Welcome to the commentary magazine podcast for today Thursday November 21st, 2019.

I am Noah Rothman, John Putthoritz is out this morning with us is senior editor Abe Greenwald,

Abe.

I know.

And senior writer in Washington, Christine Rosen.

Hi, Christine.

Hi, Noah.

We are going to begin with some reflections on last night's really boring debate.

Yeah, and we come to expect some fireworks out of these things and there weren't very many

to be had last night.

So it was kind of a substantive debate, which I suppose is a welcome change from the theatrics.

But you didn't want to little theatrics.

So I suggest we all begin with the only elements of this debate that were fiery to the extent

you can even consider them that.

But the only reason why we don't really talk about them and they do this is because they

don't matter.

The power disparity didn't matter.

So the only like back and forth exchanges that I thought we saw were between Biden and

Tom Steyer, which is again a top tier versus a nobody candidate in the race, sort of a little

bit between Elizabeth Warren and Cory Booker over health care.

But both of them were talking past each other to the point where it didn't necessarily register

as a big event in the race.

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