I confess that my secret hope of Robert F. O’Rourke jumping on top of his podium like some Iowa coffee shop counter was dashed, but the humor content was, by the standards of American political theatre, fairly impressive from the standpoint of a conservative.

Last night saw the expression “clown car” gain considerable justification as a description of the Democrats’ presidential field. It was “9 candidates with no shot at anything and the tenth, the first fake Native American candidate,” in Daniel Greenfield’s apt description of the farce. But there were moments of hilarity that punctuated the tedium, so it was not a total loss for those who subjected themselves to the entire broadcast, a marathon competition in pandering to the hard-left activists that shout the loudest on Twitter.

In descending order of laughter potential:

#7 Bill de Blasio goes full commie

This is humor of the grim humor genre, so it loses points in the hilarity competition, but gains them in the meaningfulness column. The Mayor of New York reflects a growing sentiment among Democrats with his implicit claim to spearhead the re-assignment of wealth from the hands of those who earned it into the hands of those who want it. Bill and his crypto-commie associates know which hands are the wrong ones to have money. “There’s plenty of money… it’s just in the wrong hands”

#6 NBC declares us a bi-lingual country, with moderator asking first-ever Spanish Language question in a US presidential debate

More grim humor. Because Quebec is such a model of the utility of having two language groups hostile to each other (I am old enough to remember when Montreal was the largest city in Canada and the economic capital – a title it lost to Toronto starting the moment Francophone fanatics started kidnapping and killing officials they regarded as Anglophone enemies), it was grimly funny (as in strange) to see a debate moderator pose a question in a language most viewers did not understand. This is such a good idea that I recommend MSNBC use Spanish for half of the minutes of each broadcast hour. It should do wonders for their ratings.

#5 Warmist fanatic Jay Inslee’s non-sequitur claim that the filibuster is flooding Miami Beach.

Hey, it’s Democrats, Jake. Don’t expect it to make sense.

#4 Robert F. O’Rourke randomly starts speaking Spanish with a Gringo accent (very appropriate for an Irish-American, but unhelpful in the pandering department)

#3 Cory Booker tells us, “‘We Don’t Talk Enough About Trans Americans, Especially African American Trans Americans’

On behalf of handicapped differently-abled African American trans Americans, I protest this appalling lack of consideration of a minority that is even more persecuted by an America which is so horribly unjust that nobody would ever want to violate our border. We need to spend several minutes every waking hour discussing their plight. Or else we are bad people.

#2 Julian Castro calls for taxpayer-funded abortions for biological males who are pretending to be women. Because it’s only “justice.”

The words need a little parsing because there may be some attempt to wiggle out of this absurdity:

LESTER HOLT: Would your plan cover abortion, Mr. Secretary?”

CASTRO: “Yes, it would. I don’t believe only in reproductive freedom, I believe in reproductive justice. (Cheering and Applause) And, you know, what that means is that just because a woman, or let’s also not forget someone in the trans community, a trans female, is poor, doesn’t mean they shouldn’t have the right to exercise that right to choose. And so I absolutely would cover the right to have an abortion. More than that, everybody in this crowd and watching at home knows that in our country today, a person’s right to choose is under assault in places like Missouri, in Alabama, in Georgia. I would appoint judges to the federal bench that understand the precedent of Roe V. Wade and will respect it, and in addition to that make sure that we fight hard as we transition our health care system to one where everybody can get and exercise that right.”

A “trans female” is a biological male who wishes really, really hard he were a woman, and who goes to self-destructive ends (hormones or even genital mutilation) in order to make the masquerade slightly less ridiculous. For such a person to pretend to get pregnant, the services of an actual womb must be rented, along with an egg acquisition from a biological female. Under such circumstances, accidental pregnancies are impossible, and any pretend pregnancy comes at considerable cost and effort on the part of more than one person.

#1 Pandering pre-emption: Cory Booker and Elizabeth Warren’s reactions when Robert F. O’Rourke randomly switches to Spanish

This one wins the crown because it is visual, and because it captures both the pandering nature of the event and the phoniness of all the virtue-signalers. Watching a fake Hispanic worry a fake Indian and pre-empt a fake public housing project resident with a fake friend named T-bone is just fakelicious and captures the essence of the Democratic Party in 2019, You already saw the video of the Gringo-accented Spanish, so this one just gets a screen, cropped for your viewing convenience.

(Grabien screen grab, croppepd)