Julian Castro and Beto O'Rourke Had the Only Real Debate of the Evening
MIAMI, FLORIDA-Every NFL season, somebody watches a game with a stopwatch and concludes that, in a four-hour broadcast, there are approximately 11 minutes of actual football being played. The rest is beer commercials, hanging around, and concussion protocols. As the Democratic National Committee put its two-night SummerSlam together here, a similar dynamic played out. With 10 candidates on the stage each night, at the end of each two-hour broadcast, the candidates all had spoken for approximately eight minutes each, and that includes all the times that New York Mayor Bill DeBlasio came lumbering in shouting about the working class. Still, there were enough signifying moments to draw some conclusions.
1) Congressman Tim Ryan should get out of this thing before he does himself an injury. He spouted off the usual bafflegab about how the Democratic Party has to move away from being "coastal" and "elitist" and get back in touch with his fellow salt-of-the-earth Ohioans and, in doing so, he seemed to suggest that the party needs to find a white guy to run against Lindsey Graham in South Carolina instead of the very charismatic Jamie Harrison, who already is spoiling for a brawl with Senator Huckleberry. Then, Ryan bungled his way into a slugfest with Tulsi Gabbard in which he demonstrated that he knows nothing about military policy at all and, into the bargain, gave Gabbard her only good line of the night.
2) Senator Professor Warren, the clear favorite coming into the hall, left it pretty much the same way, having weathered some truly banal "howyagonnapayforit" questions from Savannah Guthrie and some "there are people who think you coastal elitists are going to take away their guns and make them drink their own pee to save the planet" posers from Chuck Todd. She handled them with her customary aplomb, pivoting to her basic campaign pitch, and demonstrating that she indeed must have been a simply murderous high-school debater.
GUTHRIE: Are you picking winners and losers?
WARREN: So the way I understand this, it's there is way too much consolidation now in giant industries in this country. That hurts workers. It hurts small businesses. It hurts independent farmers. It hurts our economy overall. And it helps constrict real innovation and growth in this economy. Now, look, we've had the laws out there for a long time to be able to fight back. What's been missing is courage, courage in Washington to take on the giants. That's part of the corruption in this system. It has been far too long that the monopolies have been making the campaign contributions, have been funding the super PACs, have been out there making sure that their influence is heard and felt in every single decision that gets made in Washington. Where I want to start this is I want to return government to the people, and that means calling out the names of the monopolists and saying I have the courage to go after them.
However, the two surprises of the night both came from Texas. Former HUD Secretary Julian Castro, heretofore a mild presence in the general free-for-all, proved himself to be a formidable counterpuncher, and he proved it by taking all of the air out of Beto O'Rourke, who spent the evening looking as though he had to be tied down to keep from floating out the door. Teed up by moderator Jose Diaz-Balart, who summoned the image of Oscar and Valeria Martinez face down in the Rio Grande, Castro went all electric all at once.
CASTRO: I'm very proud that in April I became the first candidate to put forward a comprehensive immigration plan. And we saw those images of Oscar and his daughter, Valeria, [were] heartbreaking. It should also piss us all off. On day one, I would do that executive order that would address metering. And then I would follow that up in my first 100 days with immigration reform that would honor asylum claims, that would put undocumented immigrants, as long as they haven't committed a serious crime, on a pathway to citizenship. And then we'd get to the root cause of the issue, which is we need a Marshall Plan for Honduras and Guatemala and El Salvador so that people can find safety and opportunity at home instead of coming to the United States to seek it.
Later, in Spanish and in English-both O'Rourke and Cory Booker went bilingual in their answers, which was rather cool-O'Rourke tried to climb into the discussion with some airy generalities, and Castro completely flummoxed him.
O'ROURKE: We would not detain any family fleeing violence, in fact, fleeing the deadliest countries on the face of the planet today. We would implement a family case management program so they could be cared for in the community at a fraction of the cost. And then we would rewrite our immigration laws in our own image, free Dreamers forever from any fear of deportation by making them U.S. citizens here in this country, invest in solutions in Central America, work with regional stakeholders so there's no reason to make that 2,000 mile journey to this country.
CASTRO: Let's be very clear. The reason that they're separating these little children from their families is that they're using Section 1325 of that act which criminalizes coming across the border to incarcerate the parents and then separate them. Some of us on this stage have called to end that section, to terminate it. Some, like Congressman O'Rourke, have not. And I want to challenge all of the candidate to do that. I just think it's a mistake, Beto. I think it's a mistake. And I think that -- that if you truly want to change the system, that we've got to repeal that section... If not, then it might as well be the same policy.
O'ROURKE: Let me respond to this very briefly. As a member of a Congress, I helped to introduce legislation that would ensure that we don't criminalize those who are seeking asylum and refuge in this country.
CASTRO: I'm not talking about -- I'm not talking about the ones that are seeking asylum.
O'ROURKE: If you're fleeing -- if you're fleeing desperation, then I want to make sure...
CASTRO: I'm talking about -- I'm talking about everybody else.
O'ROURKE: ... I want to make sure you are treated with respect.
CASTRO: I'm still talking about everybody else.
O'ROURKE: But you're looking at just one small part of this. I'm talking about a comprehensive rewrite of our immigration laws.
CASTRO: That's not true.
O'ROURKE: And if you do that, I don't think it's asking too much for people to follow our laws when they come to this country.
CASTRO: That's actually not true. I'm talking about millions of folks -- a lot of folks that are coming are not seeking asylum. A lot of them are undocumented immigrants, right? And you said recently that the reason you didn't want to repeal Section 1325 was because you were concerned about human trafficking and drug trafficking. But let me tell you what: Section 18, title 18 of the U.S. code, title 21 and title 22, already cover human trafficking...I think that you should do your homework on this issue. If you did your homework on this issue, you would know that we should repeal this section.
In a week in which the issue of this administration*'s cruel immigration policy was all over the television and at the top of the news, Julian Castro was the one Texan who knew what he was talking about, and this was the only real moment of actual debate in the entire evening's exercises. This was the actual NFL football being played between the beer commercials.
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