Dems Debate in Hollywood

I watched some of the Democratic debate that took place in Hollywood. I had to turn it off. The degree to which these candidates pander and ingratiate themselves with the public is so tiresome and transparent. Republicans are guilty of this as well, albeit to a far lesser degree. Obama and Clinton didn't miss a chance to curry favor via maudlin demagoguery and weren't beneath using race, gender and class to shape their arguments in opposition to the Republicans. This is populism and French Revolutionary-style Jacobism at its best, the choice modus operandi of Progressives. Jonah Golberberg put it nicely when he fleshed out Progressive notions of the "general will", rarefied abstractions of "the people" and populist overtures and their subsequent ties to modern totalitarianism, on full display in the American left:

The idea of the general will is the intellectual basis for all modern totalitarianisms. It created a true secular religion out of nationalism, a religion in which “the people” in effect worshipped themselves. The people’s existence lacked meaning and purpose except in relation to the collective.