Marianne Williamson: watch this space

But there were plenty of other candidates who faltered. There was businessman John Delaney, who got nary a word in edgewise throughout most of the debate; Tim Ryan, who did not know the Taliban did not attack us on 9/11; hyped tech executive Andrew Yang, and firmly-fine-but-problematic Tulsi Gabbard.

The biggest star - at least on Twitter - however, was Marianne Williamson, writer, businesswoman, friend of Oprah, possible host body for Little Edith Bouvier Beale, and former roommate of Big Little Lies star Laura Dern (no really). She plans to fight the president with love and call the Prime Minister of New Zealand. So, you know, we’ll see how that goes.

Immigration and healthcare - the biggest topics

Immigration was, perhaps, the biggest issue of the two nights, what with the startling, heartbreaking images from the United States/Mexican border across all media. Every candidate wanted to make sure they said something on the matter - regardless of whether it was included in the question or not. (You know, normal politician behaviour.) Race and xenophobia also played heavily into that conversation, thanks to insights from the likes of Castro, Warren, and Harris, who sought to end so many of the intellectual debates about these issues that ultimately tend to go nowhere. Where the white men spoke mostly in platitudes of “bridging the aisle,” the women and people of colour on the stage fought hard to shake Americans out of the stupor of wilful ignorance about race, refugee, and immigration relations in America. It was an illuminatingly stark contrast.

It was also nice to see the candidates talk so openly about Medicare-for-all or their own personal universal healthcare proposals. It’s wild to think that it was only a year or two ago where politicians were saying Americans would never go for it. And yet…it seems to be exactly what they want, according to the data: 70% of us, in fact! Several candidates also rallied hard around a woman’s right to abortion access and complete control over their healthcare decisions: a truly maddening sentence to have to type out in 2019, but, I mean, we have a bloviating sock puppet for a president so what would you expect? If we’re going to try and overthrow our new budding Gilead, we have to start calling out bad behaviours and ugly policy decisions for what they are - though I’m not sure these clarion calls would’ve been so clear had there not been as many women running as there are, particularly Kirsten Gillibrand who promised to “guarantee your reproductive rights no matter what.”

Democratic Debates 2020: “Elizabeth Warren and Kamala Harris make me excited to be a young American woman”