Here’s video from yesterday’s 8th CD Democratic debate (aka, “forum”) at Mt. Vernon High School. FYI, I had to save the battery power on my video camera so I didn’t get everything, but I did get a lot. Jim Southworth of Fairfax County Public Access TV was videotaping and should have the rest. Also, I’m not going to attempt to put these in strict chronological order. Anyway, here’s the first video; I’ll be uploading the rest in the comments section of this post. Thanks.
P.S. Also note that in the interest of saving video and battery power, I sometimes skipped the candidates who I believe have absolutely zero chance of winning (e.g., Derek Hyra). Jim Southworth’s video should be of the complete debate.
1. Name the top three foreign policy issues facing our nation and the world today.
*Levine – Energy security; aggression from foreign leaders like Putin, Iran; genocide in places like Syria, where he’d put a no-fly zone into place.
*Herring – She speaks barely above a whisper, with absolutely no confidence, struggles badly in trying to answer this straightforward question (which she should have been prepared for, but apparently wasn’t). Bottom line: it’s clear that Charniele Herring’s’s wayyyyy out of her league when it comes to foreign policy. This is very close to diqualifying in and of itself for someone running for Congress, which deals with crucial foreign policy questions all the time.
*Shuttleworth: Show restraint in foreign policy, be “much more non-interventionist…much more on the sideline.”
*Bill Euille: Security, terrorism, energy.
*Don Beyer: We can’t allow a nuclear Iran; we must avoid a 2nd Cold War with Russia; climate change is the greatest weapon of mass destruction.
*Satish Korpe: Rogue states, Russia, not sure what his third point was exactly, but he did say we need an “old-fashioned carrot-and-stick policy.”
*Lavern Chatman: Says she met with the “Truman Group” on “just this issue” (I’m sure she meant the Truman National Security Project, which “recruits, trains, and positions progressives across America to lead on national security,” not the Truman Group, which “provides high quality psychological care to North American and Western European expatriates living overseas”). Cybersecurity and…nothing else mentioned. She’s clearly far out of her league on foreign policy.
*Patrick Hope: Climate change; Putin’s invasion of Crimea (“we need to solve that problem”); do more nation building at home and less overseas.
*Adam Ebbin: He squeezed in more than 3 items — Russia, nuclear Iran, Syrian regime and their atrocities; climate change; cybsersecurity; threats to democracy anywhere, but there are limits to American military intervention so focus on diplomacy before the fact and sanctions during or after the fact.
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