5 Fresh Moments From the 5th Democratic Debate

[redqueen]

...

1) Candidates stand up for the Hong Kong protesters and the Uyghurs

After a humdrum first hour, the debate grew impassioned when the candidates turned to foreign policy. Kamala Harris got things rolling by declaring that “Donald Trump got punked” by Kim Jong Un, the dictator of North Korea. And things got more entertaining as Andrew Yang imagined speaking with Vladimir Putin after winning the election, telling him “I’m sorry I beat your guy.”

But Yang turned that moment of levity into a vigorous defense of American values, talking about the need to stand up for human rights in China — addressing both Hong Kong, where the government is violently cracking down on pro-democracy protesters, and Xinjiang province, where the Beijing government has rounded up more than a million Uyghurs into “re-education” camps. Perhaps most striking, Biden picked up Yang’s critique and boldly advanced it, condemning the Uyghurs’ detention in what are “essentially concentration camps.”

...

5) Yang warns the “kids are not all right”

In perhaps the strongest closing statement of the night, Yang hit the same theme of generational insecurity from a deeper place. “Our kids are not all right,” he warned. “We’re leaving them a future that is far darker than the lives that we have led as their parents.” Warning that “the American dream that my parents came here to find is dying before our eyes,” Yang insisted that he’s running for president as “a parent and a patriot” who decided that darkness “is not something I am willing to accept.”

Without a trace of the irony that can sometimes mark his campaign, Yang touted his vision to remake a more secure economy, “so we can look our kids in the eye and say to them — and believe it: ‘Your country loves you. Your country values you. And you will be all right.'”

https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-news/five-fresh-moments-atlanta-democratic-debate-915730/