So... there's a Democratic debate in about an hour. Not that anyone cares. Like DC Pierson says: we're fascinated by the GOP debates/trainwreck/shitshow, but pretty much everyone around here—save our resident trolls—is gonna wind up voting for whoever the Democrats nominate. The Democrats could nominate a Debbie Wasserman Schultz fart and we'd vote for it over Trump, Cruz, Rubio, Bush, Christie, Bush, et al.

Some people think this not caring is be design: The DNC intentionally scheduled a Democratic for the Saturday before Christmas—a night when no one is watching TV—because not watching the debate helps Hillary, hurts Bernie, and has no measurable impact whatsoever on Marty. And that may be true! Who knows! All I know is the Democratic Debate No One Was Supposed to Watch starts in an hour but a thing happened yesterday—someone's data got beached?—and the Clinton campaign is furious at the Sanders campaign and the Sanders campaign is furious at (and suing!) the DNC and Rachel Maddow is telling me that people are going to watch tonight's debate after all because there could be fireworks about the beaching of all that data. (Washington Monthly has a big explainer up about what the hell happened, for those of you who would like to get up to speed about the data breach—breach, not beach! I've learned so much already!—and you might want to read it before the Democratic Debate No One Was Supposed to Watch gets underway.)

Because you'll be watching the debate! Because "Data Breach Jolts Democratic Debate," says CNN! Because I'll be live-slogging it! Solo! Because everyone else is busy or out of town! Right here! On Slog! Join me!

4:54 PM: I begin my love-Slog duties by Googling "Seattle ABC affiliate." The debate show is on KOMO 4 here in Seattle, and it's live-streaming at www.abcnews.com.

5:00 PM: Current poll standings, care of RealClearPolitics...

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"The last best chance for Bernie Sanders and Martin O'Malley to shake up the race," says George S. Hillary was in the lead eight years ago at this stage of the race, says one of ABCNews' talking heads. Also, Bernie leads the polls in New Hampshire, and draws big crowds. SO ANYTHING COULD HAPPEN, PEOPLE. ANYTHING.

5:10 PM: I'm old enough to remember when presidential debates didn't look like game shows on space ships.

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I'm really old. Also: blah blah blah. When does the debate start? Are they debating for two hours once the candidates beam down to the set? Or has the clock already started ticking? In other words: How long do I have to be here?

5:20 PM: Ten more minutes of this blather? Oy. Here's some ass to tide you over until the debate starts...

A photo posted by Amp (Tyler) (@running_ampent) on


5:27 PM: What he said:


5:30 PM: Finally. Jesus. Fucking. Christ. Bernie and Hillary... "face each other, and the country, live!" Oh, and Martin O'Malley is here too. But who gives a fuck about that guy, right? Martha Raddatz reminds us that it's been five weeks since the last Dem debate and SO MUCH has changed in the world. She means San Bernardino and Paris, of course. Also, too, white sand data beaches. Opening statements! Squee!

5:36 PM: Opening statements!

Hillary Clinton: I will defeat ISIS—she has a plan—and she will raise the incomes of middle-class Americans, protect Obamacare, and stop people on the no-fly list from buying guns.

Martin O'Malley: I will run my mouth and my numbers won't budge. I visited a mosque. Also, I'm going to call it ISIL, okay? And Donald Trump is an asshole.

Bernie Sanders: Our economy is rigged and the top 1% can go fuck themselves and climate change is for real and I'm going to destroy ISIS by putting together a coalition to defeat ISIS but I'm not going to get us involved in quagmires, okay?

5:40 PM: First question to Sanders: Let's talk about the data breach? (Breach! Not beach! I knew that all alongI I was only funning!) Bernie is now talking about the data breach and tearing into the DNC. Bernie, prompted, apologizes to Hillary. Hillary says she appreciates the apology—appreciate ≠ accept—and says we've "resolved your data" and then she echoes Bernie on Hillary's email server: "I don't think the American people are very interested in this." Martin O'Malley jumps in, plugs his website, and neither his poll numbers nor his web traffic budges.


5:46 PM: Martin O'Malley is our "first post-9/11 mayor, and our first post-9/11 governor." Whatever that means.

5:50 PM: The moderator asks the candidate to explain how they'll do the almost impossible: prevent lone-wolf attacks. Lone-wolf attacks are almost impossible to prevent absent the creation of a totalitarian police state. So maybe we should make it just a little bit harder for lone wolves to assemble arsenals like the one those murderous bastards in San Bernardino were able to pull together? Maybe? (Hillary calls for gun control, Bernie says people are going to own guns but we need to prevent Americans from owning military weapons, Marty blows his stack and attacks Bernie and Hillary and even the moderators roll their eyes.)

5:57 PM: We've had a request in comments for some more ass. This one's for you, Despicable Me...

A photo posted by J Tyler (@jtylerwhitmer) on


6:05 PM: I'm glancing at Twitter, where the People of the Internet are slamming Sanders for pivoting to economic inequality in answer to a question about Trump's successful demagoguery. But Sanders is right: demagogues like Trump—fascists like Trump—exploit economic anxieties by providing scared, worried, not very bright people with someone to blame. (I'm resisting the urge to go Godwin here. Google "Weimer Republic" and "hyperinflation" and "failed Austrian artist.") Not abstractions like tax breaks or economic systems. Enemies—Mexicans immigrants and Muslim refugees are to blame, not a political system fully controlled by the wealthy and political subsidiaries masquerading as elected officials.

6:12 PM: So... not to inflame all the Sanders supporters out there... but Bernie's plan to defeat ISIS sounds just like Bill Maher's plan to defeat ISIS: get Jordan, Saudi Arabia, and the Gulf States to do it. Sanders just called for Jordan and Saudi Arabia to pull together an army to defeat ISIS. And here's notorious/supposed Islamophobe Bill Maher on defeating ISIS: “Where are all the other Arab countries who pretend to hate ISIS so much? I tallied up their armies one night. There are over five million people under arms if you look at all these countries, Saudi Arabia, and Jordan, and Turkey that could send troops to fight an army of about 25,000 assholes who have 1970 Toyota pickup trucks.”


I think both Sanders and Maher have a good point here.

6:26 PM: Speaking of ISIS... they're booby-trapping mass graves. Who does that? Fucking monsters.

6:28 PM: O'Malley suggests that maybe it's not our job to take out every dictator in the world—because where in the Constitution does it say it's our job to take out dictators like Assad? "The reason we're in the mess we're in... is because of Assad," says Clinton, skipping past the disastrous war in Iraq which also maybe might've had something or other to do with it. Sanders calls for us to defeat ISIS first, then take out Assad sometime. "[Then] let's have a democratic Syria," says Sanders. Should work out about as well as that democratic Iraq we sank four trillion dollars and oceans of blood into creating.

6:35 PM: I missed this:


Martin O'Malley is 52 years old.

6:36 PM: We're starting back up without Hillary—oh, here she is. "Sorry," she says. Let me know when you guys want some more ass.


6:42 PM: In response to a question about getting the middle class a raise, Hillary makes two great points: First, we live in a consumer economy and if people aren't confident—and they don't have money to spend—our economy suffers and we all suffer when our economy suffers. (Except the 1%, who never suffer.) So that's why she wants to raise the minimum wage and encourage businesses to create profit-sharing programs (how about compelling them to?) and wants millionaires to pay their fair share of taxes, which she clocks at 30% per Warren Buffet. Second, you won't hear anything like the stuff the Democratic candidates are saying during Republican debates.

6:48 PM: Martin O'Malley is talking. No one cares.

6:50 PM: By popular demand... a little more ass... hands down my all-time personal favorite...

A photo posted by Terry Miller (@terrysphots) on


6:55 PM: Hillary just finished defending Obamacare, with Raddatz pressing her on deductibles and rising costs. Sanders goes next: Obamacare is good, we ended the despicable "pre-existing conditions" scam/racket, but we need single payer. Raddatz presses Sanders for a figure: Just how much will people have to pay in new taxes to fund a single-payer health care system? Sanders says... they won't be paying for private insurance anymore, or for deductibles, so yeah. Not really an answer the question.

Sanders is trying to imply that it'll be a wash: We'll all come out even once we have single-payer and we've done away with the corrupt, jerry-rigged system we have now. Sanders should make a case for all of us paying a little more in taxes to create a single-payer health care system—which will not only buy us better health-care outcomes, but also relieve us of the anxieties built into our for-profit health-care system. (The system Obamacare preserved and may have rescued.) Right now we all have to worry about our coverage, whether we have enough coverage, the chance that we might get sick and lose our coverage (which can happen even under Obamacare), how big our deductibles are, and on and on and on. Hillary is saying "no middle-class tax hikes" but I would happily pay more in taxes to have those worries lifted off my shoulders. Wouldn't you?

7:02 PM: College—how free should it be? Totally, mostly, or nearly?


7:13 PM: Jesus Christ, let it end already.

7:15 PM: OMG. The moderator is asking about the bullshit, debunked, non-existent "Ferguson effect." It's not a thing. ABCNews should be ashamed for perpetuating this big lie.


7:25 PM: Racial justice—Black Lives Matter—name-checked, and sped past. Now we're on to drug reform, treatment, addiction issues.

7:26 PM: Raddatz takes us back to (inter)national security—Libya is in chaos, she says to Hillary, and you supported toppling Ghadaffi (sp?), and, again, Libya is a total shit show now. So do you take responsibility for the mess you helped to make there, Hillz? "The whole region has been rendered unstable, in part because of the aftermath of the Arab Spring," says Hillary. It's always something... but it's never the Iraq War, which Hillary supported. (Me too! But I'm not running for president! Or anything else! Ever! I consider myself forever disqualified from having opinions about the Middle East in public ever again because I supported the Iraq War. But I'm probably going to vote for Hillary. #Irony!) Sanders weighs in, now O'Malley. Sanders says we're good at taking down regimes, not good at controlling what comes next. O'Malley says we've undervalued stability. One day we'll have to confront the real reason most of the countries in the Middle East can only be stabilized by tyrants and dictators and bullshit monarchs... see: The end of WWI, the collapse of the Ottoman Empire, the way western imperial powers carved up the Ottoman Empire.

7:38 PM: We're talking about spouses now—the kind of first lady Mrs. Sanders, Mrs. O'Malley, or Mr. Clinton will make. I can't listen anymore. I'm going to go find one more ass pic—something nice to close this post—and then I'm out.

7:45: Closing statements!

Sanders: "Political revolution."

O'Malley: "New leadership."

Clinton: "May the force be with you."