Same Shit, Different Day

Wow. Last night's debate was an unmitigated disaster; I truly hope none of you saw it. All seven candidates on stage were constantly talking and even yelling over one another and the moderators failed miserably in their task. And besides that, we got the same tired old questions again; I don't think there's been a single debate in which Sanders wasn't asked the question "how will you pay for it all."

_{source: YouTube}

I'm actually flabbergasted about the fact that Sanders doesn't just answer that question with a question: "why is that question never asked when the military wants new toys to play with?" But Bernie is known for one thing: he never changes. So he'll always answer the question seriously and to his best ability within the time constraints of these debates. The TLDR is that I don't think any of the candidates managed to move the goalpost last night, which makes Sanders the winner in my eyes.

Right from the start it was clear that all the other hopefuls had to make a dent in Bernie Sanders' rise; they attacked him on praising Fidel Castro (when in fact Obama did the same thing without ever having to answer for it), Bloomberg tried the old Russia-ploy which blew up in his face, Warren was hedging her bets, attacking Sanders' team for harassing her but making the case for progressive politics, Steyer got attacked by Biden, Klobuchar tried on the "unity candidate" costume, but it didn't fit, and Buttigieg had nothing to say while speaking the most. What was unmistakable though is that Sanders is the presumptive nominee and stays the presumptive nominee because he managed to stand strong in the face of all the attacks by his fellow candidates and moderators alike.

Most interesting was actually the audience; it was the first debate in which the audience was clearly biased against Sanders, which was noticed by many pundits and has lead to discussions about the audience being bought by Bloomberg. Right after the debate there was a poll among 1500 viewers and the opinions expressed in that poll were the exact opposite of the audience's reactions; they were cheering and applauding Bloomberg, and booing Sanders on several occasions, while Sanders was the most popular candidate on stage according to the poll (in fact, according to almost all polls held in the past few months). The disconnect couldn't be more clear, and I can understand how this might lead you to think that Bloomberg payed audience members to cheer for him, after buying hundreds of millions of dollars in ads, after donating to many Democratic mayors all over the country, after donating millions to the DNC, after hiring campaign staff for insanely high compensations to the point that smaller campaigns are unable to find any staffers for a normal price, after paying very good money for people to make pro Bloomberg memes on Instagram, after hiring online trolls... You get the point: this man is literally trying to buy the elections, not to win, just to stop Sanders from getting a majority of the pledged delegates.

The price for a ticket to last night's debate started at 1,750 dollars it was reported in several mainstream and online news outlets, which could explain the elitist bias of the audience. But these reports were contested by several other reports and the Bloomberg campaign stating that it did not pay audience members for support. Both Vox and the Washington Examiner reported that the DNC and the Charleston County Democratic Party evenly distributed tickets among all candidates' supporters. It has to be said though that I, or anyone else, have no reason whatsoever to trust the DNC or Bloomberg. The aftermath of this disastrous debate is a disaster all by itself. Still, the audience's reaction was remarkably pro Bloomberg and anti Sanders and Warren, a clear shift from all previous debates that I've watched.

All things considered I think the South Carolina primary will be a close contest between Sanders and Biden, and that whoever wins, will do so with a small margin; this means Sanders will enter Super Tuesday as the front-runner, nothing has changed. Sanders proved that he can handle all kinds of attacks, something that'll be vital in a race against Trump; he further cements himself as the most electable candidate of the bunch.

_{Who won and lost last night's debate}

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