I couldn't get in to see them there.

I LIVE in the Milwaukee area, so you’d think I could manage to wrangle a ticket to tonight’s debate, right? Wrong! The closest I could come was the chance of “winning” a ticket via the Wisconsin Democratic Party’s donation request email. I entered for my chance of winning the ONE ticket they offered. Never heard from them. I guess I lost. Maybe I should have donated a pile of money to boost my odds.

The debate was held at my alma mater, the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. You think UWM students could get a ticket? Wrong! They had to register for a lottery and then only 25 tickets were handed out to the lucky “winners”.

So….who WAS in the audience? Beats me. Certainly not activists or ordinary citizens. I suspect they were State Party loyalists and hangers-on. Martha Lanning, chair of the Wis Dems, like other members of the establishment, has already endorsed HRC. Otherwise, it was 25 lucky UWM students and 1 lucky winner of the Wisconsin Democratic Party’s email donation contest.

The game was rigged, my friends. Just like the rest of our Democracy has been.

Feeling the Bern at home rather than sitting at the Debate.

Update: Thanks to mtosner in the comments:

x #DemDebate #PBSdebate Look at that crowd of young energetic University of Wis.... Waaiittt a second. #StackedDeck pic.twitter.com/Ahdc6N1nYc Ã¢ÂÂ Morning Trump (@MorningTrump) February 12, 2016

Check out that “university audience”. Bwahahahaha!!

It isn’t even a “Milwaukee audience” since all the faces I see are white and Milwaukee is majority non-white.

Update #2

It seems I should have specifically included what seemed so obvious for me at the time of writing: that my difficulty in obtaining a ticket was the reason I started looking at ticket distribution in the first place. No, I wasn’t whining. I was noticing. Even the Milwaukee County Democratic Party didn’t have tickets to distribute and that speaks volumes since the debate was held in their locale.

Next, I’m not the only one who noticed the audience.

As the candidates took their podiums, it was clear that the audience was packed with Hillary supporters. Bernie managed occasionally to spark some applause, but, relative to Hillary’s, it was infrequent, muted, and mixed with jeers. (There’s an interesting story to be written about how these audiences are assembled, and whatever happened to no-applause debates in which audience members are ordered, on penalty of ejection, to remain silent.)

Third, my main concern involved the audience not being reflective of the diversity either of the university or even the city where the debate was held. Milwaukee is “majority minority” and the nearly all-white, older audience didn’t reflect any of that.

Why bother having debates in various locations if audiences don’t reflect those local communities. If you’re going to hand pick audiences, then set a standard location to hold all the debates.