Ten years ago this week, I lived through a shitshow as a moderator of a presidential debate. Sadly, it foreshadowed the national shitshow we’re all living through now.
That evening at the University of Colorado Boulder displayed it all: the lies, anger, grift, and denial of reality that now define Donald Trump’s Republican Party. And even though Trump was only a candidate then, his putative rivals bent the knee.
In late October 2015, Barack Obama still sat in the White House. Hillary Clinton led the Democratic race to succeed him; Joe Biden had just declined to run. The Republican Party had not determined its path forward.