I'm Still Not Feeling the Bern

Last time I watched a Democratic debate two of the candidates dropped out of the race immediately after the debate.  Come to think of it, Jim Webb may have dropped out during the debate.  I've heard about debates happening since then, but the DNC did a pretty good job of keeping them secret.  I heard one of them was on the moon and you could only watch it with a telescope.  Hillary 2016!

Meanwhile, on the Republican side, they seem to be choosing between Cruz and Trump.  That's as bad as it could be.  If we elect one of them, it's not like he'll be President for a few weeks and we can all have a good laugh and move on.  We'd be stuck with him for four years.  We have nuclear weapons.  Lots of them.  It's a bad situation.

So, the Democrats really need to get their act together.  I still have concerns about Sanders in a general election, and the Clinton campaign is predictably collapsing.  I can't figure out what's wrong with the Clinton campaign except to say that they're just bad at being in a race.  Also, Martin O'Malley is a person who exists.  I thought O'Malley could at least get enough support to maybe drop out and make an impact with an endorsement.  Even that seems like a long shot now.  Things are bleak, is what I'm saying.

8:53PM: Tonight's debate is in South Carolina where Bernie Sanders is, let's be honest, just way too Jewish for those people.  Clinton leads by approximately 109 percent in South Carolina polls.  I assume Debbie Wasserman Schultz is spending these last few minutes offering Sanders increasing amounts of money to just go back to Vermont and eat some ice cream.

8:57PM: Sounds like Bernie has recently changed his position on guns, or at least some part of the gun debate.  That's fine.  I was never under the impression that any of these people could actually do something about guns if elected, I was more concerned about Bernie's position on guns being inconsistent with everything else he believes.  I still have that concern.

9:00PM: Tonight's debate is being moderated by Lester Holt and Andrea Mitchell.  Color me underwhelmed.  To be fair, I can't really think of anyone at NBC who I would trust to not be completely in the tank for Hillary.  I think they still feel bad about 2008.  Obama was just so cool though.

9:02PM: Apparently we'll have questions from "the YouTube community" throughout the debate.  Oh goodie.  Glad to see NBC can't even come up with two hours of their own questions.

9:03PM: Hillary thinks Martin Luther King Jr. was pretty great.  Leave it to Hillary to take controversial positions.  She's a real maverick.

9:04PM: Bernie also thinks Dr. King was super.  African-American voters do not think Bernie is super.  I don't really understand that.  It can't just be that he's old and white.  Hillary is almost as old, and incredibly white.  Like, translucently white.

9:05PM: O'Malley is a fan of Dr. King too.  His actual name is Martin, so I guess he wins this round?

9:07PM: Bernie's top three priorities would be universal health care, $15/hr minimum wage and infrastructure spending to create jobs.  Hillary's are essentially the same, but she added equal pay for equal work.  Both of them want to bring the country together.

9:09PM: O'Malley fit like five things into his first priority.  He threw in support for unions and immigration reform.  Then he talked about climate change.  Marty's top three priorities are roughly 13 different things.  He said everything that a Democrat has even been for.

9:10PM: Bernie just called Clinton's attacks on him about guns disingenuous.  Clinton came back by reciting Bernie's record on gun votes.  He looks genuinely embarrassed, which again raises my concerns about his motivation on this issue.

9:14PM: Hey Marty, do you want to take everyone's guns?  O'Malley says he's never met a self-respecting deer hunter who needed an automatic weapon to down a deer.  Marty also says he agrees with Bernie and Hillary, they've both been inconsistent on guns.  Zing! You've just been O'Malleyed!

9:17PM: Hillary says we need to end the systemic racism in our criminal justice system.  She added "some of that shit was signed into law by my husband, but what can I say, I married a dumbass...you get it ladies".  OK I made that second part up.

9:19PM: Bernie is employing the Trump argument of quoting polls he's leading.  Sanders is confident that African-American voters will come around when they become familiar with his record.  That could be true. He is kind of running out of time though.

9:20PM: O'Malley was the only person to actually say "black lives matter".  I feel like that should count for something, but I have a sense that it won't.

9:21PM: Holt says we're going to hear from "some of the most prominent voices on YouTube".  Prominent voices on YouTube?  What?  I'm interested to see what cats would ask Presidential candidates.

9:23PM: Sanders just said "if a police officer breaks the law, like any other public official, they should be held accountable".  Is it just me, or did he subtly motion towards Hillary as he said "like any other public official"?  Maybe it's just me.

9:25PM: We've been talking about heroin I think.  I don't know, I got distracted by a fire truck outside my building.  Bernie said something about pharmaceutical companies taking some responsibility for the drugs they're producing.  I'm for that.

9:31PM: Clinton says the Democratic party worked since Harry Truman to get the Affordable Care Act passed.  I'm not sure that's exactly what Harry had in mind, but OK.  The question was does Bernie want to destroy Obamacare.  Hillary didn't answer that question, which Bernie quickly pointed out.

9:33PM: Bernie, as we all know, is for universal health care.  He wants to provide health care for everyone and get rid of private insurance.  This is a simple question.  Do you want a candidate who's for universal public health care or do you want a candidate who's for subsidizing private health care?  It's a simple question.  I don't know what Hillary is arguing about.  Bernie's a socialist.  He wants universal health care.  It's the one thing everyone knows about him.

9:36PM: Hillary's argument seems to be that Bernie's goal of universal health care would force us to start from scratch and give up the gains made by the Affordable Care Act.  That's a fair point.  Hillary is basically saying we'll never have the votes for universal health care.

9:39PM: Bernie says we need to have guts and he brought up the influence of money on politics.  This is pragmatism vs. idealism and it's a pretty fun debate but neither of them appear to be having any fun.  Maybe (seriously) this is why Trump is doing so well.  He seems to be having a blast.  Yeah, he's angry, but he's happy to be angry.  These two look like they're getting side by side colonoscopies.  Also, I think Martin O'Malley is still here but I can't really be sure.

9:43PM: Oh, there's Marty, unsuccessfully trying to break the Sanders filibuster.  When he finally got to talk, he quoted Frederick Douglass and everyone clapped but still nobody voted for him.

9;45PM: Some fucking douchebag from YouTube just asked how these people are going to engage his generation.  Hillary talked about how young people value their independence and autonomy.  Wrong.  I work with college students.  They're the least independent and autonomous people you could ever meet.  Who's next?  Oh, apparently nobody, only Hillary gets to answer that question.  Awesome job NBC.

9:52PM: Bernie says "I don't get personal speaking fees from Goldman Sachs".  Ouch.  We all understand Bernie would be roughly a trillion times tougher on Wall St. than Hillary, right?  If you want Wall St. to be better regulated, you're voting for Bernie.  We really shouldn't have to spend a lot of time of this.

9:54PM: Hillary just called Dodd-Frank a "regulatory scheme".  I have a feeling you'll be hearing that sound bite in a Ted Cruz commercial this fall.  Where is Elizabeth Warren right now?  Why won't she run?  Is she busy?  Can't somebody else do whatever it is she's doing right now?

9:56PM: O'Malley is making snide remarks every time Hillary pauses.  It's pretty funny.

9:57PM: Marty says he's for a modern version of Glass-Steagall and Hillary isn't.  That appears to be true.  Hillary responded by saying O'Malley took Wall St. money in the past.  Yes, yes, everyone's a whore.

9:59PM: In case you didn't know who Bernie was talking about when he brought up Goldman Sachs speaking fees a few minutes ago, he was talking about Hillary Clinton.

10:01PM: How will Bernie pay for all his fun socialism?  Taxes on Wall St. speculation.  I think Bernie believes he has adequately explained himself now, but I don't think most people understand Bernie's plan anymore than they did two minutes ago.

10:04PM: Solid explanation of something from Bernie.  Yes, he would raise middle class taxes to pay for medicare for all, but those same people wouldn't have to pay $10,000 in private health insurance premiums anymore.  My employer does pay a nice sum for my health insurance, but if Bernie got rid of those premiums, I don't feel super confident that my employer would gladly just hand that money over to me.

10:07PM: Another YouTube question.  This one had cartoons.  Journalism!

10:09PM: Bernie wants to move our energy system away from fossil fuels.

10:10PM: Marty invited the other two to join him in pledging to have a 100% clean energy electrical grid by 2050.  Lester decided to go to a commercial instead of letting them answer.

10:13PM: Chuck Todd is now talking to the camera for some reason.  Since when do debates have halftime?

10:16PM: Andrea asked Bernie if it's now time to re-open a US embassy in Tehran.  Personally, I would love to see Argo 2.

10:19PM: Hillary's three point plan for Syria doesn't include ground forces.  Marty has a three point plan for lunch tomorrow, but honestly, two of the points are just two different kinds of cheese and I'm not sure that really counts.

10:20PM: Bernie showed some restraint by not actually staring directly at Hillary while talking about the mistakes of Iraq.

10:21PM: Marty says Governors have led us to victory in two world wars.  George W. Bush was a Governor too.  There may be a hole in Marty's argument.

10:23PM: Bernie, once again, pointed out that he strongly opposed the Iraq war.  He added "UNLIKE SOME OTHER HILLARY CLINTONS WHO WILL REMAIN NAMELESS".  OK he didn't, but maybe he should have.

10:27PM: We all agree Assad is bad.  Bernie seems to be advocating for a one problem at a time approach, saying we should work with anyone who wants to destroy ISIS because that has to come first.  I feel like that's one of those things you say before you become President and realize the actual scope of the mess over there.

10:29PM: Hillary just said something about advancing your security and your values.  No, no to the second thing.  We tried that.  Not everyone wants our values.  Values are things that you value.  You can't tell other countries what they're supposed to value and you certainly can't bomb them into sharing your values.  We've learned nothing.

10:31PM: Marty says the government should have to get a warrant no matter what door they want to come through.  Some people in the audience applauded very loudly and I'm pretty sure Rand Paul was one of them.

10:33PM: Bernie says private companies and the government know where you are at this very moment.  Hi private companies!  Would you like to send me some money or something?

10:38PM: Even though all night nobody else ever got to follow up on the last question after a break, Hillary gets 30 seconds to make a point about what they were talking about before the break.  O'Malley asked if he could also have 30 seconds.  The moderators seemed very reluctant but Marty got his 30 seconds in and used it to say bad things about Trump.

10:41PM: Would Bill Clinton have a real policy role in Hillary's White House, or just a kitchen table role?  She says he'd advise her on the economy.  Weird question, OK answer.

10:43PM: Goldman Sachs will not have a Treasury Secretary in Bernie's cabinet.  Well that should fix it.

10:44PM: Bernie says Bill Clinton's actions (I assume we're talking about the intern banging) were deplorable but that's not what he's here to talk about.  That whole section was about Bill Clinton.  That was weird.

10:49PM: Lester asked them if there's anything they wanted to say tonight that they didn't get a chance to say.  He started with O'Malley and everyone laughed.  Poor Marty.  He took his 60 seconds to talk about immigration, Puerto Rico, Honduras and El Salvador.  Maybe Marty is struggling because he's not great at staying on message.

10:51PM: Hillary took her time to talk about Flint, Michigan.  She just kicked the shit out of the Governor of Michigan, and rightfully so.  Bernie said he also called for the Governor's resignation.

10:53PM: Bernie also took his time to talk about money in politics.

I guess that's it.  I could name like 10 Democrats I like more than any of these three.  Booker/Warren 2016!