Back on September 8th, I foresaw the the downfall of John Boehner. Here's how I summed up the situation as it stood then:

Speaker Boehner is in a no-win situation primarily because his party is in the process of coming apart at the seams. He can put on a production or refuse to waste everyone's time, but he can't get around the Planned Parenthood issue or the debt ceiling issue or the highway infrastructure issue or the Export-Import Bank issue. He's going to be swept away by the same winds that are sweeping away the Establishment's control of the presidential nominating process.

He'll never survive, nor should he want to.

By September 23rd, I was sounding a louder alarm bell, telling you that Boehner was going to succumb, and possibly sooner than anyone thought was possible at the time.

The rumor is that Rep. Kevin McCarthy of California will replace Boehner but I will begin to believe that when I see it. There's basically nothing about McCarthy that would alter the impasse between the sane people and the lunatics. It would certainly represent an empty victory for the conservative nut-jobs who forced Boehner out, and either McCarthy would have to run things much differently or he'd be in Boehner's shoes within weeks.

Now, if there is someone else out there who has been this far ahead of the curve on this, maybe you should listen to them, but I'm also the one who began talking quite early on about the logic of a coalition power-sharing arrangement in the House.

I revisited that idea a few times about a week ago. The reason that things have been proceeding in the way that I projected isn't because I have any kind of unique insight into how Republicans think or are likely to behave. It's because the country absolutely has to pay its bills and the House Republicans, as a governing caucus, are getting ready to default on our debts by failing to give the Treasury Department the borrowing authority that they need. They're also getting ready to shut down the government, although that's more of an internal feud and looming political disaster than an existential crisis for the nation and possibly the health of the global economy.

I've pointed out, over and over again, that the coalition of representatives in the House that votes to pay our bills and fund our government is the real majority in the House. And that majority has been made up mostly of Democrats since John Boehner became Speaker in 2011. We've been able to limp along with this odd situation where Democrats are responsible for voting for Republican appropriations bills because the "responsible caucus" in Washington has been able to keep the government going and willing to act in bizarre ways in order to keep it going.

And we could theoretically continue this odd governing-coalition-not-even-in-name except for one thing. The Republicans were getting ready to defenestrate their own Speaker for working with this governing coalition instead of bending to their every demand.

So, it wasn't hard for me to see that Boehner's time as leader was coming to an end and that no one who would be willing to keep working with the governing coalition could be elected as his replacement.

The next step wasn't really hard to see, either, although it certainly approached being unimaginable. In a battle between a Republican caucus that demands national default and an Establishment that will never allow that to happen, the Republicans have to lose. And if that means that they have to give up their majority control over the House, that's eventually going to happen.

Now, you can look at the few lonely voices in the Republican Party who are willing to acknowledge this and point out that they're still badly outnumbered. But there's an unassailable logic behind what they're arguing that simply won't go away.

Without a viable alternative to Rep. Paul Ryan (R-Wis.), some centrist Republicans say they’d have little choice but to seek Democratic help in electing a new Speaker...

...“I don't see a Plan B” if Ryan refuses the job, said Rep. Peter King (R-N.Y.).

If it becomes clear that no other Republican can assemble 218 GOP votes, King added, “In that case, we would have to consider having a coalition Speaker.”

“It's a very simple question of math,” said Rep. Charlie Dent (R-Pa.), who first floated the idea of Republicans and Democrats joining together on a Speaker candidate last week.

“If there are not 218 Republican votes on the House floor, then by necessity the Democrats will have a say in who the next Speaker will be,” he said. “I still think it's a possibility.”

“Ninety-nine percent of the time that's something we don't want — it's not good,” King said of working with Democrats to elect a Speaker. “On the other hand, we can't go on forever without a Speaker.”

I think in our present circumstances that Paul Ryan is serving, unfortunately, as a bright shiny object who obscures more than he reveals. The issue isn't Paul Ryan per se, but whether he or any other Republican alternative can get the House Republican caucus to raise the debt ceiling. To be precise, can someone be elected Speaker without promising to default on our debts?

Paul Ryan has a lot of reasons that he doesn't want the job of Speaker of the House. It's a career-ender, for example, and he doesn't want to spend time away from his family going around the country to raise money for candidates. They're talking about relieving him from the fundraising obligations as an enticement, but the more pressing problem is that he's just as unwilling as Boehner or McCarthy to promise the conservatives that he'll refuse to pay our bills.

So, a radical idea begins to take form not because the idea particularly appeals to anyone, but simply out of desperation to avoid a congressionally created global economic contraction of unknown magnitude. If the Republicans do not have the votes to elect a Speaker who will pay the bills, then they're going to have make formal what has been informal. The real governing majority in the House will have to disregard party labels and vote for someone that the Democrats approve. They'll also have to share power on the committees, particularly the appropriations committees that are in charge of spending.

At a minimum, they need to make the threat to do this credible enough that the conservative members believe it will happen. If the conservatives are faced with the prospect of losing their majority condition in the House and getting blamed for destroying their party in a presidential election cycle, they might back down on their demands.

You heard it here first.

I support gay rights, gay equality, gay marriage, legislation that would protect the LGBT community from discrimination in housing and the workplace, and pretty much just accepting people for who they are sexually without making a fuss about it. But I can't honestly say that these are the issues that really animate me politically. I'm not gay myself and I don't consider myself an LGBT activist. When I feel like it, I write about these topics simply because I think they're important, but that's about as far as I go.

Still, I find anti-gay politicians who post pictures of their bare ass on gay dating sites to be uniquely obnoxious. I don't know quite why these people annoy me so much because there are countless other examples of politicians being incredible hypocrites. I really ought to feel at least as incensed about folks like Dick Cheney who have no compunction about sending your kids halfway around the globe to die but seek five deferments for themselves when it's their life that is on the line.

But it's these guys who want to tell us how to behave sexually that irritate me the most.

Why is that?

I understand the impulse that led Gary Legum to compare Jeb Bush’s campaign to a dead parrot that has “shuffled off this mortal coil.” I understand it because I suffer from the same impulse. I keep having to exercise self-restraint to avoid writing precisely the kind of pre-autopsy that Legum has just penned.

It really couldn’t be easier to mock Jeb Bush and his political aspirations. They are the lowest of low-hanging fruits.

But his campaign isn’t dead, yet.

And his campaign isn’t dead for the same reason that John McCain’s campaign wasn’t dead when he completely ran out of money and had to start over from scratch. It’s the same reason that Mitt Romney could simultaneously be the very last choice of the Republican base (after they had chewed over “serious” candidates like Michele Bachmann, Newt Gingrich, Rick Santorum, and Herman Cain) and the Republican nominee.

I’m not talking about Republican voters having a come-to-Jesus moment when they realize that they have to nominate someone with an iota of general election plausibility. I’m talking about the sheer impossibility of nominating Tom Tancredo or Fred Thompson or Rick Perry.

And, frankly, Tancredo, Thompson and Perry were considerably better prepared to handle the nuclear football than Donald Trump, Ben Carson, or Carly Fiorina.

Say what you want about Jeb Bush’s warmed-over policy proposals, he wouldn’t spend his first 90 days in office trying to work the light switches in the Residence or asking random Marines how to find the Situation Room.

Legum also compared the Jeb campaign to a zombie that doesn’t know it’s dead, but it could be that the more apt zombie comparison is that Jeb’s campaign is hard to kill and has a remarkable and frightening ability to come back to life.

I’ve said myself that Jeb has no juice. I’ve said that he doesn’t have what it takes. I’ve said that I see no real sign that he can fix his problems. That’s all true.

But I can’t count him out for a simple reason. Until I see the Republicans nominate a candidate as weak and ridiculous as their frontrunners, I won’t believe it will actually happen.

What you want to watch is not Jeb’s fundraising numbers or even his polling numbers. What you want to watch is if any of the other candidates who have some actual relevant experience and who would be acceptable to the Republican Establishment (sorry, Ted Cruz) start getting some real polling traction.

Jeb can be supplanted but the widespread desire for a non-joke candidate cannot.

What’s going to make me laugh is if either Rubio or Fiorina become the true Establishment alternative to Bush. That would be the rough equivalent of the Democratic elites arguing over whether Jack Abramoff or James Traficant would make a better party leader.

If you want some real perspective, consider this: the real dead parrot here, the thing whose “metabolic processes are now history,” is the Republican Party itself. And Jeb is supposed to be their defibrillator.

I think that’s what the exclamation point was all about.

I don’t know. Maybe it’s just me, but I feel like our vice-president doesn’t always get the kind of respect he deserves.

[Barbara] Boxer, who was a colleague of Biden’s during his long years in the Senate, told Politico on Wednesday that there was no reason for him to run. She was speaking after a televised debate on Tuesday among the Democrats who have announced they are running.

“I just don’t think there’s a rationale for his campaign,” the California senator said. “I think he should endorse Hillary and go out that way.”

When I see stuff like that it makes me want to explain possible rationales for a Biden campaign for the presidency.

I’ve been meaning to get to that, but it’s been one thing or another getting in my way and it just hasn’t happened.

While I’m dithering, I keep seeing shots across Biden’s bow. I mean, if you have to bring up Anita Hill to bash the man, I think you’re living in amber.

I don’t know if Clinton disingenuously came out against the Trans-Pacific Partnership to differentiate herself from Sanders or from Biden (as the BBC suggests), but everyone knows who was in charge of pushing that agreement in Obama’s first term, and it wasn’t the vice-president.

All I know is that it looks at least as likely that he will get in than that he will not, and the window is closing so we’ll hear soon enough.

Unfortunately, I still haven’t carved out enough time to thoroughly explain a rationale for Biden’s candidacy, but I will give you three things to research and discuss:

1. Character matters- politicians accumulate voting records that reflect their unique constituencies. Sanders represents a state that is skeptical of gun control. Clinton represented Wall Street. Biden represented that corporate tax haven of Delaware. You want to hold these things against them, go ahead. But they don’t mean shit, really. No matter who wins they Democratic nomination, they will face implacable congressional opposition to anything they want to do legislatively. We choose parties by ideology, but we ought to pick presidents by character. I like Biden’s character and I have more trust in his heart than I do the hearts of his most likely opponents.

2. Foreign Policy matters- whenever Biden and Clinton have disagreed on foreign policy in the last decade, I’ve found myself in Biden’s camp, or closer to it anyway.

3. Electability matters- it’s just my opinion and my opinion can certainly be wrong, but I think that between Biden, Clinton, and Sanders, it’s Biden who is acceptable to the greatest number of people. It could be that he’s too undisciplined, too much of a gaffe-machine, to take advantage of the good will people have towards him, but almost no one hates Joe Biden and even fewer people fear him.

I’m not going to tell you that Biden is head and shoulders above Clinton and Sanders or that he’d magically be able to get things done in DC just because he gets along better with the Republicans. I just think he has the best character, better foreign policy instincts than Clinton, and a better chance to avoid blowing a winnable election than the others.

That’s the Cliff Notes.

That’s why I hope he gets in.

Do you Tweet?

I do.

@SenSanders if Teddy Roosevelt were alive today, he’d use Boehner and Jeb as toothpicks.

— Martin Longman (@BooMan23) October 10, 2015

Sometimes, at least.

Follow if you want. Maybe I’ll follow you back.

I don’t want to sound like some kind of weeny liberal nag, but I’m having trouble understanding how we’re supposed to use our guns in these cases to act like the good guys who are getting the bad guys with the guns.

This week a 2-year-old in South Carolina found a gun in the back seat of the car he was riding in and accidentally shot his grandmother, who was sitting in the passenger seat. This type of thing happens from time to time: A little kid finds a gun, fires it, and hurts or kills himself or someone else. These cases rarely bubble up to the national level except when someone, like a parent, ends up dead.

But cases like this happen a lot more frequently than you might think. After spending a few hours sifting through news reports, I’ve found at least 43 instances this year of somebody being shot by a toddler 3 or younger. In 31 of those 43 cases, a toddler found a gun and shot himself or herself.

I know, I know. I’m a moron.

Because only a moron believes that a two year old can pull the trigger on a gun, right?

You might as well tell me that we put a man on the moon or that real men eat arugula.

I’m sure you’ve had enough of pantywaist protesters, but I haven’t forgotten how the NRA reacted to the shootings at Sandy Hook Elementary School.

After a weeklong silence, the National Rifle Association announced Friday that it wants to arm security officers at every school in the country. It pointed the finger at violent video games, the news media and lax law enforcement — not guns — as culprits in the recent rash of mass shootings.

“The only thing that stops a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun,” Wayne LaPierre, the N.R.A. vice president, said at a media event that was interrupted by protesters. One held up a banner saying, “N.R.A. Killing Our Kids.”

It’s hard to say that it’s the NRA killing our kids when it’s clearly our kids killing each other and themselves and their grandmothers. And this wouldn’t happen if we just put a good guy with a gun in the backseat of all of our cars to keep a watch on our toddlers and put a quick stop to any gang-related activity.

I’m sure you can go talk to the families who have been impacted by these tragedies and find them suffering from no regrets and no second thoughts about how safe their guns were keeping their families.

Oh, yes, I know the solution. Those stupid parents shouldn’t just leave their loaded guns lying around where any Tommy, Richie or Harry can pick them up and pop off a few quicks shots.

And girls shouldn’t have sex.

And boys shouldn’t horse around.

And say ‘no’ to drugs.

And no one gets hurt.

What matters is whether or not you can build a great electric car, not whether or not you feel anxious driving it because there aren't enough places available to charge it, yet. Would you judge a gas-fueled car by the availability of gasoline if there were not a national infrastructure already in place to provide it?

We'll need (and get) electric powering stations when people create the demand for them. First come the cars.

I completely agree with Jim Webb's son. I had no problem with his father's answer in the debate that the enemy he's most proud of having is the man who almost killed him with a grenade in Vietnam. Of course, that enemy soldier "is no longer around."

I guess some people thought it was hard to hear someone sound like they were proud to have killed a man, but I thought it was harder to hear Hillary Clinton say that she is proud to consider the Iranians her enemy.

I'd rather a politician be proud of the episode that won him the Navy Cross than proud to hate an entire nation of people.

And if that's a distortion of what Clinton intended to say, well, so too is it a distortion to suggest that Jim Webb was saying he was proud of killing a man.

What he did was save another soldier's life at great risk to his own.

I don't support Jim Webb's presidential aspirations, but I have no issues with his service to the country or his debate response.

After I saw that Texas Senator Ted Cruz has said that the president is turning the armed forces into a cauldron of social change and that he doesn’t think LGBT people should necessarily be allowed to serve in our military, I headed over to The Truman Library to see how a former president used our armed forces as a cauldron of social change. I encourage you to take a look-see at the timeline which runs from September 1945 to October 1953, when integration was basically complete and Truman was no longer our president.

Perhaps the most relevant elements of the timeline to our present day are these:

January 1948: President Truman decides to end segregation in the armed forces and the civil service through administrative action (executive order) rather than through legislation.

July 26, 1948: President Truman signs Executive Order 9981, which states, “It is hereby declared to be the policy of the President that there shall be equality of treatment and opportunity for all persons in the armed services without regard to race, color, religion, or national origin.” The order also establishes the President’s Committee on Equality of Treatment and opportunity in the Armed Services.

It should be noted that President Truman took his time. It was almost three years after the army first began studying integration that he finally issued his executive order. In the meantime, Jackie Robinson had broken the color barrier in Major League Baseball. It should also be noted that he simply could not have accomplished integration legislatively. To get an idea for how difficult that would have been, all you have to do is look at what happened at the Democratic National Convention in the summer of 1948.

July 13, 1948: The platform committee at the Democratic National Convention rejects a recommendation put forward by Mayor Hubert H. Humphrey of Minneapolis calling for abolition of segregation in the armed forces. President Truman and his advisors support and the platform committee approves a moderate platform plank on civil rights intended to placate the South.

July 14, 1948: Delegates to the Democratic National Convention vote to overrule the platform committee and the Truman administration in favor of a liberal civil rights plank, one that called for, among other things, the desegregation of the armed forces.

Let’s look at how things went down at the convention and in the aftermath of the convention:

African-Americans were an important Democratic constituency, but so were white Southerners. Previous party platforms had never gotten beyond bland generalizations about equal rights for all. Truman was prepared to accept another such document, but liberals, led by the ADA (Americans for Democratic Action), wanted to commit the party to four specific points in the president’s own civil rights program: abolition of state poll taxes in federal elections, an anti-lynching law, a permanent fair employment practices committee and desegregation of the armed forces.

Hubert Humphrey, mayor of Minneapolis and a candidate for Senate, delivered the liberal argument in an intensely emotional speech: “The time is now arrived in America for the Democratic Party to get out of the shadow of states’ rights and walk forthrightly into the bright sunshine of human rights.” On July 14, the last day of the convention, the liberals won a close vote. The entire Mississippi delegation and half the Alabama contingent walked out of the convention. The rest of the South would back Senator Richard B. Russell of Georgia as a protest candidate against Truman for the presidential nomination.

Nearly two weeks after the convention, the president issued executive orders mandating equal opportunity in the armed forces and in the federal civil service. Outraged segregationists moved ahead with the formation of a States’ Rights (“Dixiecrat”) Party with Gov. Strom Thurmond of South Carolina as its presidential candidate. The States’ Rights Party avoided outright race baiting, but everyone understood that it was motivated by more than abstract constitutional principles.

Truman was slated to deliver his acceptance speech at 10 p.m. on July 14 but arrived to find the gathering hopelessly behind schedule. As he waited, nominating speeches and roll calls droned on and on. Finally, at 2 a.m. he stepped up to the podium. Most of America was sound asleep.

He wore a white linen suit and dark tie, ideal for the stifling hall and the rudimentary capabilities of 1948 television. His speech sounded almost spit into the ether at the opposition. “Senator Barkley and I will win this election and make these Republicans like it—don’t you forget that!” He announced he would call Congress back into session on July 26—Turnip Day to Missouri farmers—and dare it to pass all the liberal-sounding legislation endorsed in the Republican platform. “The battle lines of 1948 are the same as they were in 1932,” he declared, “when the nation lay prostrate and helpless as a result of Republican misrule and inaction.” New York Times radio and TV critic Jack Gould judged it perhaps the best performance of Truman’s presidency: “He was relaxed and supremely confident, swaying on the balls of his feet with almost a methodical rhythm.”

The delegates loved it. Truman’s tireless campaigning that fall culminated in a feel-good victory of a little guy over an organization man. It especially seemed to revitalize the liberals, for whom the platform fight in Philadelphia became a legendary turning point. “We tied civil rights to the masthead of the Democratic Party forever,” remarked ADA activist Joseph Rauh 40 years later.

In truth, the ramifications of that victory would require two decades to play out. In the meantime, Thurmond, winning four states and 39 electoral votes, had fired a telling shot across the Democrats’ bow. Dixiecrat insurgents in Congress returned to their seats in 1949 with no penalty from their Democratic colleagues. Party leaders, North and South, understood the danger of a spreading revolt. Truman would not backtrack on his commitment to civil rights, but neither would Congress give him the civil rights legislation he requested.

Strom Thurmond would eventually flip over to the Republican Party and he was followed by the rest of the segregationists and their political descendants.

It would take the assassination of a Democratic president, the persistent organizing of black Americans, and the courage of Lyndon Johnson to create actual legislation to assure civil rights and equality before the law for black Americans. But the cauldron of change had begun in the armed forces, at the instruction of President Truman.

Are we supposed to look back at that executive order and see in it some great injustice? Some great constitutional overreach?

Or are we supposed to look back admiringly on a president who did the right and courageous thing when everyone around him seemed to be consumed with prejudice and hate?

There’s basically no question in my mind that Erick Erickson’s indictment of the Rand Paul campaign is not only the best but the truest thing he has ever written. I think he completely nailed everything that has been wrong with Rand Paul as both a senator and as a candidate. Erickson must be right about Rand alienating his father’s supporters or he wouldn’t be struggling to raise money. After all, he entered the race with an army of Paulist supporters that had been developed over more than two decades. Where are they? Why aren’t they opening their checkbooks? Why aren’t they plastering every road sign in the country with Paul bumperstickers like they did for his father?

At this point, Rand really should shut down a campaign that isn’t going anywhere and focus on getting reelected to the Senate. But he should also reconsider what he’s doing with his political career and his life. He could have been a real maverick who could speak for people on both sides of the aisle and for those who are alienated from the whole process. He hasn’t lived up to that promise.

At all.

I'm pleasantly surprised to see that a lot of people actually watched the Democratic debate. I didn't think there would be so much interest, especially when it was scheduled up against some pretty compelling playoff baseball games. In fact, it set an audience record for a Democratic primary debate.

My time in South Carolina has been restricted to a few trips to Hilton Head Island I took with my family when I was a small child and numerous trips where all I saw was the interstate and a few rest stops as I transited through. I'm no expert on the Palmetto State. But there are some things I think I know about it. The people are very conservative. They have a natural suspicion of Yankees. They have your typical Southern manners and are generally polite.

None of this would predict any affinity for a blowhard Manhattanite insult-dog of a candidate like Donald Trump. Yet, he's crushing the competition down there, including even their own senator, Lindsey Graham.

And I have only one explanation for that and it's the same one that led them to fire on Fort Sumter and for Strom Thurmond to react to the integration of the army by running for president as a Dixiecrat.

I'm sorry, but there it is.

Because I can’t help myself and I also like to know what I’m talking about, I stayed up super late and watched a replay of the first Democratic debate. This also meant that I overslept, but at least I now know what I’m talking about.

I have a lot of impressions to share about what I saw. For starters, there was a lot of novelty to the debate and it wasn’t really predictable at all, which made it much more interesting to watch than most debates. It’s a strange thing to watch two Democrats debate a socialist, a former Republican senator, and Jim Webb. We have a big tent, indeed.

What struck me about Clinton was that she appeared almost jovial and much more relaxed than she usually seems. She had some awkward moments, of course, and some of her answers were so scripted that they made me cringe. But she came across as happy to be there, mostly enjoying herself and the process, and ready enough to answer the questions that she had little difficulty adding little flourishes and quite a bit of passion to her answers. For a candidate who has been in a bit of a bunker and often displays a bunker attitude, this was a significantly better-than-average performance. I say this knowing that it’s focused on superficial aspects rather than the substance of her answers, but it isn’t substantive answers that Clinton needed to improve on. She has to be likable. She has to establish trust. She can’t appear defensive and secretive, and she definitely doesn’t want to come across as petulant or entitled. This is why the superficial stuff is so important for her. And I’d have to give her very high marks for style.

Bernie had an opportunity to do three things. First, he got to introduce himself to everyone who cares about politics more than baseball, which must be a few hundred thousand people, at least. Second, he got a chance to demonstrate that he can stand on the stage with a seasoned campaigner and debater and hold his own under hostile questioning. Third, he got a chance to create a sound byte that would be replayed all day today.

On all three tests, he did an outstanding job. Let’s face it, Bernie can be a little gruff. But he didn’t come across that way except when he was blasting the moderators and the media for obsessing over Clinton’s emails, and that was his sound byte and the highlight of the night. He got a good grilling from the moderators and some sharp criticism from Clinton and Jim Webb, but he stood up under the pressure. So, I think he’ll be fine in future debates and probably improve with each one.

Martin O’Malley has some crowd-pleasing moments and I can’t really find much to fault him on. If I have one criticism or critique, it’s that he doesn’t have a lot of presence. He seemed smaller somehow than the other candidates, even the meek Lincoln Chafee. Sanders, Clinton and Webb have a way of grabbing your attention when they speak that O’Malley lacks even when he’s speaking with passion. This was also his first stint on the big stage, and that could be part of the problem. He was willing to make some sharp contrasts with Clinton which earned him a withering gaze or two. This was good, because a lot of people suspect that he is auditioning for a place on the ticket and no one wants to see a tomato can of a debater. I suspect that there are lot of people who were seeing him for the first time, and there wasn’t much not to like. So, I think he helped himself.

A lot of people are talking about Lincoln Chafee’s supposedly flubbed answer for why he voted to repeal Glass-Steagall. I actually thought it was a refreshingly honest answer. It was his first vote in the Senate and he had just been appointed after the death of his father. The vote was overwhelmingly in favor of the bill, and he was basically unprepared to take a contrary position. In other words, if the bill had been contentious at the time and if he had had more time to prepare and understand the issues, he would have voted against repeal, but that wasn’t the situation he was in.

I think that’s an adequate excuse, frankly, and I’m grateful to see a politician explain why they screwed up and ask for people to give them a bit of a break.

That doesn’t mean that it will sell well after if goes through the post-debate media meat grinder, but I still liked his answer. Chafee seems to be there to be the peace candidate which is fine by me. It means he isn’t a waste of space. But he’s close to that because he doesn’t have any additional rationale for his candidacy other than that he’s scandal-free and didn’t get taken in by Dick Cheney’s information war machine the way that Clinton did back in 2002.

Jim Webb was interesting mainly because he is unpredictable. I didn’t really know what he was going to say until he said it. What he said, though, is not what a person says if they want to win the Democratic nomination. What he did was introduce some different perspectives that the other candidates had to adjust to on the fly, and that made his contribution worthy. It prevented the thing from devolving into an exercise is oneupmanship as each candidate tries to outflank the others from the left.

I might focus more on substantive aspects of this debate in a later post, but this superficial response is all I have right now. It was a much better discussion than what we see in the Republican debates. If there was any group-delusion is was that anything can get done as long as the Republicans remain locked in the grip of collective insanity. But even that bubble was pierced on several occasions.

I had the honor of attending the memorial service for a wonderful woman and the mother of two dear friends tonight. It was obviously a sad gathering of mourners, but it was done with the right balance of seriousness, reflection, celebration, and even fun. To me, if you can honestly say you had a good time at a memorial service, then it's been done well.

I didn't get a chance to watch the Democratic debate, and I don't regret that in the slightest. I have had a chance to watch some of the post-debate spin on cable news and also to read a little of the live-blogging that was done.

It seems as if Jim Webb and Lincoln Chafee didn't do much for their respective causes. Martin O'Malley is getting good reviews accompanied by assurances that it won't make the slightest difference.

Most of the coverage is focused on Clinton and Sanders who both are getting positive feedback. Supposedly, the questions are whether Sanders did anything to expand his base of support and whether Clinton did enough to quench the thirst for a Joe Biden candidacy.

It's your predictable shallow response that ignores the substance of what the candidates actually said.

But I've learned from hard experience that these debates are won after the fact by how the media portrays them. So, these post-debate narratives are probably more important than the actual debates.

This is especially true when the debates are cleverly scheduled to conflict with Major League playoff baseball.

So, I get it. There was a debate. Bernie said that the email scandal is bullshit and enough already.

He gets points for graciousness and honesty and Hillary gets points for getting let off the hook. Call it a tie, and let's start handicapping the next debate!