The Bullington Diatribe Chronicles will run occasionally for the amusement of some, the facepalming of many others, and the inconvenience of all. The following is satire….obviously.

Well, the nation did it ladies and gentlemen. Through two hours of heavy drinking and intermittent napping, 37 of the 50 states emerged intact from the 12 Angry Men/Raging Bull mashup that was the Democratic debate with its sanity in check — the chess kind where the king is in danger of losing his head. The night got off to a rolling start as the candidates entered the stage in a cartoon style dust brawl before head moderator Lester Holt snapped at them to “knock that crap off, or I’ll let Biden in here for this one too,” at which point everyone pretty much calmed down and started making nasty faces at Holt while his back was turned. Shortly before start time, Tulsi Gabbard and Amy Klobuchar were caught passing notes to each other, prompting NBC’s Chuck Todd to swipe one of the notes from Klobuchar, which read: “OMG, Warren is like so bougie and fetch and such a drama queen, and I think she just needs to get herself some respect, you know? Like, who does she think she is?” Todd attempted to retrieve Gabbard’s note as well, but the representative had already eaten it.

When asked about her plan to pay for her recent bevy of policy proposals including free college, free healthcare, free legumes, and free freebies free freely for all, Elizabeth Warren called for Americans to face the giants just like “that plucky youngster Jim or Jack or Jake or whatever his name is in the fairy tale,” and later stated that “we need an economy that works for everyone and not just the corporations.” Beto O’Rourke followed this by addressing his primarily English audience in Spanish for the first half of his opening and stating that “we need an economy that works for everyone and not just the corporations,” at which point Cory Booker angrily proclaimed his dissatisfaction with the lack of ingenuity at solving America’s problems and finished by proclaiming that “we need an economy that works for everyone and not just the corporations.” When asked if any of the candidates had a single, original thought, they all consulted their notes for inspiration.

After tripping over each other to brag about how many babies they would allow to be butchered by the abortion industry, the conversation naturally reverted back to other issues of economic importance such as whether the nation’s wealthy inhabitants should be flayed alive or slowly crushed on the wheel for their sins. Cory Booker, in what appeared to be a Freudian slip, let slide his belief that the free market should be allowed to work. Amy Klobuchar responded by angrily flinging her notepad at the Senator, but an aide for her graciously jumped in front of it to take one for the team once again. Immigration also made it into the discussion where most of the candidates decried the situation at the border as a “national emergency,” six months after President Trump had already declared it a national emergency and attempted to alleviate the suffering through congressional means before being stonewalled by the obstinate mules in the House. Julian Castro later bemoaned the fact that we live in a country where the President can’t exercise his authority unilaterally like a Chicago-style mob boss. This was soon followed, during the foreign policy section, by a stern call to constrain the President on military action, with Cory Booker stating that “failure to do so would go against our most cherished and basic principles, unless those principles are politically inconvenient, in which case who the heck cares, am I right or am I right?”

Bill de Blasio, for his part, said he took pride in the fact that he presided over the nation’s largest police force and would work to ensure justice for all criminals regardless of how yellow-bellied and depraved they were. In response, the moderators informed de Blasio that he was referring to the same police force that had turned its back on de Blasio a few years ago out of utter contempt for the mayor’s incompetence and backstabbery. Bill de Blasio immediately shot back in an angry tirade directed at the clock along the back wall, “Well, at least I don’t live in a garbage state like Maryland.” Former Maryland congressman John Delaney, upon hearing the insult, suggested a bipartisan effort to determine whether or not Maryland was in fact a garbage state. The proceedings are ongoing in both houses of Congress and polling with strong support. Tim Ryan was begged by the moderators to say or do something but merely danced a jaunty, little Irish jig and replied, “I agree with everyone and think we should do all the things,” to which Jay Inslee added, “Oh and climate change, don’t forget climate,” prompting several approving murmurs and brow-furrowings from the other debaters.

The rest of the night passed with supremely little action apart from a question about how the Democrats would deal with Mitch McConnell as a possible majority leader, whereupon Elizabeth Warren produced a large chalkboard with an outlandishly complex Tom and Jerry themed trap ultimately designed to bait the majority leader with a block of cheese and squish him under a 2000-lb anvil where ‘X’ marks the spot. A concerned Tulsi Gabbard remarked that it looked like someone had shortened the rope holding the anvil to actually land on Warren, but the Senator waved Gabbard off, muttering something under her breath about “really getting that old turtle this time.”

All in all though, we ought to be grateful to live in a country where we can freely spend two hours watching the most moribund circus on earth as we slowly watch the minutes tick off our lives like sand through an hourglass. And, hey, what better way to commemorate this event than with a second debate tonight? That is, of course, unless you have anything better to do like, I don’t know, licking the moss off a tree or photocopying your rump on the office printer, or maybe just living life as if the sky isn’t falling. But that would mean you actually have a life, and, in that case, you’re clearly not in politics.