With the first Democratic primary debate in the books, there’s time to reflect on the spectacle that was witnessed.

As I posted earlier today, I believe that Joe Biden was the biggest loser over the event, not because he’s going to lose to Kamala Harris, but because he went on record with left-wing positions that will kneecap him in the general election.

But it wasn’t just the candidates who were losers last night. So were the moderators.

In our live-blog here at RedState, I noted that if Chuck Todd had any bit of reputation left before the night began, he burned it to the ground by the time things were over. The point of a moderator is not to reinforce the correctness of a partisan idea and then ask them the candidates which one of them are the best at accomplishing said partisan idea.

There’s supposed be a challenging of positions, of fallacies, and of presumptions that are often made in political campaigns. When Joe Biden claimed the tax cuts were for the wealthy, a good moderator would have corrected him and made him answer for his lie. When Kamala Harris brought up 1970’s busing, someone with integrity would have pointed out to her that the program was actually a failure.

Furthermore, a good debate makes candidates answer for their past inconsistencies and the technical workings of the “plans” that are spewed forth. Questions like “how will we pay for that” or “how would you get such an extreme idea through Congress?”

We got none of that the past two nights. Instead, we got this.

NBC/MSNBC’s Two-Night Donation to Democratic Dreams. #DemDebate #DemDebate2 #DemDebate2020 pic.twitter.com/myFCjDYd0Z

— NewsBusters (@newsbusters) June 28, 2019

Just embarrassing.

Keep in mind that Fox News has never and will likely never allow Sean Hannity or Tucker Carlson to moderate a debate. As it stands, they won’t even let them anchor election coverage. Yet, MSNBC trotted out Rachel Maddow, one of the craziest, most partisan voices on TV as the headlining moderator.

The other moderators were no better, with all of them, including the supposed straight shooting Lester Holt framing far-left positions as rational wisdom with almost every question.

These news outlets are going to have to decide what they want to be. Because you can’t claim to be a protected class of truth tellers that are vital to our Republic one minute and operate as partisan hacks the next. Well, I take that back. You can do that, but you’ll lose all credibly and good will in the process, which is exactly what’s happened to the mainstream media.

NBC News was already a joke. Instead of trying to right that ship by asking hard hitting questions the past two days, they chose to throw slow-pitch softballs. You know what would have actually been useful? To have someone like Chris Wallace, who notedly does not like Trump at all, actually push these 2020 Democrats on their insanity. Instead, the DNC has boycotted Fox News all together.

On a related note, if I’m the Republican Party, I don’t even bother giving NBC or CNN any debates next primary cycle. Doing so would only reinforce the double standards at play.

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