LAS VEGAS-- After everything wrapped up last night, and the crowd thinned out in the general direction of the blackjack tables and the cotton-candy carousel, Tom Steyer, the green energy panjandrum and Democratic sugar daddy, was standing around the spin room, being buttonholed, and talking about the curious relationship between substance and political performance.

"I do think the candidates did a very good job of representing the Democratic party," Steyer said. "I do think that there was a really striking contrast with the Republicans in terms of the inclusive nature, the looking-forward kind of nature, and the fact that they were actually going to deal with the issues confronting middle-class Americans. I just don't think they got the chance to go into details on this stuff."

If nothing else, the first Democratic candidates debate last night drew that simple, stark contrast with the two guerrilla theater exercises that the Republicans have thrown across the electric teevee machine already. What fireworks there were turned out to be muted – Bernie Sanders after Hillary Rodham Clinton on her coziness with Wall Street, Clinton and O'Malley after Sanders on guns. The Great E-Mail Controversy was dismissed as trivial nonsense almost by acclimation with only Lincoln Chafee trying to make it an issue. This was a night for roughage and green vegetables. And, in case nobody got the point, even though everybody did, Martin O'Malley draped the contrast in neon during his closing statement.

And what you heard tonight, Anderson, was a very, very—and all of you watching at home—was a very, very different debate than from the sort of debate you heard from the two presidential Republican debates. On this stage—on this stage, you didn't hear anyone denigrate women, you didn't hear anyone make racist comments about new American immigrants, you didn't hear anyone speak ill of another American because of their religious belief. What you heard instead on this stage tonight was an honest search for the answers that will move our country forward, to move us to a 100 percent clean electric energy grid by 2050, to take the actions that we have always taken as Americans so that we can actually attack injustice in our country, employ more of our people, rebuild our cities and towns, educate our children at higher and better levels, and include more of our people in the economic, social, and political life of our country.

That is the odd fundamental paradox of the contrast between the two parties as they have presented themselves in their respective presidential debates. The Republicans have been such a carnival of the damned that all the Democratic candidates had to do was show up, as St. Paul would put it, clothed and in their right minds, and people would have no choice but to notice the difference. For example, on the issue of climate change, the Republicans are morphing from denialism to a kind of fortified resignation that it's too late (and too damned expensive) to do anything about the crisis now. By contrast, all the Democratic candidates had to do was to demonstrate that they recognized the threat and propose some possible solutions that at least might mitigate the consequences of climate disasters. That piqued Steyer's interest.

"It really was not a critical part of the debate," Steyer said. "The candidates were better than the debate on this subject. I thought they did a good job in general, but I don't think they were asked about it, don't think they were able to go through and let us know. If you really think about the three biggest issues that Democrats care about–it's jobs, health and climate. And climate affects jobs and health, and we really didn't get the kind of granularity on those issues that I think Democrats deserve in the primary season. We've been pushing for a debate just on energy and climate and what we want to hear is people talking about it in a way that it is part of the whole inequality discussion, part of the whole justice discussion, and it's one big vision for the United States. That's why we're asking for more debates. The more people hear about it, the more they will realize how it's going to touch their human lives and the lives of their families."

Still, there's a danger present in the contrast as well. First of all, appearing more substantive than the candidates of the party of climate denial and the economic salience of magic asterisks and the supply-side snake oil is a pretty low bar for a national party. Second, and perhaps more important, the Republicans are past masters at exploiting the politics of intellectual contempt and intellectual envy – it's been a go-to move of theirs since Adlai Stevenson ran twice as a Democrat – and history tells us that there is a fine line between effective wonkery and being the kid who blows the bell curve for everyone else and winds up in a locker at recess. But there are ways to walk that line. Everyone on stage seemed to be searching to find those ways on Tuesday night.

"At this point, general concern, good feeling, evidence of worry is not enough," Steyer said. "So we are asking for specific plans. I think where the Republicans are, if you really listen to them, is that they've stopped denying the science. They've stopped saying they're no scientists, and they're just saying now that it's too expensive to fix. The real irony is that the party of so-called business is now saying that business can't solve this problem, that there is no market solution available. It's somewhere between ironic and ridiculous. The answer has to be that they're answering to some other god."

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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