The angry old leftist future of the Democrats.
Daniel Greenfield, a Shillman Journalism Fellow at the Freedom Center, is a New York writer focusing on radical Islam.
The future of the Democratic Party was two angry old leftists screaming at each other for two hours to decide who hates capitalism more.
With the MSNBC and the Democratic Party's logos on a red background, the stage was set for a redder than red debate. Red was everywhere, reflected in the thick glasses of Bernie Sanders and in the garish red lipstick around Hillary Clinton's orifice of lies, and in their clamorous rants about Wall Street and the evils of capitalism that could have come from a back alley Communist pamphleteer in the 50s.
Bernie Sanders promised to end "a rigged economy" with Socialism, which is the very definition of a rigged economy. Both candidates showed their Socialist bona fides by rattling off the names of the corporations they hated the most. Bernie Sanders cheered normalizing relations with Cuba, ridiculing the idea that being Communist is objectionable. But he did express some concerns about the nuclear weapons being held by his fellow Socialists in the Democratic People's Republic of North Korea.
NBC's Chuck Todd, who was born for Archie Bunker to call him "Meathead", and MSNBC's Rachel Maddow, whose giant fake eyelashes made it impossible for her to wear her trademark glasses, moderated a debate that had no reason for existing because none of the participants had developed a new idea since the 1970s (and in Bernie Sander' case, possibly even the 1870s) and were just yelling the same things that they had yelled at all the previous debates, only louder, as if we hadn't heard them the first time. The MSNBC audience applauded every line as if it were the only job they were qualified for.
Except maybe teaching gender justice or reviewing organic cruelty-free smoothie places on Yelp.
Meanwhile Bernie Sanders picked his ear and Hillary Clinton nodded frantically during every question as if she were a bobblehead doll that had come to life and wanted to go right from plastic to president.
Anyone who had the misfortune to sit, stand or sleep through the previous Democratic debates kept hearing the same tired lines both candidates have been repeating for months; rigged economy, Donald Trump's kids, the middle class bailed out Wall Street, a progressive is someone who gets thing done, political revolution, not radical ideas, not only did I vote against the bill and "Moozlimb" countries.
Maybe it's too much to expect two career leftists with a combined total age of 142 to come up with any new ideas, but would it really have killed Bernie and Hillary to come up with some new lines?
Instead the future of the Democratic Party recited their memorized lines and rants from the previous debates. It got so bad that in response to a question about Afghanistan, Bernie Sanders reeled off the same exact rant about ISIS, Muslim souls and the King of Jordan that he had recited in the last debate until Chuck Todd gave up on the senile Socialist as a hopeless case and switched to Hillary Clinton.
The only thing that Bernie Sanders appeared to know about foreign policy was that Hillary Clinton had voted for the Iraq War twelve years ago and he hadn't. That is the only thing he will ever know.
Don't ask Bernie Sanders to find Afghanistan, Iran or Ukraine on a map. But wake him up in the middle of the night and he'll tell you that he voted against the Iraq War and that we need to raise taxes.
But what Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders lacked in the way of ideas, they more than made up for in volume. Hillary Clinton screamed, "I can get things done" as if she were pitching a product on an infomercial. Bernie Sanders ran his own telethon, stumbling over words as he boasted how much moolah he had taken in, "a million people" and "27 bucks a piece".
Eat your heart out, Wall Street. Bernie is better at suckering small-time investors than you are.
Hillary Clinton compensated for her complete lack of likability by falling back on playing the victim. She accused Bernie Sanders of ignoring feminism, black people and gay rights. She sputtered that, "Senator Sanders is the only one who would describe me, a woman running to be president, as exemplifying the establishment." Somehow a fabulously wealthy woman who is backed by the entire Democratic political establishment isn't the "establishment" because of her gender.
Hillary Clinton had tried to use 9/11 as a shield for her Wall Street donations and now she switched to using Obama's Wall Street donations as her human shield. Accusing her of being bought by special interests was engaging in an "artful smear", she indignantly insisted. Like Picasso or Jackson Pollock.
It was neither artful, nor a smear though. It was just common sense that no one was giving Hillary Clinton money because of 9/11. And a genuinely honest opponent would have made that case.
But when Hillary Clinton dared Bernie Sanders to accuse her of being bought off by special interests, the courageous political revolutionary turned tail and fled. Instead of confronting her with the facts, he began mewling something about Republicans and the Koch Brothers. Just as with the emails, Bernie Sanders backed off his criticism and showed that he didn't have the spine to stand up to Hillary Clinton.
Under all the "authenticity", Bernie Sanders is just as fake as Hillary. He paradoxically insists that he wants a political revolution, but that his ideas are not radical. After all his rants about the SuperPAC devil, he admitted that he had contemplated setting up his own SuperPAC.
Between Hillary Clinton's painfully tight smiles and Bernie Sanders checking his watch, this debate was just another infomercial for a fake election between two candidates who voted the same way 93 percent of the time. All that was left was the inane rhetoric and memorized applause lines.
"A progressive is someone who makes progress," Hillary Clinton blathered. No one asked her what progress she had ever made. Besides the progress from defending a 12-year-old girl's rapist in Arkansas to defending her rapist husband in the White House.
"I want to see major changes in the Democratic Party," Bernie Sanders demanded. He could just rename it the Communist Party.
"I have a record," Hillary Clinton boasted. But that's really up to the FBI. She promised the country half-a-billion solar panels, which it needs about as much as it needs another Clinton in the White House.
There was no truth in the New Hampshire Democratic debate, but it was child's play to spot the three biggest lies.
"I say what I believe," Hillary Clinton said. And somehow, no one laughed.
"I have been moved by my heart," Hillary Clinton said in her closing statement. "I will bring my heart with me." Medical records have already revealed that Hillary Clinton has no heart.
"I love this country," Bernie Sanders said. And for once, someone else beat Hillary in a lying contest.
