so, i watched the debates, and these candidates were every bit as awful as the previous bunch, broadly. there was precious little substantive debate, but what we heard was mostly a lot of terrible ideas that will do little to solve a lot of serious problems that are desperately in need of real solutions, along with a lot of misleading rhetoric that bordered on demagoguery (especially on the family separation file; that discussion existed in a fantasy reality that is defined wholly by fake news on social media. the court has ordered separation to advance the best interests of the child, and liberals should be supporting that by demanding a good faith application, not blathering on about family values like a bunch of republicans.). they spent more time talking about what they wouldn't do, or what they would undo, then about what they wanted to push forwards. bernie's fading appeal notwithstanding, this is a reactionary and conservative party. and i honestly, legitimately wouldn't want to vote for any of these people.

is the most important task to defeat donald trump? adamantly not. the most important thing is to prevent a return to the previous status quo. trump has broken a number of things, which opens up an opportunity for the left. the most important thing needs to be to prevent electing somebody who is just going to turn the clock back and pick up where obama left off. the most important thing needs to be fighting to take advantage of the crisis (read: opportunity) that trump has left us with, to use his policies like a shock doctrine, to embrace disaster capitalism to push forth serious, revolutionary ideas. a visionary needs to assert itself, or they're going to lose. unfortunately, bernie remains the closest thing to one.

somebody else needs to step up.

a return to the previous status quo needs to be the thing that is fought against the hardest. if the left loses the primary, the general will be unimportant, as it was in 2016.

so, who just wants to turn the clock back? who do you scratch off the list as unacceptable, immediately?

biden got hit, but i actually think he defended himself well enough. there's no question that he's the "back to the future" candidate, and that, to me, is the biggest non-starter. but, putting biden and sanders beside each other exposed how badly biden has aged, recently. if sanders is 70-something going on 90, biden looks and sounds like a centenarian. i'd almost argue that you want biden out there to make sanders look younger, at this point. he really came off as a doddering old man, and functionally disqualified himself in the process. sadly, i don't expect the democratic base to have the same reaction, as it is itself much older than the general voting population. so, how old is too old? there may be no clear answer, but biden is quite clearly too old.

the worst candidate on the stage, in my view, was marianne williamson, who is an example of the kind of candidate that i would actively campaign against. love always loses in the end; if you want to win, you have to fight. you don't want a pushover as commander in chief. prayer circles and yoga mats don't win wars - not for armies and not for working people. she would be a clear disaster and needs to be opposed as strenuously as possible.

harris was articulate and forceful, certainly, but if you actually listened to what she said rather than the way that she said it, it exposed her as lacking meaningful, substantive ideas. she often rambled or trailed off in ways that....she didn't come back to a core message. politicians will often sidestep questions, but they do so to reinforce themes. she was all over the place, and kind of came off as incoherent. so, i didn't really like what i heard from her, even if i concede that she sounded good saying it. and, i'd say something similar about gillibrandt.

i would otherwise actually argue that nobody really distinguished themselves on this night. nobody really said what i wanted to hear. and, i actually wouldn't expect to see much poll movement from it.

there are too many candidates, right now, and it really just muddied up the process. let's hope the field is a lot smaller for the next round, so we can have some more detailed discussions and more pointed analysis.

we got little out of this, and probably shouldn't have expected much different.