Democratic presidential candidates get nasty

Donald Trump congratulated Bernie Sanders for being the Democratic frontrunner. But none of Bernie's rivals for the White House job have anything nice to say to him. In fact the TV debate in North Carolina was both unpleasant for him and unpleasant for us viewers. It was singularly undignifying as each candidate laid into the 78-year-old senator, basically doing Trump's job for him. What a shower they were. None of them gave a good account of themselves, all they wanted to do was put down Sanders. I guess this is the way it is. If you want to win you have to be rude to your opponents to try and put them in a bad light. This is politics. But at the end of the debate it would have been nice to see through all the abuse and pick on one of the candidates as a shining example of a president-in-the-making. There were none. Poor Bernie was so tied up trying to stand up for himself against the waving arms of his rivals that he came across as a battered old man. Which, technically speaking, he is. Old man that is. Biden doesn't seem to have a clue anymore. At one point he said if he was president he would force China to open up to international investigators over the coronavirus crisis. Oh please, even Trump can't order Xi Zinping around, and the Chinese president would deem it to be the height of insolence and humiliation for him to suggest that he, supreme leader for life, cannot sort out the coronavirus in his country, even if he can't. There has been very little about foreign policy in these Democratic debates. I can't for the life of me list what each candidate would do on on his or her first day in the White House on such thorny subjects as North Korea, Iran, Russia, Syria, Middle East in general, Israel/Palestine, and, of course, China. Not a clue. But somehow I don't fancy any of these candidates trying to sort out the problems of the world. Nor Trump of course, although at least we know by now what he really really wants: to bring all American troops home but he just can't do it. Not yet anyway.