DETROIT—A point of personal privilege, if you will, to begin. I am sick unto death of elite political punditry's absurd disinclination to describe any Democratic candidate for president as a "conservative Democrat." They do exist, you know. Joe Manchin is a conservative Democrat. So is Claire McCaskill, now a reliable dispenser of weightless conventional wisdom on my electric teevee. It is universally acknowledged by these various high shamans that the 2020 Democratic presidential campaign will be contested between The Progressives and...wait for it...The Moderates.

Tim Ryan is not a moderate. He's a conservative Democrat, and there's nothing wrong with that. (Would that there were some actual liberal Republicans outside of the Dwight Eisenhower Presidential Library.) You know who are actual moderates? Amy Klobuchar is a moderate. So are Beto O'Rourke and Pete Buttigieg. And those people, with the exception of Buttigieg, who had a good debate with a couple of great moments, were rendered largely invisible on Tuesday night as a result of CNN's tiresome quest, coupled with the worst debate format since Pericles, to pump up The Moderates vs. The Progressives brawl that plainly has been the network's plan since it was handed one of these hootenannies by the Democratic National Committee.

John Delaney was given a preposterous amount of time. BRENDAN SMIALOWSKI Getty Images

What else could possibly account for the preposterous amount of screen time granted to John Delaney, a guy who is polling at approximately zero percent, which means that, by the margin of error, he could be polling at minus-5, and who in any case isn't even a conservative Democrat. He's a Gerald Ford Republican, at best. Senator Professor Warren did the debate, and the English language, an immeasurable favor when she sent Delaney's campaign home in a blanket.

WARREN: You know, I don't understand why anybody goes to all the trouble of running for president of the United States just to talk about what we really can't do and shouldn't fight for.

The whole evening was a farce. CNN set up a context in which the candidates were forced into sound-niblets that were rigidly enforced whenever a candidate strayed from the put-up job that the network had manufactured so that, after the debate was over, its mega-panels could wax endlessly about how The Moderates and The Progressives were dooming the Democratic Party's chances to order the breakfast special at some diner in eastern Ohio. The whole production reeked of reductive entertainment values. (Thursday night's promised an even less interesting reductive experiment: Everybody Hates Joe Biden.)

These debates have all the competitive legitimacy of a low-rent wrestling show in a legion hall in upper Michigan. There wasn't a single moment that you couldn't see coming from Hamtramck. Presidential candidates were forced to become action figures in Jeff Zucker's toybox. Meanwhile, the climate crisis was barely given a drive-by and it was almost 90 minutes in before anyone asked a question about that part of the world that is not the United States, possibly because there are no diners in the Hindu Kush. The whole night was a disservice to democracy, a disservice to public debate, and a profound disservice to decent television. Kill this format with god's own holy fire. Do it now.



The format must be killed. Justin Sullivan Getty Images

Within the performative straitjacket fashioned by CNN, SPW and Bernie Sanders both were able to handle the angry timidity of the assembled "moderates" fairly easily, although Sanders's yelling-old-dude persona is a bit old by now, and Warren seemed far less sure-footed discussing her new trade policy than she usually does in defense of her position. (And the policy itself, while consonant with her campaign theme of breaking the power of monopoly money in our politics, is less fully-baked than her other plans.)

But the debate's nearly deafening subtext was an endless reiteration of how terrified everyone is supposed to be of the president*'s magical ninja powers to turn everything into middle-school invective. Finally, Mayor Pete had had enough, and he paraphrased my favorite passage from Ulysses S. Grant:



It's true that if we embrace a far-left agenda they're going to say we're a bunch of crazy socialists. If we embrace a conservative agenda, you know what they're going to do? They're going to say we're a bunch of crazy socialists.

So let's just stand up for the right policy, go out there and defend it. That's the policy I'm putting forward, not because I think it's the right triangulation between Republicans here and Democrats there -- because I think it's the right answer.



With this remark, Buttigieg beat up CNN as decisively as Senator Professor Warren beat up John Delaney. Both richly deserved it.

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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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