If the latest Democratic presidential debate was Tulsi Gabbard’s last chance to show she belongs in the race for the White House, it only proved the opposite.
The Hawaii congresswoman had little speaking time compared with the upper tier among the 12 candidates and used much of it to air personal grievances instead of policies.
Gabbard was mostly dominated or dismissed in exchanges with more adept opponents, earning dim post-debate reviews.
She barely qualified for the event with the minimum 2% poll support required by the Democratic Party, and is seen as unlikely to make the November debate when the polling threshold goes up to 3%.
She blasted the party as unfair and briefly threatened to boycott the debate, but achieving 3% support after months of campaigning and millions spent is hardly a high bar.
Gabbard, 38, used the run-up to the debate and the event itself to renew her Donald Trump-like attacks on the news media, which she’s alternately accused of ignoring her and picking on her.
The look wasn’t attractive; we already have a president with a persecution complex and see how that goes.
Gabbard’s best chance to shine in the debate came when she was asked what she would have done differently from Trump in his abrupt withdrawal of U.S. troops from Syria, which went to her main campaign issue of reducing military involvement in the Middle East.
Instead of answering the question, she accused fellow Democrats of having blood on their hands along with Trump and the media of “cheerleading” for the war and “smearing” veterans like her.
Gabbard repeated her stock phrase “regime change wars” 11 times in two minutes as though they were magic words to open the kingdom to her.
Fellow Middle East war veteran Pete Buttigieg took her down as “dead wrong,” explaining as Gabbard should have how it could have been done without exposing our Kurdish allies to slaughter by the Turks, giving the Islamic State new life to attack the U.S. and boosting Russian and Iranian interests.
Buttigieg, who was applauded by the audience, lectured her, “You can end regime change wars without embracing Donald Trump’s policies, as you’re doing.”
Gabbard was largely ignored when she questioned front-runner Elizabeth Warren’s credentials to serve as commander in chief.
A post-debate poll by FiveThirtyEight/Ipsos found her performance was rated worst among the candidates by viewers on both issues and ability to beat Trump.
Gabbard’s net favorability, already low before the debate, fell another 4.5 points after — the biggest dip of any candidate except Beto O’Rourke.
Her only good news, if you could call it that, was that she was the runaway debate winner in an unscientific instant poll on the right-wing website Drudge Report.
Reach David Shapiro at volcanicash@gmail.com.
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