Being our semi-regular weekly survey of the state of Our National Dialogue which, as you know, is what Lerner and Loewe would have come up with, had they composed "Get Me To The Derp On Time."

It was strictly B-list all the way around on The Sunday Showz this weekend. One of the ways you know this is that Bernie Sanders, an actual presidential candidate in one of our two major political parties, was allowed to darken the doorsteps of the studio in what only can be classified as a Christmas miracle. Unfortunately, he was called into the front parlor of the Overlook Hotel, where my man Chuck Todd always has been the caretaker, apparently only for the purpose of settling down Andrea Mitchell, who was filling in for my man Chuck Todd, and who, alas, appears to be afraid of everything these days. Sanders, on the other hand, lashed himself to his campaign message as though to the mast.

MITCHELL: Well, while you're trying to, as you point out, focus on the real issues, there have been charges of sexism back and forth between Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton. He used a vulgar term against her and then said it wasn't really that vulgar. Then she said said that she's going to have Bill Clinton campaigning in January and he tweeted out in the last 24 hours, "Hillary Clinton has announced she is letting her husband up to campaign, but he's demonstrated a penchant for sexism. So inappropriate." Are we getting into an argument not only of sexism between Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton, but Donald Trump attacking Bill Clinton?

SANDERS: Well, I tell you what. We're going to let my wife Jane out and I think Hillary is going to be in real, real trouble. But look, the real issues are not Donald Trump's vulgarity. And he is vulgar. It is the fact that Donald Trump thinks we should not be raising the minimum wage. He believes that wages in America are too high. This guy wants to give hundreds of billions of dollars in tax breaks to the top 3/10 of 1%, and meanwhile what he wants to do is divide our country between Latinos and Americans and Muslims and everybody else. That's not the kind of America we need.

Note to all you young candidates out there—that is the way you stay on message right there. It got even better when Mitchell started counting up all the ghosts and monsters hiding in her closet these days.

MITCHELL: At the same time, the polling has shown that on foreign policy and on ISIS that you are far, far behind Hillary Clinton. And you have said that you would somehow persuade the Saudis to stop fighting in Yemen and turn their attention to ISIS. No one else has been able to get that, to persuade the Saudis to do that. How could you, as commander-in-chief, do what other presidents have failed to do in terms of getting the Saudis to listen to what America wants for the fight against these terror groups?

SANDERS: Well, what has got to happen, and certainly the United States and the other major powers have a great deal of leverage, A, it cannot be the United States alone. B, what many people in the Middle East understand, it must be the Muslims themselves on the ground destroying ISIS… So what I think American leadership is about is putting together that international coalition to destroy ISIS. But let me also say this, Andrea. I know sometimes the media thinks that is the only issue. It is an enormously important issue. We have got to defend America. We have got to destroy ISIS. But right now are people watching this program who are 55, 60 years of age. They have zero dollars in their retirement account. They're wondering how they're going to make it in their older age, which is why we have to expand Social Security. There are millions of young people out there desperately want to go to college. Don't want to leave college deeply in debt. We have got to deal with that issue. We're the only major country on Earth that doesn't provide paid family and medical leave. Doesn't provide healthcare for all people as a right. We cannot ignore those issues. So my view is yes, of course, we've got to focus on foreign policy. We have to destroy ISIS. But I will not stop fighting for working families and the middle class, will not stop taking on a billionaire class whose greed, in many ways, is destroying our economy.

(It should also be noted that Ms. Mitchell asked Sanders about the recent dust-up with the Democratic National Committee, but did not ask mysteriously still-employed DNC chairperson Debbie Wasserman Schultz about it at all. But we did learn that DWS's grandma never would have used the word "schlonged," so there's that.)

This was completely amazing. It was an appeal to a lost America that could walk and chew gum at the same time, that could build an intercontinental railroad, establish the land-grant system of higher education, and hold a fairly normal presidential election in the middle of a fcking Civil War. Now, we get scared out of our democracy by cable television anchors and horror show logos and a bunch of savages in second-hand pick-up trucks. This is how you win the House Cup, folks. Cling to your night terrors while the actual world goes to hell all around you. And you top it off with this little ha-ha byplay with one of C-Plus Augustus's former word-ho's, which we present here without comment.

MITCHELL: And of course we are so disliked, we the media, collectively, are so disliked--



(LAUGHTER)



MICHAEL GERSON: Speak for yourself, Andrea.









Ho, ho. Fck off.

OK, not entirely without comment.

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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