Tuesday night's Democratic forum on CBS wasn't the final primary debate of this season, but it's likely the last one that will matter. Between now and the next debate, a total of 21 states -- and that includes the biggest ones, California and Texas -- will hold their primaries. By then, it will almost certainly be over.
So you think the candidates would use the time to talk about things that voters cared deeply about. And for a brief moment, one of them actually did that. In his first answer, Bernie Sanders brought up wages. He said they ought to rise faster, which is true.
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Now, how could wages possibly go up with the open borders Sanders is demanding? That's an unanswerable question. But at least he mentioned it and that's exactly why he is the front-runner. When you talk about things people care about, they respond.
Michael Bloomberg is not the front-runner; he'd like to be. When given his chance to speak, Bloomberg went right to the issue he believes voters care about most -- the fact that Bernie Sanders is a secret Russian agent.
Mike Bloomberg: Vladimir Putin thinks that Donald Trump should be president of the United States and that's why Russia is helping you get elected so you'll lose to him.
Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt.: Oh, Mr. Bloomberg --
So that's what Bloomberg's consultants told him to say. The lesson here is obvious: Go into political consulting -- even dumb people get rich.
At least one audience in America was powerfully moved by Bloomberg's attack -- the other candidates. At the very mention of Vladimir Putin, the stage erupted. Suddenly the debate sounded like a radical book club from the 1970s, old people yelling about the Cold War. "Russia! Russia! Russia!"
Pete Buttigieg, who is 38 but seems at least a century older, jumped in with his theory. What Trump and his paymaster Vladimir Putin actually wants, explained the tiny robot from South Bend, is political chaos. Buttigieg seemed totally convinced that no one had ever said that before.
At this point, the moderators at CBS just gave up. The chaos Putin is hoping for descended on the debate stage. Sanders decided it was a perfect opportunity to indulge his real passion, which is attacking America, a country he clearly hates.
Here he is explaining that the American criminal justice system is actually more repressive than communist China's.
Sanders: We have a criminal justice system today that is not only broken, it is racist. It got more people in jail than any other country on Earth, including China. One of the reasons for that is a horrific war on drugs.
Oh, the war on drugs. Bernie Sanders talks about that in every speech he gives. A declining country with a sad underemployed middle class obviously needs to smoke a ton more weed. That's Bernie's solution to the malaise -- fire up a bowl, numb out, maybe you won't notice.
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So where's all this weed going to come from? Well, Bernie has got a plan for that, too. Black people are going to sell it to you. No kidding.
Sanders: And I'll tell you what else we're going to do. We're going to provide help to the African-American, Latino and Native-American community to start businesses to sell legal marijuana rather than let a few corporations control the legalized marijuana market.
That's a real clip, by the way. So first, they fill black neighborhoods with abortion clinics. Now, their front-runner is encouraging more black kids to sell drugs. But somehow this is the party that loves black America. It doesn't sound like it.
But whatever. Joe Biden soon changed the subject by making very loud noises. Biden has lost his ability to speak clearly, and that's got to be frustrating for anyone. In Biden's case, it's led to a series of rage eruptions.
Joe Biden, former vice president: You talk about -- whether we're talking about with Bernie. Bernie, in fact, hasn't passed much of anything. The fact of the matter is --
Tom Steyer, billionaire hedge fund manager and activist: I get to answer that.
Biden: Look, the fact is --
Steyer: You're out of time.
Biden: I'm not out of time. You spoke overtime, and I am going to talk. Here's the deal. Here is the deal. The fact of the matter is, look at what's happening here. Look at what's happening here --
At the very mention of Vladimir Putin, the stage erupted. Suddenly the debate sounded like a radical book club from the 1970s, old people yelling about the Cold War. "Russia! Russia! Russia!"
The crowd roared, because screaming always elicits roars from crowds. Our animal brains at work. But for those who are trying to follow what Biden was actually saying -- deaf people, for example, reading it at home on closed caption -- it was a profoundly confusing moment.
By the end, Biden's train of thought didn't simply get lost. It hopped the tracks and became a fiery derailment plunging off the bridge into the gorge below.
Biden: I would make it clear ... I'd make it clear to China. We are going to continue to move closer to make sure that we can, in fact, prevent China -- prevent North Korea -- from launching missiles to take them down. And if we don't -- why am I stopping? No one else stops.
"Why am I stopping," he asked. Well, because disjointed sentence fragments are counterproductive in a presidential campaign.
The good news is, at least Biden still knows a verbal cul de sac when he hits one. A few months from now, he'll be reciting Allen Ginsberg poems to strangers at bus stops. He's going fast.
Elizabeth Warren was there, too. Warren is not going to be president. That's a good thing. She's awful, maybe the most unpleasant human being ever to run for president in this country. You'd be in Paraguay by the end of the first Elizabeth Warren administration just to stop the noise.
Warren seems to know this. She can tell that she is doomed. If nothing else, she's not stupid. And she's decided to spend her remaining time destroying Michael Bloomberg.
And really that's a nice way to go out if you think about it. It's a service to the country. But, unfortunately on Tuesday night, it didn't work. Instead, Warren just humiliated herself.
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Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass.: I was visibly pregnant. The principal wished me luck and gave my job to someone else. Pregnancy discrimination? You bet.
But I was 21 years old. I didn't have a union to protect me. I didn't have any federal law on my side. So I packed up my stuff, and I went home.
At least I didn't have a boss who said to me kill it that way that Mayor Bloomberg is said to have said to one of his pregnant employees.
Bloomberg: I never said that. Oh, come on!
Whoa, whoa, wait a second! We have news emerging. Did you notice here Elizabeth Warren say there are circumstances in which encouraging abortion might be wrong? Oh, don't tell Planned Parenthood -- she'll lose her funding.
Meanwhile, Warren's story about her own pregnancy could have been the most depressing moment of the night. The story is a lie. Everyone knows it is. It has been conclusively debunked by her on tape.
But Warren keeps telling the story anyway, with exactly the same inflections and pauses and hand gestures. Keep in mind, this is a person who was once a tenured Harvard law professor. She wrote a genuinely good book at one point. People respected her.
Now? Well, now, Warren's up there degrading herself with some transparent whopper designed to show you how oppressed she is.
By her time is over. Warren will be Hillary Clinton pacing her backyard with a bottle of wine and sending bitter tweets about Trump at midnight. No normal person will have lunch with her after this. It's pathetic and sad.
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But it's not just her -- it's universal this year. Everyone in the Democratic field has been greatly diminished by this, and it's not because they're all bad people. Not all of them are bad people. It's because their ideas are absurd.
Adapted from Tucker Carlson's monologue from "Tucker Carlson Tonight" on Feb. 26, 2020.