Welcome back again to another of our post-debate snap-reactions columns. Tonight was the tenth in the continuing series of Democratic presidential debates, moderated this time by CBS. When they woke up and remembered to, I should say, because at several extended times during the night I thought the moderators had completely left the room for a coffee break. It certainly seemed that way, since the candidates just engaged in a free-for-all shouting match where it was impossible to hear what any one of them had to say. This wasn't an isolated incident, it happened over and over again. And the moderators either were too timid to even try to, you know, moderate the discussion, or they were just flat-out incapable of doing so. Or, as I said, perhaps they had all ducked out for a few moments in the hallway.

Tonight's debate seemed just as high-energy as the last time around, which was held last week in Las Vegas. The stakes couldn't be higher, as this is the last time the candidates will all stand on one stage until after Super Tuesday -- which may well eliminate a number of them. But to me (at least) tonight didn't seem quite as personal and vicious as the last installment. Perhaps this was due to Amy Klobuchar and Pete Buttigieg deciding to forego the "Amy and Pete attack each other with chainsaws" part of the program -- which, up until now, had been a regular feature of all the other debates where they faced each other on stage.
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Bernie Sanders emerged from the Nevada caucuses as the man to beat in the Democratic presidential nomination race. He is now the lone frontrunner, having outpaced Pete Buttigieg and Joe Biden by significant margins. In fact, he is now positioned to become almost unstoppable, should he do well in South Carolina and, more importantly, on Super Tuesday. The question for those who would stop Bernie is now a very stark one, because it basically boils down to which candidates will quit, and how soon they'll bow out.

Bernie's good fortunes with the voters are causing the moderate and establishment Democrats to absolutely freak out right now, because they see the pathways to stopping Bernie shrinking and falling away, one by one. Last week, it was conventional wisdom that Bernie had a built-in "ceiling" of support, and that this would never exceed roughly 25 percent of the electorate. After a rash of new polls was released showing Bernie much higher than this (north of 30 percent in multiple polls), the new storyline immediately became: "Bernie will not win a majority of delegates, so let's plot how to stop him at a brokered convention." This, again, assumed Bernie was not really all that big a threat, since he obviously would never received an outright majority of the delegates.

Nevada shot that concept down, though. Bernie is going to win not just a majority, but the lion's share of Nevada delegates, after blowing the field away. If he pulls off a similar performance in California on Super Tuesday (which seems to be what the polls are indicating), he will be well on his way to winning a clear majority of the convention delegates.

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We are hereby totally throwing in the towel on our usual "weekly news wrap-up" segment here, because the Democratic primary race is ever so much nicer to focus on. In place of it, we offer up what we wrote back in Friday Talking Points Volume 523, from last April -- a "Generic Weekly News Roundup" with Mad-Lib-style fill-in-the-blanks. Two paragraphs even caught our eye as being not all that far removed from the current week, to wit:

Trump was also in the news this week for firing [HIGH-RANKING ADVISOR], which he claimed was due to [TOTALLY MADE-UP AND CAPRICIOUS REASON]. Multiple White House sources report, however, that the real reason was that [HIGH-RANKING ADVISOR] refused to violate numerous federal laws when directed to by Trump, which sent him into a rage.

...and the slightly-more-tongue-in-cheek:

In the current field, Senator Elizabeth Warren released [WILDLY POPULAR AND DETAILED POLICY IDEA], but the media completely ignored it because it was so intently focused on [LATEST SHINY-OBJECT NON-STORY FROM CAMPAIGN TRAIL]. And also because they had to have time to run the [LATEST ADORABLE CAMPAIGN VIDEO] from [CURRENT MEDIA DARLING CANDIDATE], thirty or forty times each hour. "[CURRENT MEDIA DARLING CANDIDATE] has really locked up the [CAT-LOVERS / DOG-LOVERS / ROCK FANS / STAR WARS FANS / YOUTH ACTIVIST / SENIOR CITIZENS] vote, with this new video clip," said every cable news anchor, simultaneously.

Cynical? Perhaps. Amusing? We hope so, at any rate. But let's push on with the real subject at hand instead, shall we?

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Normally, after a presidential debate, I'd wait a few days or even a week before taking a look at the state of the race nationally, but we're in the crunch phase of things so I'm just going to leap right in without the benefit of seeing how the post-debate poll numbers shift. The numbers were already shifting before the debate, though, so there's still plenty to analyze and very little time to do so. Nevada caucuses this Saturday, we've got another debate next week, and then South Carolina votes next Saturday. Three days after that is Super Tuesday, when one-third of the total delegates will be decided. So we really don't have the luxury of waiting, at this point.

Last night's debate was certainly a humdinger. It also got the highest viewership of any 2020 debate yet, if early indications are correct. More people were watching, and they certainly got more bang for their buck this time around.

Will it change anything? The conventional wisdom is that no matter how much the pundits love to dissect debates, they rarely actually move the needle with the voting public. However, that didn't turn out to be true in New Hampshire, where Amy Klobuchar rode a big debate wave right into third place. Will this one have the same effect, or possibly the opposite effect, on any of the candidates? It's hard to say, at this point.

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There's an old switcheroo-at-the-end joke that goes: "I went to see the fights, but a hockey game broke out instead." After tonight, this can now be updated to: "I went to see the fights, but a Democratic presidential debate broke out instead." In fact, the best word I can think of to describe what we all just saw is "brutal." Maybe for the next debate, we should have a metal detector installed so that nobody can bring any brass knuckles to the podium? Just a thought.

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Today, Michael Bloomberg placed in double-digit support in his fourth national poll, just before the deadline. As a result, he will be on tomorrow's debate stage. This could be a pivotal moment for the entire Democratic presidential race, no matter what the outcome.

Up until now, Bloomberg has had the freedom to carpet-bomb the airwaves -- with little or no opposition -- in almost every state in the Union. No other candidate has had a such bottomless supply of money (Bloomberg, by some reports, has now spent over $400 million in advertising alone -- a staggering number, considering that it's only February). In most of the states Bloomberg's been up on the airwaves, viewers have seen zero opposition ads to counter any of his message. This has allowed him to make the best possible first impression on millions upon millions of voters. But that's going to change tomorrow night, because for the first time Bloomberg will have to face all his Democratic opponents on free television for a few hours. So while his ads may have paved the way, this will really be the first time many voters will get the chance to see Bloomberg live and in person, rather than in heavily-scripted ads.

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[Program Note: As I am occasionally wont to do, I am taking today off because it is a holiday. Sort of. Rather than celebrating the birthday of Abraham Lincoln and George Washington separately, we now have today's catchall holiday instead. Maybe this is for the best, because even George Washington wasn't even born on Washington's birthday -- and that has nothing to do with making all federal holidays fall on Mondays. But that's a different story, of course. Today I decided to reprint an earlier column, on the subject of how many actual presidents we have to celebrate today. And the answer's not as easy as you might think. So happy holiday, everyone, and I promise we'll resume new columns tomorrow.]

Originally Published February 21, 2011

Happy Presidents' Day, everyone!

The two formerly-individual holidays celebrating Washington's Birthday and Lincoln's Birthday have been merged into a single federal holiday -- a holiday which, while intended to honor both Washington and Lincoln, has now become somewhat "genericized" (in name, at least) into a celebration of all our presidents. But what about the forgotten presidents? [Or, to be scrupulously accurate, "presidents"?]

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It was a fairly quiet week in politics, since we only had one new constitutional crisis erupt from the White House. OK, that's only partially tongue-in-cheek, but at least it wasn't one of those weeks where multiple such crises arise, we suppose.

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That headline might be misleading, because some might read it as me joining in the complaints that Michael Bloomberg is somehow getting a "free pass" into the next debate. Nothing could be further from my meaning, though, because my actual message is that continuing to exclude Bloomberg from the Democratic primary campaign process -- which includes not only the debates, but also full media vetting and crossfire from the other candidates -- is the "free pass" that Bloomberg has, up until now, both enjoyed and ruthlessly exploited. To state it even more bluntly: Bloomberg needs to be challenged directly, and the sooner this happens the better. Any Democratic candidate who doesn't yet realize this is ignoring Bloomberg's possible impact on the race to his or her own peril, plain and simple.

How is not allowing Bloomberg into the debates a good thing? That's the question that really needs to be asked of those charging that he is "buying his way into the election," and that somehow this shouldn't be allowed. So far, what both the mainstream media and pretty much all the other candidates have largely been doing is to completely ignore Bloomberg in some sort of wishful hope that he'll eventually just go away. This is a dangerous fantasy, because he's not going anywhere (and neither is his money). Don't believe me? Then why is it that Bloomberg's name was not even mentioned by any of the Democratic candidates in any of the debates so far, until the last one happened? Even that appearance was instructive, because the moderator openly admitted that they had asked for viewers' questions to be submitted in real time, and what they got was an overwhelming number requesting that Bloomberg's campaign be addressed by the candidates on stage. In other words, the moderators themselves were not going to ask about him until the viewers absolutely demanded it. It's as if an 800-pound gorilla was in the room, yet neither the moderators nor the candidates thought it worthy to even comment on the shaggy heavyweight present. "Gorilla? What gorilla? Hey, let's have the Medicare For All debate dustup for the eighth or ninth time instead of talking about King Kong, whaddya say?" This is precisely what I mean when I say that Bloomberg, up until now, has gotten a completely free pass from both the media and the other candidates. They prefer not to talk about him at all, which lasted right up until the viewers demanded that the subject be raised.

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There are now two early-voting states in the rearview mirror, after New Hampshire proved last night that it was far better at counting votes than Iowa. Otherwise, I would have had to wait a few days to write this article, but thankfully things went much more smoothly in the Granite State. So now we've got actual voters weighing in rather than just public opinion polling and punditry. And New Hampshire has shaken up the race even more than Iowa did, continuing the realignment of the Democratic presidential field.

This was, to be honest, long overdue. The polls for the past year have shown how incredibly stable this race has been, up until about two weeks ago. There was one big surge by Elizabeth Warren which fell back, one smaller and earlier surge by Kamala Harris which also fell back almost immediately, and a mini-surge by Pete Buttigieg which also diminished over time. That's it. Those are really the only graph lines which crossed -- or even appreciably moved -- during the entire year of campaigning before the votes actually started being cast. Throughout the whole time, Joe Biden had a commanding lead, Bernie Sanders held remarkably stable in second, and everyone else except Warren stayed well below double digits, for the most part. But now all that is not only changing, but changing very fast indeed.

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