Last Friday, Daily Kos Founder Markos Moulitsas appeared on Meet the Press with host Chuck Todd and fellow panelists Doug Thornell, Jennifer Palmieri, and Dan Balz. The group weighed in to discuss the strong performances of Sens. Elizabeth Warren and Kamala Harris in the first Democratic presidential primary debates. According to Markos, “The thing that really struck me more than anything else more than the substance or a lot of the details of what was said—see, if you noticed, nobody interrupted Elizabeth Warren on day one. She was sort of holding court, nobody dared step on her. And on day two, every time there was a scrum, Kamala Harris came out on top; that just showed that they had the strength, the poise, the command of somebody you want to be running for president.”
Moulitsas also touched on Bernie Sanders’ messaging: “He has the exact same message he had four years ago, and that message didn’t get him to victory four years. I’m not sure why he’s not trying to calibrate that. … Bernie deserves a lot of credit for mainstreaming a lot of those ideas, but he has done nothing to build his own base of support. And why stick with Bernie, who’s as divisive as he is, when there are more appealing, inclusive candidates—and there are a bunch to choose from.”
A short clip and the full video are below the jump.
Lastly, Markos offered his thoughts on the breakout performance of the first night from Julián Castro and on Cory Booker:
The only person other than Harris and Warren that really stood out was actually Julián Castro, who really started on the bottom rung, and I’m surprised nobody’s talked about him, because he actually has had a little bit of a mini resurgence on the online left. He won a face-off with Beto, and he showed command and poise and really spoke to a community that isn’t used to getting spoken to. I’m Latino, and I appreciate that. Speaking of, if you don’t speak fluent Spanish, please don’t try — it’s painful, so painful. But, that said, Julián Castro really impressed me, and I don’t think he’s going to go anywhere. And I actually don’t think Booker really is able to bust through any kind of the noise, but at least he acquitted himself well and at least made a reason why he’s running, which a lot of these people did not.”
You can view the full segment here: