The Fifth Democratic Presidential Debate

For all of those, myself included, who are confident of a 2020 Blue Wave last night's Democratic presidential debate in Houston should prompt a reassessment. What was on display was an aged, sclerotic party mouthing the same exhausted decades-old now-completely-meaningless platitudes. It's a party in thrall to a bankrupt centrism whose most zealous adherents are the 1%.

Where to begin? Why not the standard-bearer? That Joe Biden continues to top the polls is a very bad sign for the Democratic Party. Last night he repeated his performance of previous debates and primarily spouted gibberish. It comes in a gush. Most of it is nonsense, or of a sense internal to Biden's addled brain. That Biden continues to top the polls shows that either polls are entirely worthless or that a significant plurality of respondents know next to nothing about the current state of political affairs.

Bernie Sanders shit all over the bed last night in a dramatic display of fawning cowardice when Univision's Jorge Ramos asked him why he hasn't criticized Venezuelan president Nicolas Maduro. Bernie responded by calling Maduro a "murderous tyrant." As Max Blumenthal tweeted,

If a performative Miami ambush journalist like Ramos can make Bernie parrot Bolton with a few provocations, imagine what the Beltway blob can do once it oozes its way into his administration.

That's why you need Tulsi Gabbard in the debates. Presumably she would have stepped in and repeated her mantra about no more regime change wars; at which point she could've reminded the millions of viewers about Uncle Sam's rich legacy of coups and dirty wars in South America, including George W. Bush's failed ouster of Hugo Chavez and the more recent failed coup of Juan Guiado.

Elizabeth Warren is being declared the winner. But to me she seemed tweaked out, a twitchy and insincere version of her previous debate performances. Kamala Harris, who is also being touted as a winner of last night's debate, was slick and utterly unbelievable.

All in all a very bad night for Democrats.