2nd DEM Debate Thread: July 30 & 31, Detroit (MI), CNN

[GM Team Member and Deputy PPT WB]

how many of the candidates reached the polling and donor quotas so far, and who is close

21 have reached either of those. The 21st is Mike Gravel. His campaign is fighting tooth and nail to try and get him in (since the DNC says the max is 20)

[GM Team Member and Deputy PPT WB]

WB rankings for night 2

Biggest winners:
Booker: Did a good job attacking Biden. Not much else other than that.
Gabbard: Did decent, and considering that mostly everyone sucked in this debate that's enough to put her here.
Yang: Was much more able to articulate his plans, but he did have a kinda messy answer when he basically said "just evacuate the coasts we can't do anything"

Biggest "meh"s:
Biden: Did way better than last time, but still has serious foot-in-mouth issues.
Castro: Did good, although he could have definitely done better.
de Blasio: He was very mediocre.

Biggest losers:
Gillibrand: She tried so hard to get a good attack in against Biden but managed to fail. She isn't going to make it past this month imo.
Harris: She did a bit worse than I expected her to. Nothing absolutely debilitating, but she certainly unperformed.
Bennet: Still sounded medicated. Next.
Inslee: Just wasn't able to articulate his ideas well.

[GM Team Member and Deputy PPT WB]

Yang: Was much more able to articulate his plans, but he did have a kinda messy answer when he basically said "just evacuate the coasts we can't do anything"

When did he say that? I never heard him say anything like that. Do you have a clip?

However, in relations to the climate crisis debate, he did say that we need to lift higher, to lift everyone up with a universal basic income. He didn't say it in this debate, but he's said it dozens of times earlier in his campaign that poor people can't manage to worry about climate change as long as they're constantly distressed and in fear of financial ruin and personal bankruptcy. Thus in order for Americans to start really caring about fighting climate change and making it a huge grass roots movement, even on the Republican side of the isle, lifting people up to and into the middle class is absolutely crucial in order to hit that groundswell of support which it will need in order to change policies on the local, regional, state and federal level.

YANG: The important number in Vice President Biden's remarks just now is that he United States was only 15 percent of global emissions. We like to act as if we're 100 percent, but the truth is even if we were to curb our emissions dramatically, the earth is still going to get warmer.

And we can see it around it us this summer. The last four years have been the four warmest years in recorded history. This is going to be a tough truth, but we are too late. We are 10 years too late. We need to do everything we can to start moving the climate in the right direction, but we also need to start moving our people to higher ground