Bernie Sanders looked so angry tonight I feared for his arteries. He really is the most divisive candidate pitting everyone against the 1% as if that were a wholesome thing to do...or something well worth the apparently unrelenting anger.
It makes me wonder if Bernie is just, temperamentally, an extremely angry person and that politics is just he way of adapting to the needs of his own, violent neural system.
He looked so angry tonight that I feared, as president, he would nuke us. Meanwhile, the other candidates played their cards the best they could. Buttigieg played up his youth. Warren wore red to stress that she is a fighter.
It was fun for me to watch John Delaney get under her skin. At one point it looked like he was making her cry. Hickenlooper, again, impressed me. He stressed his practical experience, but forgot to mention how he'd work to get us all on marijuana. I liked another governor too, Steve Bullock. Unfortunately, he had his chin up to high during his close...it sounded like he was choking or something. All three of them appeared to be gunning for Warren suggesting her ideas were silly, too expensive, impractical, or dead wrong. It was hard for me to find any fault with their critiques.
The best performance of the night, of course, came from Marianne Williamson, who was also gunning for Warren. Trish and I both contributed a dollar to her campaign in the expectation that we would do whatever we could to keep her on the debate stage. She looked great. She made the others look like they weren't really Democrats, that they were too wonky, that they were hypocrites for taking PAC donations.
As she said: "...if you think any of this wonkiness is going to deal with this dark physic force of the collectivized hatred that this president is bringing up in this country then I’m afraid the Democrats are going to see some very dark days." All in all, she struck me as emotionally authentic and definitely not as scary as Warren or Bernie.
Meanwhile, I thought Amy Klobuchar's eye make-up made her look worse and perhaps even shorter. She looks like your angry, fat boss at the school district...not like a presidential candidate.
Among the congressman, I thought Beto O'Rourke continued his slide into immature ignominy. Tim Ryan said the right things, but then harmed his own message by looking oddly frightened. He seemed as if his mom had sent him to the corner for the debate.
All in all, it looks like most of the fire was trained on damaging Warren. It seems everyone has decided that Bernie is done. For me, I'm still supporting Marianne Williamson. Who needs an angry, wonky commander-in-chief?
John C. Drew, Ph.D. is an award-winning political scientist.
