How do you say "nightmare" in Spanish?

The Democrats's first round of debates was a never-Trumper's nightmare. Bad as it was all around, a few embarrassments stand out.

First was the plethora of VP contenders, book floggers, and otherwise supererogatory deadwood. I like the idea of political parties, but only if they have some coherence.  Tom Perez has admitted that he wanted all of those people on stage, and he wanted fireworks, because it generated "earned media."  Is that what we have political parties for? To earn the attention of the ratings whores who run our media?

No, Mr. Perez.  If the 2016 election should have taught party leaders anything, it's that the party should limit the field to people with the support of its leaders. Nancy Pelosi, good as she is as a Speaker, is a feckless party leader.  Her voice should count, and it should be loud.  The party is not served by Eric Swalwell's proof that back-benchers should be seen and not heard, Maryanne Williamson has no business on the debate stage, Andrew Yang should run for dog-catcher before President, and on and on.  And Bernie Sanders?  What part of "party" does the DEMOCRAT party not understand?  Of course, the party should work to defeat him; he isn't even a member!  Yikes.

And then there's the circular firing squad, led by Kamala Harris. After feigning reluctance to criticize a fellow Democrat, Sen. Harris implied last week that Mr. Biden was "celebrating" segregationists.  She didn't have the courage to accuse him of doing so; he simply said that she didn't think anyone should do it. (Sometimes, context is everything.) But by the night of the debate, she had dropped all pretense. After clearing up, for those of us in doubt, the burning question of whether Mr. Biden is a racist - she said he is not - she accused him of "praising" segregationists and then, again after protesting that the debate shouldn't be a food fight, proved that point by throwing him under the bus, rehearsing a forty-year-old grievance, choreographed with the Tweet of a picture of herself as pickaninny in pigtails.  Food fight? No. Knife in the back?  Sure.  The left says she won the debate.  Wrong. Donald Trump won it.

The debate about healthcare was not about healthcare.   Everyone up there was for universal coverage. The debate was about whether private insurance companies were a sufficient cause for our broken system. Those opposing private insurance did so out of hatred for their profit motive.  There was no substantive discussion about the quality of care, the negotiating prowess of private entities vs. the corrupted government, or anything else.  Single payer is one thing, but a government-run health system - can you say "VA", little girl? - is something quite again.

A special vote of thanks to the moronic José Díaz-Balart. He asked each of the candidates whether someone whose only violation of the law was entering the country illegally should be deported, conjuring up images of good people living long commendable lives, but describing as well thugs with MS-13 tats the minute they exit the tunnels.  They haven't committed any crimes here either. So all those lawyers on the stage put on their pander suits and said they would not deport those people.  Mayor Pete at least had the sense to frame his response as a use of resources, but the right answer was simply "How long have they been here? Twenty minutes or twenty years?" If practical, illegal entry should be a tort, the remedy should be deportation, and there should be a statute of limitations. The first day of law school, students are told that they will learn how to think like lawyers, but some learn only how to think like politicians. They all sounded like they were for open borders, or at least for some kind of game where, if you can make it over the fence, you get to stay.

Meanwhile, again in response to a "yes or no" question, they all say that their government-run health plans would cover illegal immigrants.  Mayor Pete got to say that his plan would "cover them" by letting them buy in like anyone else, but, one assumes that the poor among them would be equally subsidized. I know he's the intellectuals' darling, but that may just mean that his sophistry is more sophisticated. The herd effect pretty much requires that we treat anyone here so that their illness or disability does not affect the rest of us.  As Anatole France wrote, the law in its majesty forbids rich and poor alike to sleep under bridges, beg in the streets, and steal bread.  If we don't want people doing those things, we must make poverty less common and less oppressive. The same is true of illnesses, especially infectious disease.  Out of what kind of spite do we not treat tuberculosis in an illegal immigrant?

But the issue is subtle and connected to the deportation problem. So long as deportation is a risk, illegal immigrants will not seek help, and the unhelped can be a dangerous presence. So maybe a case can be made for a high wall and amnesty for those who get over it, not for their benefit but for ours.  A common sense position would hold that the fewer people get in, the more we can do for them. But common sense isn't how one gets elected here anymore. Qué lástima.

Speaking of which, we should not let the whole Spanish business go unremarked. I suspect that I know as much Spanish as Cory Booker, probably a bit less than Beto O'Rourke, and a lot less than Mayor Pete (who only spoke Spanish when addressed in Spanish). But I know enough to recognize a thick "American" accent, and I found it embarrassing to hear these people conduct US politics, however poorly, in a foreign language.  This is not Canada.  Ici on ne parle pas l'espagnole. Aquí, nosotros parlamos inglés. At least that's what the independent voters we want to lure away from Trump do.

To answer my title question, then, the debates me dan pesadillas; they gave me nightmares. They resurfaced everything Hillary did wrong. Even when the occasional candidate mentioned the "working men and women," it was in the context of zero-sum class warfare, not bigger-pie optimism. Wages are paid from gross revenues.  You can't pay factory workers more if you lower the price of what they make. That's not to say that some prices aren't out of hand, just that restoring collective bargaining, not taxing the rich, is the winning Democrat message.  Don't kill the goose; fatten it and change the sharing rules.

In short, two tough nights for conservative never-Trumpers. I will vote for whichever of these left-wing wackos gets the nomination, just as I voted for HRC, who was not a left-wing wacko but, to her shame, consternation, and comeuppance, played one on TV. I prefer misguided to evil, and one does not choose among the candidates one wants; one chooses among the candidates one gets.

Did I mention las pesadillas?