We’ve endured the second round of Democratic presidential debates, this time hosted by CNN.  By now, the folly of the format is clear:  too many candidates chasing too few chances to speak and CNN’s media personalities pursuing drama at the expense of depth.  Lots of heat and not much light, as the old phrase has it.  Senator Cory Booker had the best line of the two nights when he accused Vice President Biden of “dipping into KoolAid when you didn’t even know the flavor.”  It may not have been sophisticated policy, but it was folksy and human – and exactly emblematic of the problem with the format.

The folly of the whole procedure was further revealed in a telling exchange between CNN’s Jake Tapper and the candidates when he repeatedly challenged them to say whether or not their health care plan would “raise taxes on middle-class Americans.”  It was gotcha journalism at its worst.  Americans already pay less in taxes than most other advanced countries of the world.  So, it’s a reasonable question to ask, would you exchange an increase in taxes for a decrease in your health care costs?  Any rational person would say yes, because your household budget dollars are fungible, and paying $500 more in taxes for, say, a $1,000 reduction in health care costs would be a good exchange and leave you $500 ahead.  But nuances like that were lost in the prosecutorial tone (and sound-bite glory) of Tapper’s phrasing.

OK, so we have too many Democrats running and trying to get them all on stage, even over two nights, makes for a messy debate.  But what have we learned about the field of candidates so far, and how have we moved forward?  Here are a few conclusions, from the standpoint of communications and not politics.

One-liners make great debate theatre but indifferent policy.  The format is a terrible way to get into the details of any policies at all, favoring as it does the zippy comeback or heart-rending story rather than the difficult task of actually creating good laws and programs.  Everyone agrees that the stakes are high; how could we do this better?

There’s a clear A-team and B-team distinction to be made already.  The A team probably consists of Biden, Booker, Buttigieg, Castro, Gillibrand, Harris, Klobuchar, Sanders, and Warren.  The others should drop out now.  They’re wasting our time and the nation’s shrinking attention span.  Even nine people on the stage would be too many, but it would be an improvement over 10 people each for two nights.  Once the numbers begin to shrink, then I suspect that the increased scrutiny will rapidly reduce the numbers even further.  I, for one, am impatient for the next debates where the ante will be raised and the numbers will be much smaller.

One of these candidates is not like the others.  Senator Sanders is as angry on the left as candidate Trump was (and is) on the right.  Does that make him a good opponent for President Trump, or a bad one?  This is not a political blog, but solely in terms of contrast in communication styles, if I were putting up the Democratic foil to President Trump, it would not be someone as similar to Trump as Sanders.  I was watching the debates on my computer, and I regularly paused the feed to check the micro-expressions of the candidates.  Every single time I froze Sanders, he was grimacing in anger.  And when he smiled, it was always a fake smile that didn’t reach his eyes.

Vice President Biden has a focus issue.  After the first debate, many people, myself included, raised concerns about Biden’s ability to go the debate distance given his fumbles and rhetorical lapses.  While he did better this time around, at best it was an uneven performance.  I don’t think he would be the right nominee in 2020.

Buttigieg and Warren are the best communicators on policy in the pack.  That doesn’t mean either one will win the nomination, and it’s certainly not a prediction about the election.  But these two demonstrate the best grasp of a wide range of policy issues and a willingness to explain their positions with a minimal amount of bombast and a fair helping of clarity.

If all this debating seems like a forlorn way to spend an evening, think of it this way:  so far, in terms of time on task, we’re at about the equivalent of one season of Game of Thrones, and the stakes are probably as high for us as they were for the good people of Westeros.  So there’s that.  On to Season Two!