The real fight night. Joe Biden mumbles, Bernie Bumbles, Warren Fumbles, and everyone grumbles.

I'm Ben Shapiro. This is the Ben Shapiro show.

Now, that's some pretty outsized enthusiasm for what ended up being a pretty

soporific debate. Soporific in the dictionary. Boring. Okay, I'm going to put you to sleep.

Here's the thing. There were some moments. There were some moments, but how you think that debate

went last night for the Democrats? And it was the first real debate because he got all 10 of the leading

candidates, meaning three leading candidates and a bunch of Lilliputians. You got all of them on one

stage. And it was a grand moment. It was going to, it was going to be the moment when we got some clarity on the candidates. Yeah, we didn't. Instead, what we ended up with was a bunch of people clubbing each other with sticks. And it wasn't really particularly telling. Because how you think the debate went last night depends on what your expectations were going in. So if you thought that Joe Biden was going to collapse and fall off the stage, he didn't quite do that. And he sort of stumbled around on stage, knocked into some furniture, but he's still upright, right? He survives. If you thought that Bernie Sanders was going to collapse into pudding, that didn't happen either. Bernie was just Bernie. Bernie is always Bernie. That guy's been Bernie since he was five. He's sort of like the high school principal and back to the future. That guy was always bald.

Burr. either. Bernie was just Bernie. Bernie is always Bernie. That guy's been Bernie since he was five. He's sort of like the high school principal and back to the future. That guy was always bald. Bernie was always Bernie and Bernie will remain Bernie. Long after he's dead, Bernie will be stumbling around talking about making the rich pay their fair share. And if you thought that Elizabeth Warren was going to have a breakout moment, and this is where I think that the debate, it didn't change anything, but it did change

an underlying assumption. If you thought that this was Elizabeth Warren's moment to shine, and she really didn't. She really didn't. See, what we have right now, just in terms of the dynamics of this democratic race, is a three-way standoff. We have the very end of the good, the bad, and the ugly. They have three people, and they all have their guns pointed at each other, and it is utterly unclear who's going

to fire first. And each person has a sort of prisoner's dilemma with the other members of the

stage. The worst possible option is for them to open up their guns on the other members of the

stage. But if nobody opens up their guns, then everything remains exactly as it is with Biden eking out a narrow victory over the combined voting

force of Sanders and Warren. But for each individual candidate, they have no real interest in starting

a firefight. So Biden did it a little bit with Warren, a little bit, and Warren didn't really

hold up particularly well to it. But the fact is that each one of those candidates sort of wants to avoid conflict with the other two. So if you're Bernie, what you're hoping is that Biden attacks Warren. Warren attacks Biden. They knock each other out like a NASCAR crash, and you just run on the inside lane and win the nomination. If you're Biden, you're hoping that eventually Sanders and Warren tire of being best friends, and they go after each other and you just sort of walk through that middle lane to the nomination. And if you're Warren, you hope that Bernie at a certain point gets frustrated and takes out Biden for your benefit. But in doing so, poisons the well with all the Biden voters and all of them end up with Elizabeth Warren. So you have all of these three candidates with their guns pointed at each other, but none of them actually have an interest in starting a firefight. So there's a lot of talk before the debate yesterday about maybe this was going to be the moment when they opened up their guns on one another. But that's not happening. That's not happening. And the person who really, in the end, does need to break away from the pact as Warren. So if your assumption, if your baseline

assumption is that if Warren just keeps doing what she's doing, she wins the nomination, then she had a

fine night last night. If your baseline assumption is she does need to do something to overcome Biden,

and that is my assumption, because the polling numbers at this point, as much as there's been

talk about her early polling numbers and her gradual rise and all this, she has no support in the black community. Bernie's support level remains absolutely steady.

In Iowa right now, Bernie and Biden are running ahead of Elizabeth Warren, and in New Hampshire,

in several of the polls, Bernie is running ahead of Elizabeth Warren. If she loses Iowa and New Hampshire,

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