The Contrast

Juxtapose the Democratic Debate last Thursday with the Republican Debate last night. See any stark differences? The former showcased two adults having an intelligent and vigorous debate that spoke to the ideological core of the Democratic party. The latter looked like a food fight at a middle school with Marco Rubio being the kid that everyone picked on.

As Steve Benen and Tegan Goddard recently noted, the big winner of the Democratic debate was...the Democrats.

“The real winners were Democratic voters,” Goddard wrote overnight. “Anyone who watched learned a lot. It made the Republican debates look like over-produced game shows.” 

I think that’s both true and important. I don’t doubt that Clinton’s and Sanders’ backers can make spirited cases why their candidate prevailed, but I hope they won’t miss the forest for the trees: for two hours, Americans saw two very capable candidates engage in a deeply substantive, engrossing discussion that mattered.

I'd add that Bernie Sanders has been exactly what the Democrats needed at this moment in time and he knows it. For too long, Democrats have succumbed to a sort of faux compromise where the Republicans (really, the Tea Party...now fully absorbed into the GOP) stake a claim so far on the right side of the field that any consensus inevitably ends up being a conservative (see also: non functional in objective reality) solution.

Now with Sanders on the scene, he pulls the party in the far left direction and any sort of compromise ends up where it should be...in the fucking middle. 

He makes Hillary a better candidate and so does the press...beating up on her from everything to her emails, to her Wall Street speeches, to her "lackluster" campaign and especially to her honesty gap. I say get all that shit out there now so she can get her game together for the fall. Force her to go farther left on some issues that she may feel comfortable with so the nation can benefit.

Because it's pretty clear the nation isn't going to benefit from any of the GOP candidates. Take a look at how the debate started off.


What a fantastic metaphor for the GOP in 2016. It only got worse from there.

Marco Rubio has been rising the polls these last few days but he really looked out of his league last night, repeating himself over and over again.


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Wow.

The rest of the night showed 7 little boys sniping at each other that honestly reminded me of my 8th graders. Actually, I take that back. My 8th graders are more mature than these guys.

I'll have my predictions for New Hampshire on Monday night.