So, that happened.  There were some moments, but to me they mostly looked uncomfortable or desperate or unhinged to varying degrees.  Since Kennedy/Nixon, when TV became the “trump” card for winning elections, googly eyes and flop sweat and dry mouth and mumbling and a perceived lack of confidence and presidentialness has been enough to send even the most qualified candidate into early retirement.  If anybody’s watching and listening at all, they’re looking to be convinced that one of those talking heads wants to give them something that will make them feel so ‘not-out-there-on-their-own’.  It’s not about chickens in pots or other stuff.  Almost everybody is too cynical to believe those bullshit political promises.  But fear, poking at bogey men beneath the beds and hiding in the closets of the less-than-fulfilled masses in desperate need of a champion to take on the culprits of their collective woe…that’s the cultish currency of power.  Sure, it’s despotic power, flimflam, hoodwinking and evil, but make no mistake, we are well past the tipping point of losing whatever democratic values any of us clear-thinking whiners hold dear.  None of those twenty, seemingly well-intentioned individuals gave even the tiniest trace of their ability to leap tall buildings in a single bound which will be crucially necessary in the fight for truth, justice and the American way.

The most important 10 seconds of the 14,400 that made up the two-night ‘debate’, was a statement shouted by Julián Castro over the jibber jabbery cacophony of the other nine candidates and three moderators when he paraphrasically stated that, “Immigrants are not taking your jobs and lowering your wages, American corporations are doing that!”  We have created our own version of the oppressive monarchy that led to the revolutionary establishment of the USA.  Today, 90% of our country’s wealth is in the hands of 1% of the population and that gap is widening every day. The 2020 election and the future of democracy are dependent on the emergence of a candidate who can make the case against this inequity in a calm, Oprah-believable rallying call to return to the values that truly made us great.  Donald Trump, his puppet master Putin, Big oil, Big pharma, Big insurance, Big banking don’t care about you or your family or our deteriorating ecosystem.  America is supposed to be better than that…and that’s not debatable.