An honest review of last week’s U.S. Senate candidate debate

On Monday night, the four leading candidates, Adam Schiff, Steve Garvey, Katie Porter and Barbara Lee, took the stage to make their case as to why they should fill the late Dianne Feinstein’s seat in the U.S. Senate.

Here’s my analysis of each candidate’s performance.

Rep. Barbara Lee did not do much to help her struggling campaign. When Lee starts a sentence, it really feels like even she doesn’t know how that sentence is going to end. She just keeps moving her lips until something comes out.

During her response to the question of whether President Biden should use his executive power to circumvent Congress and secure the border, Lee said: “Currently we need to make sure that we invest in cities and counties that are really uh helping uh immigrants given the governors’ abilities to send immigrants to other states and what they’re doing is dividing residents from immigrants.” How does this answer the question? It doesn’t. What does it mean? No one knows.

Lee also took the opportunity to double down on her $50 minimum wage proposal, citing a United Way report that states that a family of four in the Bay Area requires $127,000 to just barely get by. The argument here is simple: people need more money, so let’s make employers pay them more money. As nice as this sounds, Lee completely ignores all of the evidence that higher minimum wages just end up producing more inflation.

Companies are forced to increase prices, so any extra money you get is negated by having to spend more money on the goods and services you need. This is only one of the many negative effects it would produce. Lee stands by her $50 proposal either because she’s ignorant of the economic effects or because she wants to say something that sounds nice to voters who themselves do not