With boring predictability . . . .

. . . . the Dem blogs this morning are crowing a big victory for their long-established favorites, the beloved leftists, over the klutzy, hated DINOs on the stage, heretofore known as "moderates", "centrists", or . . . "Democrats".

As for Chuck Todd "using Republican framing" isn't that what he's supposed to do?

Or did you think he was supposed to lob softballs right into the zone all night?

Oddly, the Times' headline - not so much, the story - is the least left-spinning of those in Dem media I have seen, today.

Sanders and Warren Battle Accusations of ‘Fairy Tale’ Promises as Intraparty Rift Flares

There was former Representative John Delaney of Maryland, who accused Mr. Sanders and Ms. Warren of making “fairy tale” promises; Gov. Steve Bullock of Montana, who lamented liberal “wish-list economics”; and former Gov. John Hickenlooper of Colorado, imploring the left not to overreach and “FedEx the election to Donald Trump.”

Arguing in somewhat subtler terms was Senator Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota, who declined multiple chances to lash her liberal rivals by name but questioned the viability of their progressive stances on health care and education.

“I have bold ideas,” Ms. Klobuchar said, “but they are grounded in reality.”

With Mr. Sanders and Ms. Warren refusing to yield an inch, the debate laid bare the stark choice before Democratic primary voters: whether to embrace an agenda of transformational economic change in an effort to motivate young and nonwhite voters, or to proceed more cautiously by embracing more incremental appeals that could win over moderates.

Or, here's a radical thought, the Dem voters could support candidates whose advertised agendas comport with their (the voters') own politics rather than so obviously playing bare-naked horse-race politics, treating agendas and aspirations as of no intrinsic importance, at all.

Though of course each group insisted a candidate (and party) with their type of agenda would do better in the general against the Duce (and the GOP on the whole).

<snip>

The most protracted exchanges of the night, and by far the most substantive ones, concerned Mr. Sanders’s signature proposal to replace private health insurance with a single-payer system of the kind employed in Canada and a number of European countries. 

Mr. Delaney and the other moderates attacked the proposal from the first minutes of the debate, calling it a politically toxic idea that would void the health care plans of union members and of employees of private businesses.

“We don’t have to go around and be the party of subtraction, and telling half the country, who has private health insurance, that their health insurance is illegal,” Mr. Delaney said.

Mr. Sanders defended his plan ferociously, with periodic help from Ms. Warren. 

He cast Mr. Delaney and other Democratic doubters as champions of an indefensible system, and argued that opponents of the single-payer format tended to brand it with traits — like costliness and unpredictability — that the American health care system already possesses.

“The answer,” Mr. Sanders said, “is to get rid of the profiteering of the drug companies and the insurance companies, move to ‘Medicare for all.’”

Spoken like "profit" is a dirty word, in the manner of a true socialist in the real sense of the word, entailing and usually motivated by anti-capitalism.

Visceral, in Sanders' case.

Both he and Ms. Warren depicted skeptics of single-payer health care as being in league with the G.O.P.: Mr. Sanders accused a CNN moderator, Jake Tapper, of using a “Republican talking point” when raising questions about his plan, and noted that “the health care industry will be advertising tonight on this program.” 

In a similar complaint, Ms. Warren urged Democrats to “stop using Republican talking points” on the issue.

. . . .

The harshest counterattack on the moderates, however, may not have come from Mr. Sanders or Ms. Warren.

“I wonder why you’re Democrats,” said Marianne Williamson, the author and spiritualist. “You think there’s something wrong about using the instruments of government to help people.”

. . . .

The same center-versus-left divide evident on health care was also on display as the candidates clashed over trade and immigration, and whether some of the proposals offered by the liberal candidates would represent a boon to Mr. Trump.

“We got a hundred thousand people showing up at the border right now,” said Mr. Bullock. “If we decriminalize entry, if we give health care to everyone, we’ll have multiples of that.”

Turning to Ms. Warren, he accused her of “playing into Donald Trump’s hands” for wanting to make illegal immigration a civil penalty and seeking to provide federal benefits to undocumented migrants.

Ms. Warren fired back that “seeking refuge, seeking asylum” is “not a crime.”

A similar crossfire unfolded on trade, as Mr. Hickenlooper and Mr. Delaney accused Ms. Warren of pursuing a trade agenda closer to Mr. Trump’s than to that of the last Democratic president, Barack Obama. 

Ms. Warren’s agenda, Mr. Delaney said, “would isolate America’s economy around the world.”

. . . .

The evening seemed to expose the rifts in the party that might ultimately define the Democratic race once the party’s primary field narrows, and Mr. Biden comes face to face in future debates with Mr. Sanders and Ms. Warren.

. . . .

Ms. Warren ignored a question about her boasts that she’s a proud capitalist — a barely-veiled contrast with Mr. Sanders, a democratic socialist — and used the prompt instead to talk of her battles with Wall Street. 

Mr. Sanders even praised his colleague at one point, echoing her tough talk on corporate America.

“Elizabeth,” he said, “is absolutely right.”

Of wolves in sheep's clothing, one thinks, thinking about her protestations of non-socialism, of commitment to capitalism.

What we are looking at is a small group of fierce anti-capitalists who really are socialists in their hearts masquerading as capitalism-preferring and -loyal progressives, vs a coterie of actual progressives whom they are trying to portray as Republican bare-knuckle reactionaries.

Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders, Marooned Together on Fantasy Island

Of course, Bernie and Pocahontas are perfectly right that those candidates who belabored their agendas as fantasies oppose them, and would react with horror if they turned out not to be so fantastic, after all.

And the same is generally true, I suppose, in the commentariat.

But I am not at all sure about Frank Bruni.