O God, that I were a man! I

would eat his heart in the marketplace.



—Much Ado About Nothing, Act IV, Scene 1.

In my time as a sportswriter, I have covered many epic hockey fights—general brawls in which gloves and sticks, and blood and teeth, littered the ice while the fans went wild. I have seen Dave Schultz and Stan Jonathan. I have seen Mike Milbury lead the entire Bruins team into the stands at Madison Square Garden and hit a dude with his own shoe. So believe me when I tell you this.

The Democratic debate Wednesday night was better.

Those people lamenting that El Caudillo del Mar-a-Lago wasn’t a big enough topic are missing the point of how Senator Professor Warren rolled on Mike Bloomberg. As Greg Sargent points out in the Washington Post, she made Bloomberg the proxy Trump, the same way that early 20th-century Progressives made Jay Gould or John D. Rockefeller the face of the baleful monopoly power. Those people who wanted her to be their Judas goat with Bernie Sanders fail to grasp that she first has to get her feet clear, as the offensive line coaches say. Otherwise, here are my two remaining takeaways from Wednesday night’s action.

Takeaway 1: Everybody involved in Democratic politics—activists, operatives, pundits, voters, and even Sanders and his staff and supporters—has to start getting used to the possibility that he might be the eventual nominee. For the activists and operatives, that means deciding now whether or not you’re going to do to him what the union bosses and old-line Democrats did to George McGovern, and what the Democratic congressional establishment did to Jimmy Carter in 1980. Bear this in mind: go that way, submarine your own party’s nominee, and the president*’s second term is on you guys, not on Sanders. This also goes for pundits and voters, especially the Never Trump contingent, which seems to be wetting itself daily over the very prospect.

There were two main takeaways from Wednesday’s Democratic debate in Nevada. Mario Tama Getty Images

As for Sanders and his staff and supporters, knock off the premature triumphalism, this “bend the knee” crap for which the only real answer is, “Kiss my ass.” Don’t send your press secretary out on TV to compare the legitimate criticism about Sanders’s not releasing his health records as equivalent to the racist birther conspiracy promoted by the president*. In fact, maybe get another spokesperson. Acknowledge that there are questions about his candidacy that he hasn’t fully answered yet, and that these include his health and the very real contingent of his online followers who are sui generis in their nastiness no matter how much he tries to both-sides the issue. But, if your main concern is removing this president*, accustom yourself to the reality that Bernie Sanders might be your only shot at doing so, and act accordingly.

Takeaway 2: I became something of an Amy Klobuchar fan at that moment in which Brett Kavanaugh revealed the POS beneath and threw that “blackout drunk” line at her during his confirmation hearings, knowing, as he must have known, because she had referred to it moments earlier, her harrowing history with her father’s alcoholism. She came back at him with a cold, restrained anger that was all the more lethal for its being cold and restrained.

"Could you answer the question?"



It wasn’t what she said. It was how she said it.

If your main concern is removing this president*, accustom yourself to the reality that Bernie Sanders might be your only shot at doing so.

Which makes her current situation with Pete Buttigieg all the more baffling. For months now, it has appeared that her dislike for him—based, as it seems, on the not-unwarranted notion that Buttigieg is a supercilious jumped-up city councilor—is quite possibly the most authentic thing about the 2020 campaign. It exploded last night in a way that was not helpful to either one of them. It began when they engaged each other on immigration. Buttigieg shot first. I swear, when God handed out smarm, this guy went back for seconds. He even went out of his way to be smarmy towards Walter Mondale.



If you're going to run based on your record of voting in Washington, then you have to own those votes, especially when it comes to immigration. You voted to confirm the head of Customs and Border Protection under Trump, who is one of the architects of the family separation policy. You voted to make English the national language. Do you know the message that sends in as multilingual a state as Nevada to immigrants? You have been unusual among Democrats, I think the Democrat among all of the senators running for president most likely to vote for Donald Trump's judges, who we know are especially hostile to Dreamers and to the rights of immigrants.

Now, in South Bend, it was not always easy to stand up in a conservative place like Indiana on immigration. But we delivered. We created a municipal ID program so that Dreamers and others who were undocumented were able to navigate everyday life. We stood up for those rights and stood with members of our community with the message that they were as American as we are.



Klobuchar opted for a seventh-grade clapback.



I wish everyone was as perfect as you, Pete. But let me tell you what it's like to be in the arena. Number one, do the math. If my friend, Andrew Yang, was up here, that's what he'd say. In fact, I have opposed, not supported, two-thirds of the Trump judges, so get your numbers right. And I am in the top 10 to 15 of opposing them. Number two, when it comes to immigration reform, the things that you are referring to, that official that you are referring to was supported by about half the Democrats, including someone in this room. And I will say this: He was highly recommended by the Obama officials. Do you know why? Because Trump had so few career people. I did not one bit agree with these draconian policies to separate kids from their parents. And in my first 100 days, I would immediately change that. And I would add one more thing. I have been in the arena.



It got worse from there.



KLOBUCHAR: he had made a pretty big allegation against me again, and I think I should have a right to respond. He had...



BUTTIGIEG: I'm stating the facts, because these are votes that you took, and those votes set you alone among the Democrats running for president.

KLOBUCHAR: That is just...

Buttigieg and Klobuchar brawled, to neither’s apparent benefit. Mario Tama Getty Images

BUTTIGIEG: No other -- is it true or is it false that no other Democrat from the Senate running for president voted that way?

KLOBUCHAR: First of all, it is -- what you've said about the judges are false. You are comparing me to two colleagues up here on this stage, and you are forgetting one thing.

BUTTIGIEG: Well, I would say anybody who ran for president this cycle, Senator Harris, Senator Booker saw through this.

KLOBUCHAR: You know what, Pete? If you could let me finish, since I've been in the arena. Ted Kennedy asked me to work on the first immigration bill. We were able with President Bush to at least get that bill to a vote. I'm sorry that Senator Sanders actually opposed that bill, and I worked on it. And if we had gotten that bill done, there would have been a path to citizenship for so many people. Then I worked on the 2013 bill. I'm actually so proud of the work I have done on immigration reform. And you know what? You have not been in the arena doing that work. You've memorized a bunch of talking points and a bunch of things, but I can tell you one thing. What the people of this country want, they want a leader that has the heart for the immigrants of this country, and that is me.

And this exchange illustrates another dynamic at work in this field. The moderate candidates—by whom I mean Buttigieg, Klobuchar, and Joe Biden, because who the hell knows where Bloomberg lands at this point—can’t get out of their own way. Uncle Joe Biden had a good night because he said little and stayed above the hurly-burly. (Although SPW did give him a turn with the boning knife concerning Bloomberg and non-disclosure agreements. I thought that was damn sporting of her.) But neither Klobuchar nor Buttigieg said or did anything on Wednesday night that should help them with the minority voters whom they desperately need to convince. As to what that may come to mean, consider Takeaway 1. And consider who might be standing there when and if the two takeaways collide.

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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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