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.

Ah, this is what we were really waiting for all this time, wasn’t it folks? Joe Biden stroking the Dr. Evil cat while taking slow, deep, diaphragmatic breaths of Kamala Harris’s hair; Bernie Sanders taking each of his old-man pills individually while explaining Medicare for All in between sips of prune juice and Ensure; Pete Buttigieg getting pinched on the cheek by everyone older than him and asked where he was thinking of going to college — all this and nothing else of much importance as the electoral purge continues. Let’s see how they all did:

I thought Biden had a solid night on the whole, insomuch as “solid night” means “sounded vaguely normal and not hopping mad.” We had the usual stumbles here and there, but I thought his use of the woosh-woosh machine to pacify Kamala Harris in the third act was pretty genius. Reading her the bedtime story was a little creepy, but it fits with his general persona as the nation’s uncle. Next time, I’d recommend he pass out Snickers instead of figgy pudding to the audience, though I recognize some might see that as offensive to the fruit lobby and Christmas carolers everywhere.

Speaking of Kamala Harris, we have really got to recognize the genius of her tax proposal, where she very strongly tut-tutted the Republican tax bill which doubled the standard deduction and instead pushed for a $500, that’s right everyone, $500 tax credit to people making under $100,000. “What?” you may be saying to yourself, “How is that better? Shouldn’t we just let people save more of their hard-earned money instead of blindly redistributing it?” Aha, see that’s where you’re wrong, Mr. Generic Money Grubber, because math, logic, and facts are racist and homophobic and anti-poor people and misogynistic and xenophobic and Islamophobic and micro-aggressive and patriarchal and just generally verboten in the Democratic party. Also interesting was her anecdote about making sure that bodycams were always on for California police officers while she was attorney general, which had to be exhausting going around each day to check each individual camera. I mean, wouldn’t you delegate that task at some point? I can’t help but think that would have freed her up to more important items; heck, she might even have been useful.

Bernie Sanders seemed a little off to me…no, I’m being quite literal. I don’t know why they let him speak into the electrical outlet for so long, especially when he kept sticking a fork into it to watch the sparks fly out again and again. And, charming though it was, someone really should have told him to stop waiting for the Soviet national anthem and stop standing at attention in anticipation. Honestly though, I pin that one on the MSNBC staff. The guy’s slowly approaching eleventy-seven and four hundred; cut him some slack.

Now the one who really struck me (not in the Amy Klobuchar sense) was Kirsten Gillibrand. On abortion rights, she waxed eloquently about her lifetime of service to the industry and stated definitively that her first act in office would be to enshrine abortion as a national right for all. Later, on foreign policy, she made it clear nuclear war was a grave threat to the country and stated definitively that her first act in office would be to reenter talks with Iran to secure peace in the region. Then, turning to immigration, she expressed outrage at the border crisis and stated definitively that her first act in office would be to fix all the immigration issues with one fell swoop. To be honest, I’m a wee befuddled as to how all these “first act” aspirations are all going to be actual first acts, but we’ve seen so many different iterations of herself in the past that she might just be able to have her former selves all sign different first acts and claim “promise kept” through a slight technicality.

Everyone else had their moments — John Hickenlooper and Michael Bennet both vying for the title of Mr. Colorado; Eric Swalwell not having a blessed clue what on God’s green earth was going on and trying to figure out if he was him or you or I or he or thee or they or us; Andrew Yang leading a risky but bold crusade against formal attire and bucking the tie — I had a jolly old time. A general theme I particularly appreciated was their focus on combating Trump’s dictatorial style of governance by pledging themselves to doing everything by executive order and fiat. Whether it was Kamala Harris spouting off that she’d give Congress 100 days to act on immigration before she’d do it herself like Thanos in Infinity War, or Bernie Sanders calling for the next Democratic President to get out their executive pen to rescind everything Trump has done, or several candidates calling for various schemes to squelch state-based deliberation on abortion; I’m just glad I don’t have to worry about any possible, future Presidents lighting up the Constitution like a piece of gasoline-soaked flash paper.

And now that’s it all over, we can get back to living our lives, the most mediocre of which are generally more interesting than what happened over the past two nights, and hoping to high heaven that none of these happy clowns ever get close to the Oval Office unless accompanied by a White House intern giving a tour.