Bernie Sanders live-tweeted the Republican presidential debate and it was fabulous

Mer­ci­ful­ly, the first Repub­li­can pres­i­den­tial debate of the 2016 cam­paign is over. Those of us who watched the event on Fox Noise Chan­nel will nev­er get those two hours back, but thank­ful­ly, on Twit­ter, pro­gres­sives had a fan­tas­tic debate watch­ing com­pan­ion in Ver­mont Sen­a­tor Bernie Sanders, who live-tweet­ed the debate.

Here’s a chronol­o­gy of Bernie’s best rejoin­ders to the Repub­li­can field:

6:15 PM: Jeb Bush has a lot of respect for his broth­er George W. Real­ly? Let’s not for­get the vir­tu­al col­lapse of our econ­o­my when he left office.

6:16 PM: Will any Repub­li­can talk about the need to raise the cur­rent star­va­tion min­i­mum wage of $7.25 an hour?

6:20 PM: Does any Repub­li­can care about whether or not a woman, rather than the gov­ern­ment, should make deci­sions regard­ing her own body?

6:30 PM: Still wait­ing. Will Fox ask if it’s appro­pri­ate for bil­lion­aires to buy elections?

6:32 PM: Kasich saved Ohio’s econ­o­my! Oh. Who was the pres­i­dent who helped low­er unem­ploy­ment and cre­ate mil­lions of new jobs?

6:33 PM: Mar­co Rubio is right. The peo­ple are frus­trat­ed. The rich get much rich­er and every­one else is get­ting poor­er. Will the Repub­li­cans talk about this?

6:36 PM: U.S. is the only major coun­try with­out guar­an­teed paid fam­i­ly and med­ical leave. Will we hear any­thing about that tonight?

6:38 PM: Who would’ve believed it? Rand Paul is right. Yes, we can fight ter­ror­ism and pro­tect the U.S. Constitution.

6:40 PM: The clock is tick­ing. Cli­mate change? Income inequal­i­ty? Cit­i­zens Unit­ed? Wait­ing for the ques­tions and the discussion.

6:43 PM: Some of us did­n’t believe Bush and Cheney on Iraq. We vot­ed NO. That was the right vote.

6:48 PM: Did Don­ald Trump just sup­port a nation­al sin­gle-pay­er health sys­tem? Well. He was right on something.

6:52 PM: Huck­abee and Car­son: more tax breaks for bil­lion­aires, high­er tax­es for work­ing families.

7:03 PM: Car­son talks about the debt. Hey, Dr. Car­son… the Repub­li­cans for­got to pay for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. $6–8 tril­lion on the cred­it card.

7:05 PM: Jeb Bush — Talk about killing jobs. When your broth­er left office we were hem­or­rhag­ing eight hun­dred thou­sand jobs a month. And you want more of the same?

7:11 PM: Social Secu­ri­ty can pay every pen­ny owed for next eigh­teen years. Lift the cap on tax­able income and it’ll be sol­vent for decades.

7:21 PM: Will Fox and the Repub­li­cans talk about pay equi­ty for women work­ers who make sev­en­ty-eight cents on the dol­lar com­pared to men? Waiting.

7:26 PM: Will Fox and the Repub­li­cans dis­cuss crim­i­nal jus­tice reform and the need to end police killing of unarmed African-Americans?

7:29 PM: Mil­lions of Amer­i­cans are strug­gling with hor­ren­dous stu­dent debt + high inter­est rates. Do the Repub­li­cans have any­thing to say?

7:46 PM: Repub­li­can agen­da: more mon­ey for mil­i­tary, tax breaks for the rich, cuts to Social Secu­ri­ty & pro­grams for work­ing families.

7:49 PM: Lis­ten to Repub­li­cans talk about mil­i­tary fund­ing and remem­ber what [Repub­li­can Pres­i­dent Dwight] Eisen­how­er said about pow­er of the mil­i­tary-indus­tri­al complex.

7:50 PM: Pope Fran­cis says cli­mate change is one of the great crises we face. I’m wait­ing for one word from Fox and the Repub­li­cans on it.

8:01 PM: The very rich get rich­er, every­one else poor­er. And Repub­li­cans who take cam­paign mon­ey from bil­lion­aires have noth­ing sig­nif­i­cant to say.

8:05 PM: It’s over. Not one word about eco­nom­ic inequal­i­ty, cli­mate change, Cit­i­zens Unit­ed or stu­dent debt. That’s why the Repub­li­cans are so out of touch.

As Bernie points out, what was most sig­nif­i­cant about the debate was what was miss­ing. Fox per­son­al­i­ties Brett Baier, Meg­yn Kel­ly, and Chris Wal­lace wast­ed oppor­tu­ni­ties to drill into the issues and ask sub­stan­tive ques­tions. The can­di­dates were not chal­lenged on any of the great sys­temic and press­ing issues fac­ing our coun­try, like big mon­ey in elec­tions, income inequal­i­ty or the cli­mate crisis.

Kel­ly did ask one ques­tion of Scott Walk­er about the Black Lives Mat­ter move­ment before cut­ting to com­mer­cial — but this received all of a few sec­onds of air­time. Oth­er­wise, the top­ic of crim­i­nal jus­tice reform received scant atten­tion. The debate stayed in shal­low waters for near­ly its entire duration.

Of the ten can­di­dates, John Kasich came across as per­haps the most rea­son­able and com­pas­sion­ate. Giv­en an oppor­tu­ni­ty to spar with Don­ald Trump, he passed, with­out endors­ing Trump’s fiery rhetoric. He had a good debate.

But he won’t get the Repub­li­can nom­i­na­tion by appeal­ing to bicon­cep­tu­als. He may well turn out to be the Jon Hunts­man of the 2016 cycle.

The can­di­date who gave the scari­est per­for­mance was for­mer Arkansas Mike Huck­abee, the man who set police killer Mau­rice Clemons free. Huck­abee espoused a vision of a theo­crat­ic gov­ern­ment that dic­tates Amer­i­cans’ fam­i­ly plan­ning choic­es and spends ever increas­ing amounts of mon­ey procur­ing weapons for our military.

Not sur­pris­ing­ly, media mogul and real estate tycoon Don­ald Trump talked the most with­out say­ing any­thing sub­stan­tive. He did not rule out run­ning for pres­i­dent as an inde­pen­dent when chal­lenged to, or take back any of his absurd com­ments from ear­li­er this sum­mer. At times he seemed bored or dis­in­ter­est­ed, like the debate was beneath him. But at oth­er times, he seemed more engaged, toss­ing barbs at the Fox hosts as well as trad­ing jabs with oth­er can­di­dates on stage.

The next big Repub­li­can debate will take place in Sep­tem­ber at The Gip­per’s pres­i­den­tial library, and will be tele­vised by CNN.

The first Demo­c­ra­t­ic debate, mean­while, won’t hap­pen till Octo­ber 13th. It will take place in Neva­da and will also be tele­vised by CNN.