Did you miss last night's Democratic beauty pageant? Five bombshells strutted down the stage on Las Vegas to answer questions about their career ambitions and dreams for world peace. Alas, there was no time for a swimsuit competition.
No huge surprises emerged from the debate, aside from an Amber Alert that threw viewing parties across the state into a panic. There's something maybe a little unseemly about how everyone at Comet booed when their entertainment was interrupted for a bulletin about a missing child? (She and her mother were located safely in Spokane, thanks for asking.)
But there were also some pleasurable diversions during the debate in the form of quippy remarks, bizarre mutterings, and as happens most nights, Dan Savage tweeting about analingus. (The candidates also talked about Libya and Pacific trade and Keystone and guns, but most of that was pretty snoozy stuff we've heard a milion times before.) I've collected some of the fun highlights for you below. You're welcome, America.
First of all, there was the highlight of the evening: Bernie Sanders hollering at the world to just shut up, everybody, about the damn emails.
Lipless aquatic creature Lincoln Chafee didn't agree with that, and needled Hillary about her lack of credibility as it pertains to email. Did she want to respond? "No." This moment would only have been more perfect if she had then knocked her podium over and set it on fire. WITH HER EYES.
The most painful moment: Lincoln Chafee explaining his vote to repeal Glass-Steagall, which was so fumbling it was a ripoff of a Homer Simpson joke. "It's my first day!" Sadly, there were no penguins present to quack approvingly.
Then there was CNN's question about what enemy the candidates are most proud to have made. Chafee's proud of having alienated the coal lobby; O'Malley the NRA; Clinton was a greedy Gus and claimed the NRA, drug companies, healthcare lobbyists, and the Iranians; Bernie claimed Wall Street and the pharmaceuticals; and Senator Webb smugly cited just one guy who threw a grenade at him.
Wait, what?
Turns out, Jim Webb doesn't just SEEM like an action movie character. He was in a battle in Vietnam that sounds absolutely terrifying and culminated in him killing a whole bunch of people and then using his body to shield a fellow soldier from an explosion. Of all the candidates running for President, Jim Webb probably has the highest body count, so there's one way to compare them.
Also of note is what the candidates had to say about LGBT issues: nothing, even though the debate was hosted by two openly gay men. Compare that to the Republicans, who are still squabbling about what they can do about gross homosexual marriages. It took them awhile to get there, but at least the Democrats have finally come around to noticing that queers deserve civil rights too. Now, if they could just do something about all the states where you can still get fired for even SEEMING like you're gay.
Ugh, but we also have to talk about Hillary Clinton refusing to take a position on pot, which feels a bit like her cowardly opposition to marriage equality that lasted up until a few years ago.
Last year, she said it was too soon to legalize marijuana nationwide, and that we need to study how it goes in Washington and Colorado. Last night, she hadn't changed that stance: we still need more time. Oof. At least nobody went the Carly Fiorina route and tried to fabricate a connection from regulated pot to prescription drug abuse.
"We have the opportunity through the states that are pursuing recreational marijuana to find out a lot more than we know today," Hillary said. "I do support the use of medical marijuana, and I think even there we need to do more research so we know exactly how we're going to help people for whom medical marijuana provides relief."
So, that's kind of shitty. Come on, Hillary, how much more do we need to "find out" about the harm of incarcerating people for smoking pot?
That disappointment aside, last night's debate was marked by a nicely grown-up tone that was a reminder of what a presidential race sounds like when reasonable people make intelligent points. Nobody said anything overtly racist, or lied about abortions, or insulted Rosie O'Donnell. (That all was happening in the backchannel, where Mike Huckabee tweeted a joke about how Asian people eat dogs, HAHAHAHA.)
Grown-up, reasonable, intelligent? The Democrats may be doomed.