ublic. Yeah that was a hard fail.

Let's say Buttigieg. He talked about him. He was the closest thing to the adult in the room and it seemed to be that's the channel he's trying to carve out is the one who doesn't say crazy stuff. So he was saying that for health care, since we already know the public will never go for a solution where they lose their private health care that they like, Buttigieg is saying exactly what I said a few months ago when I did a whiteboard thing which is what's wrong with keeping the private ones for people who want it while making a public option short of the Medicare for all or the Medicare for the ones who want to sign up for it. Let's say as the most practical way to get to something like full coverage. That's maybe hard. Maybe we can't get there but it's a reasonable thing to say.

So Buttigieg is carving out this reasonable sound and he's carving now in guns and health care. So on guns he looks at Beto and he says you're not going to go to people's homes and get all their guns. The best we can do — and this is best meaning if you're of this political persuasion not my personal opinion best — but the best you can do is to stop the sale of new ARs, you know the new assault rifles as they would call them. And I thought to myself you know that might be a good idea or it might be a bad idea but it's an adult idea.

So Buttigieg took the role of the adult by saying it's great that you love candy before dinner but you can't have candy before dinner, right? So he does that on both guns and healthcare. I thought it was very effective.

So I'm seeing some people saying that there was no clear winner last night and there was nobody who stood out and I disagree. I would say that Buttigieg, if that didn't move him into the top three and I doubt it moved him that much, you should put him in a solid fourth place if he's not already there. Maybe he's already there as the top three started to falter.

Somebody says when Pete repeats, echo Scott's got things highly of him. Well of course that's exactly what I'm doing. When he agrees with me I think he's smart. That's how it works. That's how it works for all of us. So I think Buttigieg had a great night. I would be surprised if he doesn't at some point get into the top three and it depends which of the top three falters first I think.

Let's talk about Bernie. Bernie once again impressed. Bernie looked healthy and vigorous. Damn it Bernie you're impressing the hell out of me with your vigor and your fight. And I thought he had a good debate too. Now I don't think it matters and I don't think it matters that AOC and three of the four squad endorsed him. That's the other news. Because I think the hard problem and the fact that he is so completely unelectable in a general election. I just don't think Bernie can get across the finish line but his performance was great. He looked great. Yeah he had a good debate. Good enough.

Let's talk about Biden. Biden is being chided by both sides so even the liberal pundits are mocking him for his word salad. So whoever used the phrase first — it might have been Bret Baier who said that Biden was talking in word salad. Now that's especially word salad about somebody who has a cognitive decline in their old age. Now I don't know that Bret Baier was intentionally trying to make that connection but in my brain that's automatic. If you hear that somebody of a certain age is talking in a word salad your brain automatically goes to a cognitive decline and it looked like cognitive decline to me. Have you noticed that?

Bret, the Biden smile is upside down. Have you noticed that? Here's what a smile should look like. Here's Biden's smile. I know I can't even do it but he somehow looks like he's smiling while his smile is actually inverted. I don't know how to do it. Like somehow he makes it look like a smile while he's frownin