Democrats who hustled over to meet with Donald Trump after his election, praised him after a visit to Trump Tower, and refused to sign on to a letter opposing the appointment of Steve Bannon to an official position.
Gabbard is carrying a metric crap-ton of baggage. But you wouldn’t know that from the Wednesday night debate, where the format allowed her to hit while never taking a blow.
In the second round of debates, CNN discovered the beauty of dogpile politics: having 20 people onstage meant that there was always someone who was willing to take up Jake Tapper’s offer to say something bad about a leading candidate. On Wednesday night, that meant that Gabbard got to go after Kamala Harris on her actions as attorney general, using loaded phrases and selected statements to paint Harris as someone who was ready to throw pot-smokers behind bars for eternity and personally throw the execution switch for death row inmates after hiding evidence of their innocence.
There’s no doubt that Harris will face more kicks about her AG role during this campaign, and she certainly expected to receive some blows. But Gabbard knew she could square off with Harris in the certainty that no one, but no one, came into the Wednesday night debate thinking, “I need to prepare some talking points against Tulsi Gabbard.” And even if she had, CNN gave Harris little time to muster her thoughts before calling in more witnesses to bolster Gabbard’s attacks.
The Tuesday night debate featured Tapper regularly swinging John Delaney, Tim Ryan, and Steve Bullock against Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders. But the two leading progressive candidates mostly stayed on message, had each other’s backs, and put down these attacks with aplomb.
The Wednesday night debate in particular showed that the low bar for getting on the debate stage wasn’t doing anyone a favor. Far from it. What it really did was invite the candidates who barely climbed over the 1% line to go after those in the middle, even as those in the middle were looking to those at the top. And they could do it knowing that no one was prepared, or given the time, to fend them off.
Kamala Harris is a serious candidate, with serious positions, and a serious chance of becoming the Democratic nominee. Tulsi Gabbard is none of those things. But she can be a serious spoiler when third-tier candidates, such as Gabbard and Williamson, are treated as the real thing by networks that are more interested in punchlines than policy. What Gabbard was looking for on Wednesday wasn’t enough attention to become a serious candidate. She was looking to get 1% from Harris so she can climb onto the stage in the next round.
Let’s hope she doesn’t get it.
