WESTERVILLE, OHIO—Let us begin.

Senator Professor Warren: "Donald Trump broke the law again in the summer, broke it again this fall. You know, we took a constitutional oath, and that is that no one is above the law, and that includes the President of the United States."



Senator Bernie Sanders: "Trump is the most corrupt president in the history of this country."

Joe Biden: "This president—and I agree with Bernie, Senator Sanders—is the most corrupt president in modern history and I think all of our history."

Senator Kamala Harris: "Donald Trump needs to be held accountable. He is, indeed, the most corrupt and unpatriotic president we have ever had."

Senator Cory Booker: "So I swore an oath to do my job as a senator, do my duty. This president has violated his. I will do mine."

Senator Amy Klobuchar: "This president has not been putting America in front of his own personal interests."

The field could certainly agree on one thing. Win McNamee Getty Images

Julian Castro: "He made that call to President Zelensky of the Ukraine, but he is in ongoingly—in an ongoing way violating his oath of office and abusing his power."

Mayor Pete Buttigieg: "It's also about the presidency itself, because a president 10 years or 100 years from now will look back at this moment and draw the conclusion either that no one is above the law or that a president can get away with anything."

You get the point, right? The first segment of Tuesday night's Democratic presidential debate here, the onetime home office of the Anti-Saloon League and that most bungling of big-government bungles, Prohibition, was largely devoted to what a crook and heathen the President* of the United States has proven himself to be. This was, of course, refreshing and invigorating as all get-out. Not even Tulsi Gabbard could harsh the enveloping mellow, concerned though she said she was that this whole impeachment business is terribly, terribly divisive and might scare the horses. Speaking for myself, I could have gleefully sat through three hours of wallowing in the president*'s cock-ups and crimes.

Amy Klobuchar must stop with the jokes. SAUL LOEB Getty Images

But, as Buttigieg relentlessly reminded us—and there will be more about him in a minute—sooner or later, El Caudillo del Mar-a-Lago isn't going to be president* anymore and, assuming we're not all dead or celebrating Tayyip Erdogan's birthday every year, somebody's going to have to sweep up the shards of glass and bits of metal that are all that's left of our government. So, the debate quickly went back to everybody fighting about the particulars of everything that everybody otherwise agrees about.

The most conspicuous—and most predictable—characteristic of the evening was the sudden transformation of Senator Professor Warren into Target A for everybody else, save Castro and Bernie Sanders. (And, if Sanders's goal for the evening was to prove that he was still a feisty old dude who can sound the trumpets, he cleared that bar with daylight to spare.) It began with a lengthy assault from Buttigieg and Klobuchar over Medicare For All—specifically, why SPW won't give a yes-or-no answer on whether her plan will raise taxes on middle-class families.

BUTTIGIEG: Well, we heard it tonight, a yes-or-no question that didn't get a yes-or-no answer. Look, this is why people here in the Midwest are so frustrated with Washington in general and Capitol Hill in particular. Your signature, Senator, is to have a plan for everything. Except this.

No plan has been laid out to explain how a multi-trillion-dollar hole in this Medicare for all plan that Senator Warren is putting forward is supposed to get filled in.

KLOBUCHAR: At least Bernie's being honest here and saying how he's going to pay for this and that taxes are going to go up. And I'm sorry, Elizabeth, but you have not said that, and I think we owe it to the American people to tell them where we're going to send the invoice.

SPW was a bit flummoxed by the end of this passage. She needs more clarity on her position that a yes/no on a tax increase elides the basic function of M4A, which is universal coverage, and she needs to push back more strongly on the fact that M4A doesn't necessarily mean the end of private insurance. In Australia, for example, everybody gets Medicare-like coverage, but they also have the opportunity to purchase supplemental plans, and half the population does. Being accused of "throwing millions of people off their coverage" demands a stronger counterpunch than an explanation of how healthcare costs get folded into a personal economy.



Warren struggled to beat back attacks on her healthcare plan. SAUL LOEB Getty Images

That attack at least was substantive. But I don't know what Beto O'Rourke was talking about when he accused SPW of being "punitive" for talking about a two-percent wealth tax on the uber-rich.

O'ROURKE: I think that Senator Warren is more focused on being punitive and pitting some part of the country against the other instead of lifting people up and making sure that this country comes together around those solutions.

(At least Andrew Yang pointed out that other European countries have tried a wealth tax and given up on it. But Yang lost whatever points he gained by advocating for a value-added tax, which is probably the most universally loathed tax policy since the Stamp Act. Europeans hate it. Asians hate it. People in Papua New Guinea hate it. And if there are people living on Ceti Alpha 5, they hate it, too.)

And when Buttigieg accused SPW of advocating "infinite partisan combat," he passed smoothly over the International Smarminess Line. He approached it several times when he cited his working-class bona fides, because the Harvard-educated son of a Notre Dame professor of literature hasn't exactly walked out of a Bruce Springsteen song, no matter how often he cites his roots in the "industrial midwest." Klobuchar was a far more effective centrist alternative than is Buttigieg, with his consultant's patter and edgeless personality. (Klobuchar, however, has to stop with the jokes. She simply cannot deliver a punchline.)

Bernie Sanders is back. Win McNamee Getty Images

Warren survived all this for two reasons: first, her dogged insistence in answering every question in her way, and second, because the revived Bernie Sanders functioned as both an ally and a shield. There was an effective progressive bloc on stage Wednesday night, and it held its own. And, anyway, among progressive voters, the debate is going to be lost in the news that three members of The Squad will endorse Sanders at a rally in New York on Saturday.

So, fundamentally, once they all reached an agreement that the current administration* is a malignancy that needs to be excised as cleanly and fully as possible, the Democratic field broke down along fairly conventional lines. But this administration*, and its Republican enablers, have changed the calculus of that basic equation in a way that disadvantages moderate approaches that rely on moderate Republicans to get things passed through the Congress. There are no moderate Republicans anymore, not in positions of power, anyway. If there were, this president* wouldn't be president* anymore.

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Charles P. Pierce Charles P Pierce is the author of four books, most recently Idiot America, and has been a working journalist since 1976.

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