GRAND RAPIDS, Michigan — Minutes before the Democratic debate was set to start Tuesday evening, families and young people were criss-crossing red-brick streets vying to grab a seat among the maze of breweries that line this Western Michigan town.
For most people who aren’t either political junkies or in the news business, there are more important things to do on a warm, balmy Michigan summer evening than watch a debate between primary candidates who won’t be competing for their attention in this state until the weather turns cold.
Peter Meijer isn’t most normal people, though. The Army veteran is a Republican candidate for the 3rd Congressional District currently held by Rep. Justin Amash, the former Republican who left the party earlier this month.
Meijer not only had a professional interest in watching to see what direction the Democrats were heading, he had a personal one. His in-laws, Nani and Tet, immigrants from Brazil, were watching their first presidential debate as American citizens, something both earned in the past 12 months.
For Meijer, watching it with them was fulfilling, but he felt the debate itself was confounding, “The Democratic debate was tedious and underwhelming. The candidates polling at 0% were the only ones that bothered to anchor policy ideas in something resembling reality,” he said of some of the stand-out moments for Rep. Tim Ryan of Ohio, former Rep. John Delaney of Maryland, and author Marianne Williamson.
“Most of the candidates were dead set on back-pedaling from the more extreme positions they took in the first debate,” he said of the complete lack of mention in the debate on things like free healthcare for illegal immigrants that was the cornerstone of the last debate.
While the political class fawned over Sen. Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts on social media and TV, the more casual middle-of-the-road voters were re-looking at Ryan, Williamson, and Delaney during the debate.
The ideological gulf between the tribes that make up the Democratic Party erupted within moments of the debate and quickly became a dog-chasing-tail swirl as the leftists defended their single-payer healthcare plan while candidates like Ryan scoffed at the idea that union members should be forced to give up their private plans.
Williamson, for her part, lit up the stage largely on her outsider quirks and entertaining quips.
“There is no better example of how extreme some of these candidates have gone than the fact that Williamson comes off as the sensible one,” Meijer said of her quixotic quest for the presidency.
