By Kathy Wray Coleman, editor-in-chief at Clevelandurbannews.com and Kathywraycolemanonlinenewsblog.com. Tel: (216) 659-0473. Email: editor@clevelandurbannews.com, Ohio's most read digital Black newspaper and Black blog. Coleman is an experienced Black political reporter who covered the 2008 presidential election for the Call and Post Newspaper in Cleveland, Ohio and the presidential elections in 2012 and 2016 As to the one-on-one interview by Coleman with Obama CLICK HERE TO READ THE ENTIRE ARTICLE AT CLEVELAND URBAN NEWS.COM, OHIO'S LEADER IN BLACK DIGITAL NEWS.
CLEVELANDURBNNEWS.COM-DETROIT, Michigan- Tamir Rice, the 12-year-old Cleveland Black boy gunned down by a White Cleveland cop, and Eric Garner, a Black man strangled to death by police officers in Staten Island, New York, were center stage as race and gender were highlighted during Night 2 of the second Democratic presidential debate Wednesday night in Detroit, Michigan, the presence of Blacks and women presidential candidates on stage and a Black CNN moderator in Don Lemon making a difference on what issues became paramount.
A battleground state, President Donald Trump won Michigan in 2016 and is struggling to keep it a red state for 2020.
Among Wednesday's candidates were former vice president Joe Biden, the front-runner, U.S. Sens Kamala Harris, Michael Bennett, and Kirsten Gillibrand, New York Mayor Bill de Blasio, former HUD secretary Julian Castro, and Rep. Tulsi Gabbard of Hawaii.
Sponsored both nights by CNN and moderated by Lemon, Dana Bash and Jake Trapper , Night 1, held on Tuesday and also in Detroit, was also a panel of 10 Democratic candidates, including U.S. Sens. Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren, and Ohio Congressman Tim Ryan.
Black Lives Matter and the MeToo Movement got attention, the Black and female vote critical to the Democrats winning the White House in 2020.
Biden said he supports rehabilitation for drug abuse and not prison, and more resources for reentry into society.
"In prison they should be learning to read and write and not just to sit there and learn how to be better criminals," said Biden.
Booker blamed the legal system for mass incarceration.
"We have treated issues of race and poverty, mental health and addiction with locking people up and not lifting people up," said Booker, a Newark mayor turned U.S. senator.
Gilibrand said the New York cop who put Garner in a choke hold and killed him"should be fired," the justice department refusing to bring charges in the celebrated excessive force case. And she told Biden that his previous stance against women working outside of the home was ludicrous, Biden saying his record on women's issues speaks for itself and that "I wrote the Violence Against Women Act."
Sen. Harris, whose support among Black voters has grown since her performance in the first debate, said that she met with Garner's mother and that President Trump has allowed the U.S. Department of Justice to "shut down consent decrees, to stop pattern and practice investigations."
She said that the Trump administration overrode a decision by the Civil Rights division of the department of justice to level charges in the Eric Garner case.
Aside from efforts to unseat President Trump, other issues common to the debates both nights were climate change, health care, medicare-for-all proposals, education, foreign policy, immigration reform, and the economy, Night 2 focusing more so on gender discrimination and unequal pay for women, the public policy issues on women parity pushed by Bash as a female moderator, and the three women on stage, Harris, Rep. Gabbard and Sen. Giliibrand.
The Trans-Pacific Partnership was touched upon during the debates both nights, and so was the Iran Nuclear Deal, the Obama administration supporting the trade deal and nuclear arms agreement, and Trump and his administration against the measures.
Biden, 76, did better in this second debate, pundits said, effectively addressing climate change and the economy, and admitting his policies have changed over the decades relative to criminal justice reform, desegregation, and immigration, the former longtime senator and vice president refusing, though pressed by Mayor de Blasio, to criticize former president Barack Obama on deportation rates of immigrants under his tenure.
While Obama, the nation's first Black president, may have deported more migrants coming in as president than Trump, he pushed for the Dream Act and comprehensive immigration form, Biden said.
A Latino and former San Antonio mayor, Castro, who was secretary of HUD with the Obama administration, wants to decriminalize border crossing, and so does Harris, Sens Sanders and Warren taking the same position in Tuesday's Democratic presidential debate.
Biden is not yet a polished debater, and may never be, the former vice president missing key opportunities to make his points.
But he defended his record, and he showed he can fight back against President Trump, which is what Democratic insiders want most in a Democratic nominee
Harris clobbered Biden during the first debate last month in Miami, Florida, raising busing and his ties while in the Senate to segregationists, Biden, with Gabbard's help, calling out her prosecutorial record while a California Attorney general and saying she vacillates on the death penalty.
Likewise, Sen. Booker said Biden's vote as a senator on the 1994 crime bill that disenfranchises the Black community and other public policies around criminal justice reform has been a big problem, Biden saying Booker backed stop and frisk policies while mayor and was an ally to former New York mayor Rudi Gulliani, a Republican, and a Trump operative with a dismal record of police reforms in the nation's largest city.
Everybody has a past when you are in a position of power, said Booker, emphasizing the crime bill that was pushed by Biden when he was a senator, one of the most destructive policy matters impacting the Black community in the 20th century, a federal law that arbitrarily escalated criminal penalties and strengthened disparities between White and Blacks in the legal system, the Supreme Court ultimately deeming disparities in sentencing between crack and powder cocaine unconstitutional.
Biden said the 1994 crime bill was supported by many congressional Democrats at the time in response to elevated crime and drug problems in the country, and that it later proved to be bad policy. And he said he does not support decriminalizing the border.
The race controversy, heightened following President Trump's ongoing attacks on congress persons of color and Civil Rights leader the Rev Al Sharpton, took on reparations, Jim Crow and Flint's water crisis Tuesday night, Wednesday's debate addressing excessive force, and criminal justice reform in that respect.
On the issue of federally mandated busing that Biden opposes, Harris said busing helped to desegregate the nation's public schools and had the segregationists that Biden fraternized with while serving in the Senate had their way "I would not not be a member of the United States Senate, Corey Booker would not be a member of the United States Senate and Barack Obama would not have been able to nominate him to the title he now holds," referencing Biden's role as vice president under Obama.
The candidates traded barbs on their healthcare, immigration and criminal justice reform plans, the first 10 minutes of the two and a half hour debate an exchange between Biden and Harris on their proposals for health care, Harris, unlike Biden, whose health care proposal is similar to Obamacare, advocating for medicare-for-all with a public option
Harris said Biden's universal health care plan leaves out 10 million Americans.
Biden said her's is too expensive.
Harris struggled on health care, pundits said, and Rep. Gabbard, or team Biden, was effective in calling her to task as California's top prosecutor on embracing state and federal policies deemed detrimental to the Black community, Harris arguing that she was at the forefront of criminal justice reform in California and will carry that same enthusiasm to the White House if elected president.
Clevelandurbannews.com and Kathywraycolemanonlinenewsblog.com,Ohio's most read digital Black newspaper and Black blog. Tel: (216) 659-0473. Email: editor@clevelandurbannews.com. CLICK HERE TO READ THE ENTIRE ARTICLE AT CLEVELAND URBAN NEWS.COM, OHIO'S LEADER IN BLACK DIGITAL NEWS.
