Last night, at the Democratic debate in Las Vegas, Massachusetts Senator Elizabeth Warren finally put on the combat boots that are still speckled with the blood of banking lobbyists and got back to the business of stomping ultra-rich asses. Warren had been trying to be above the fray at the debates, largely, until she was put on a stage with Mike fuckin' Bloomberg, fer fuck's' sake, and, well, his smug fuckin' billionaire face was just begging for a rhetorical curb-stomping.
It's not just that Warren went at him with a combination of sharp stiletto and dull ax blade, making him watch as his organs were dumped onto the stage. It's that she fucking enjoyed it, like it was absolutely cathartic. For many of us who have had Warren in our top tier (if not first) since she entered the race, it was positively orgasmic. When Warren opened with "I'd like to talk about who we're running against, a billionaire who calls women 'fat broads' and 'horse-faced lesbians.' And, no, I'm not talking about Donald Trump. I'm talking about Mayor Bloomberg" as her opening comment, the audience gasped, I fuckin' gasped, and then I thought, "Oh, shit, it's on."
And it was. The entire debate was more energetic, more passionate, and more engaging than pretty much any other primary debate that I can remember, from the Klobuchar/Buttigieg bloody cage match to the attempts to ding Bernie Sanders for his health records to Biden finally being coherently cranky. But it was Warren going warrior that raised the temperature of the whole event. The evening was something of a Hail Mary pass for Warren. Fading in the polls, watching Buttigieg, Klobuchar, and now Mike fuckin' Bloomberg pass her in the polls, she gave up her last fucks and threw long and hard. And the thing about Hail Marys is that, when they work, they are things of beauty.
Warren went after everyone on the stage, dismissing Buttigieg and Klobuchar's health care plans as bullshit (although, to be fair, Klobuchar has far more than a "Post-It note" on her website) and, in a truly gutsy moment, actually pushing back on the most sacred of Sanders' sacred cows, his Medicare for All plan, saying, "His campaign relentlessly attacks everyone who asks a question or tries to fill in details about how to actually make this work. And then his own advisors say, yeah, probably won't happen anyway."
But it was Bloomberg who Warren returned to time and again, just fucking reaming his ass over the racist assaults that were "Stop and Frisk," eviscerating his weak, late pseudo-apology with: "When the mayor says that he apologized, listen very closely to the apology. The language he used isn't about stop and frisk. It's about how it turned out. No, this isn't about how it turned out. This is about what it was designed to do to begin with."
And when it came to Bloomberg's mistreatment of women, Warren went right for the billionaire's throat and wallet, calling him out for the non-disclosure agreements the unknown number of women signed, likely as a condition of a monetary settlement: "Are the women bound by being muzzled by you? And you could release them from that immediately? Because, understand, this is not just a question of the mayor's character. This is also a question about electability." Bloomberg's gonna need to spend another $400 million to spin that in his favor.
Yes, the candidates on stage did seem to be ignoring the orange gorilla in the room by not attacking Trump enough, but Bloomberg was the Trump stand-in. Bitch-slapping Bloomberg around the stage is great practice for going after Trump. Jesus, Bloomberg can actually make a sentence. If Warren attacked Trump for the NDAs or his border savagery (which, by the way, was sadly not discussed last night), he'd sputter for a few seconds and yell, "Pocahontas!"
A lot of us indulged in the fantasy of Elizabeth Warren, armed for bear, stepping into an arena with Trump. And you know she's licking her lips at the possibility. Should Trump actually debate his Democratic opponent, that candidate has to know that they aren't dealing with a rational being. They are dealing with an uncontrollable rage machine powered by narcissism, lies, and spite. They are dealing with someone who had a rally during the debate where he complained that a military dog got more attention than him, vented about Hillary Clinton, bragged about his 2016 victory, and said about eliminating the estate tax, no, really, "So if you love your children, it's good. If you don't love your children, it doesn't matter. Don't leave it to them if you don't love them. If your children are no good to you, don't give them anything. Let them go out to work like hell." Debating Donald Trump will be like wrestling orange Jello.
It was a good night for a good candidate in Las Vegas. Let's hope she keeps kicking ass. And if you thought that Warren was too angry, too mean, or too shrill while Sanders, who yelled almost every answer (as is his way, love him or hate him), was presidential, you have a fuckload of self-reflection to do.
