About Me

My photo
Beverly Hills, California, United States
Eli Kantor is a labor, employment and immigration law attorney. He has been practicing labor, employment and immigration law for more than 36 years. He has been featured in articles about labor, employment and immigration law in the L.A. Times, Business Week.com and Daily Variety. He is a regular columnist for the Daily Journal. Telephone (310)274-8216; eli@elikantorlaw.com. For more information, visit beverlyhillsimmigrationlaw.com and and beverlyhillsemploymentlaw.com

Translate

Monday, August 10, 2015

Dems get their 'food fight'

Politico
By Gabriel Debenedetti
August 7, 2015

Democrats wanted the 10 Republicans on the packed stage to bloody each other in front of a national audience. They got their primetime brawl.

From the first question, it was clear that the main event in Cleveland would not disappoint followers of Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton’s party — even if the spectacle created just two ready-for-attack-ad moments and failed to entirely fell any of the GOP front-runners.

“It was an intra-party food fight focused on who can get furthest to the right on immigration and women’s issues, reminiscent of the 2012 GOP debates that helped set our path to victory,” said President Barack Obama’s re-election campaign press secretary Ben LaBolt, evaluating the two-hour show that followed the more demure second-tier affair earlier in the evening.

LaBolt’s sentiments were quickly echoed by the Democratic front-runner’s campaign itself, which blasted out a fundraising email minutes after the debate’s close. “NOPE. NOPE. NOPE.,” read the subject line.

“Should one of these guys be president?,” the body asks, above pictures of the 10 contenders. “NOPE. You can stop them. Donate.”

While the candidates on the Fox News-hosted stage Thursday night focused plenty of their derision at Obama and Clinton, enough of the personal attacks came in the form of direct Republican-on-Republican squabbling that few of those individual lines caught national Democrats’ eyes as gaffes or campaign fodder.

There was Huckabee vs. Christie. There was Christie vs. Paul. There was Paul vs. Trump. There was Bush vs. Trump. There was almost Huckabee vs. Trump. There was Trump vs. the moderators. There was Trump vs. the world.

“There were few standout moments,” said longtime Democratic strategist Mo Elleithee, executive director of Georgetown’s Institute of Politics and Public Service. “But for Democrats, this is less about a ‘moment’ and more about the general tone. I can see Democrats going after the entire field for spending less time talking about the middle class than they did about Planned Parenthood.”

Instead, a select few Republican attempts to outflank each other shone in Democrat-blue eyes.

Multiple top Democratic strategists pointed to a pair of particular exchanges — involving top-tier candidates Scott Walker and Marco Rubio — centered around abortions and women’s health as particularly likely to pop up in party attack ads before long.

Addressing Walker for the first time early in the debate, host Megyn Kelly asked him about a Wisconsin abortion law, pressing him on whether he would let a mother die rather than have an abortion.

Walker’s answer, said Democratic operative Bill Burton — who co-founded the Priorities USA super PAC that backed Obama in 2012 and is now supporting Clinton in 2016 — was “probably the most important of the night — it will live deep into the general if he’s the nominee.”

Walker, who has repeatedly hit Clinton over her support of Planned Parenthood, stood his ground, insisting to Kelly, “I’m pro-life, I’ve always been pro-life, and I’ve got a position that I think is consistent with many Americans out there in that I believe that there is an unborn child that’s in need of protection out there. And I’ve said many a time that that unborn child can be protected and that there are many other alternatives that can also protect the life of that mother.”

Later in the debate, Rubio insisted to Kelly that he had never been in favor of an exception to an abortion ban that would allow the procedure in cases of incest or rape. Rubio’s determination to appear as a hardliner on the issue raised eyebrows of Democrats from Brooklyn to Washington. Elleithee called the exchange the “oddest moment of the night.”

“I’m not sure that that’s a correct assessment of my record,” Rubio said. “I have never said that. And I have never advocated that. What I have advocated is that we pass a law in this country that says all human life at every stage of its development is worthy of protection.”

Burton noted that the question of choice played a more prominent role than expected in the debate — a noteworthy development considering the issue’s potency while many Republicans continue to insist on defunding Planned Parenthood and Clinton recently took a strong stance in support of the embattled group.

Nonetheless, figures from across the party acknowledged that the main story line of the night would, as predicted, be the poll-leading Trump, and Democrats remained more than happy to let him take the spotlight — particularly as they saw Jeb Bush, who has scared many Democrats with his fundraising prowess, “fade into the wallpaper,” in LaBolt’s words.

Throughout the evening, Trump repeatedly pushed back against the notion that he was too close to Democratic positions, all the while ridiculing Clinton — at one point saying that the former secretary of state only attended his wedding because he had donated to her family’s foundation.

To that, the Clinton campaign responded simply: “That hurt our feelings.”

On Thursday night, such puzzled levity was common. It was not a night for targeted attack, but a night to let the show roll on.


“Donald Trump was Donald Trump,” said Elleithee, a veteran of Clinton’s 2008 campaign and the Democratic National Committee. “I’ve given up trying to understand what that means.”

For more information, go to: www.beverlyhillsimmigrationlaw.com

No comments: