All White Democratic presidential candidates debate reparations, race, Flint's water crisis, and more in Night 1 of the 2nd Democratic debate in Detroit, which follows Trump's fallout with Black Democratic congress persons, Rev Al Sharpton.....Long shot presidential candidate Marianne Williamson, also an author and activist, stood out during the CNN-sponsored debate and said congress should give Blacks reparations and their 40 acres and a mule and that the mistreatment of people of color and the Flint water crisis represent "the dark underbelly of American society, the racism, the bigotry"....Williamson said that President Trump is perpetuating "a dark psychic force of collectivized hatred" in the country....Night 2 is Wednesday night in Detroit and includes Joe Biden, Kamala Harris and Cory Booker.....By editor Kathy Wray Coleman of Clevelandurbannews.com and Kathywraycolemanonlinenewsblog.com, Ohio's most read digital Black newspaper and Black blog
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Sponsored and moderated both nights by CNN, front-runner former president Joe Biden and Sens Kamala Harris of California and Cory Booker of New Jersey, both Black, and the only Blacks in the race for president in 2020, are among the 10 debaters for Wednesday, Night 2 of the second Democratic debate.
The race controversy, no doubt, has been heightened following President Trump's ongoing attacks on congress persons of color and Civil Rights leader the Rev Al Sharpton, a former presidential candidate himself.
There were no surprises, Warren setting the tone for favorable discourse among Democrats on stage Tuesday night, coupled with the effectiveness of the CNN moderators, the nearly two hour and 45 min debate going smoothly with no real fire works in reach, Detroit an 83 percent Black and impoverished city of some 673,000 people and Michigan a swing state like neighboring Ohio, and Pennsylvania, the president in trouble in all three states, states he carried in 2016.
He is the first Republican president to win Michigan since George H.W. Bush.
Also center stage was reparations, and Black people, several of the candidates, all of them White, favoring reparations and giving soapbox speeches in response to questions by CNN moderator Don Lemon about the country's racial divide and the president's disdain for Blacks who disagree with him.
Sanders called the president a pathological liar and outright "racist," and Warren said Blacks are still disenfranchised, comments that follow Black apathy in voting, some four million Obama voters staying home when Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton lost her second bid for president to Trump in 2016, the former bid a loss by the former New York senator to Obama in the 2008 Democratic primary.
Former congressman Beto O'Rourke of Texas may have tackled the race issue the best on Tuesday, O'Rourke highlighting slavery during the 17th and 18th centuries that saw millions of Blacks uprooted, chained and transported to America, the reminisce of the vestiges of racial discrimination, a by-product of racism and segregation that still plagues the Black community to this day.
Warren and O'Rourke said they support the reparations bill pending in congress that would establish a commission to study reparations proposals for Blacks and to examine slavery and discrimination.
"I support reparations," said O'Rourke.
The other public policy issues debated on Tuesday, an array of them, ranged from increasing minimum wage to climate change, health care, education, foreign policy, immigration reform, gun control and the economy, Warren and Sanders holding up under scrutiny from the underdog candidates like former Maryland congressman John Delaney and defending their plans for medicare for all as reasonable and affordable, and workable in spite of the lack of a public option.
"It works in Canada," said Sanders of his proposal to revolutionize the nation's health care system with medicare-for-all via his signature universal health care legislation, and at no expense to the nation's poor and middle class, and others, he said.
O'Rourke and Montana Governor Steve Bullock both said they oppose medicare-for all plans and Bullock said its is impractical to decriminalize illegal border crossing, Warren saying immigrants should not be criminalized just for fleeing to America for a better life for themselves and their families.
South Bend Mayor Pete Buttigieg, 37, the youngest on stage Tuesday night and the only openly gay candidate, called for a ban on assault weapons.
Activist, author and spiritual adviser Marianne Williamson, who managed to qualify for two debates and has friends like Oprah and former clients such as Cher, stood out on Tuesday, the articulate Williams, 67, calling the Democrats to task for being lackadaisical on policy change around racism and reparations.
Williamson said Flint is an example of environmental injustice against Blacks and communities of color.
"We have an administration that has gutted the Clean Water Act," said Williamson in response to the water crisis in Flint, Michigan. "This is part of the dark underbelly of American society, the racism, the bigotry."
Williamson said that reparations are long overdue and that congress should give Blacks their "40 acres and a mule."
She said that Trump is perpetuating "a dark psychic force of collectivized hatred" in the country.
Congressman Ryan, a Youngstown area Democrat, told moderators that he is divided on tariff's on China that Trump supports, and he pushed for the protection of the teamsters, steel workers and manufacturing jobs in Ohio's rust belt country, GM last year closing its automotive plant in Lordstown, Ohio, which sits in Ryan's 13 congressional district and is a hot button topic in the race for president.
Immigration was front and center too, the candidates differing on whether undocumented immigrants should have access to free health care and whether crossing the border illegally should be decriminalized, Warren and Sanders supporting both and taking heat from the more moderate candidates, Warren also courting the Black vote by vowing to deliver millions of dollars for historically Black university's and colleges if elected president.
Free college tuition that would also include undocumented immigrants was debated too, the candidates differing on such stance with progressives like Sanders and Warren supporting the measure.
Going into Tuesday night's debate a Quinnipiac poll released July 29 on the Democratic nomination for president has Biden at 35 percent, Warren at 15 percent, and Harris and Sanders with 12 percent and 11 percent respectively, a drastic change in poll numbers since the Democratic debate last month in Miami, Florida that had Biden at 22 percent and in first place, followed by Harris, and then Sanders and Warren.
What a difference a month makes.
Since the Dems first debate last month, the President has been busy making more enemies.
He created a fury by demanding that U.S. Reps Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York, Ilhan Omar of Minnesota, Ayanna Pressley of Massachusetts, and Rashida Tlaib of Michigan go home to the countries they came from, all but Omar, who is a naturalized U.S. citizen who came to America with her U.S. born parents as a child refugee, born in the U.S.
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U.S. Representatives Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York, Ilhan Omar of Minnesota, Ayanna Pressley of Massachusetts, and Rashida Tlaib of Michigan
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Then he branded senior congressman Elijah Cummings racist and brutal and said that the 65 percent Black city of Baltimore, which sits in Cummins' seventh congressional district, is a slum where nobody would want to live.
Rev Al Sharpton drew the president's wrath after he defended Cummings, Trump tweeting that Sharpton is a troublemaker and a conman who hates Whites and cops.
All this occurred in under a month, Sharpton shooting back and calling Trump racist, bigoted and immature at a press conference in Baltimore on Monday.
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