Debate worse than worthless

I watched the entire Democratic debate.   What a waste of time.  I will be brief.

Either the debate should have helped Democrats choose between the two candidates or it should illuminate issues that will inform the American public about matters of civic concern.  

This debate did neither.

Hillary and Bernie each looked like competent ugly politicians talking trash about one another.   No minds were changed and nobody was informed about anything.    What did happen was destructive for Democrats.   We watched an angry shouting match.

I have written and deleted some detail of the gratuitous and misleading descriptions that each side used to charge the other.   Hillary and Bernie have evolved to essentially the same positions on gun control, on increasing the Social Security tax tax on high earners, on the $15 minimum wage, on reducing mass incarceration, on controlling or breaking up banks.   Yet their debate conduct last night was all about the supposed lack of integrity of the other in the timing and ferocity of their adopting similar points of view.  So, Hillary's 1990s comment about superpreditors "was a racist term, and everybody knew it was a racist term," Bernie said.    Bernie's evolving position on guns as befits his role changing from a Senator representing Vermont to a Democratic candidate for national office was characterized as lack of sympathy for the victims at Sandy Hook.   Hillary--like every other candidate in either party--getting contributions from banks showed her lack of integrity and qualification.   

The gulf between either Democrat and any Republican candidate is huge, but this debate was all about angry differences on very small points between the two Democrats, with the differences charged as being about fundamental integrity and fitness for office.   Ugh.

Happily for Democrats, the debate was boring because there is only so much squabbling one can watch before it feels endless and repetitious.  Its only value will be to assist Republicans.  They will have good video clips to use in general election campaign commercials and it will serve to make it less likely that Bernie supporters will turn out to vote for Hillary in November, the wedges between them having been driven deeper.