GOP Clown Car Gets Less Crowded (Dem Side Down to Two)

It was bound to happen. It's still too full. But the 2016 GOP Presidential Clown Car is finally shaking loose some of its more useless passengers. It's difficult to tell if the crazy level has dropped on average. I mean, Rand Paul is out of there, but he's always been half reasonable/half cuckoo. Mike Huckabee somehow got his fat behind out of that little trunk, but he wasn't ever so much crazy as oily and evil.  Rick Santorum was a frothy mix of very sincere (but awful) religious principles, and desperation. . .with maybe a little crazy in with the lube and unfortunate fecal matter.

But they're leaving behind the primary drivers, Donald J. Trump and Rafael "Ted" Cruz, who between them encompass at least a dozen overlapping negative qualities to different degrees, including batshit crazy. It's a VENN diagram I don't even want to contemplate. Still stuffed in the back seat are Ben "Dr. Stabby" Carson, Jim "Who?" Gilmore, Carly "Bring me those puppies!" Fiorina, (poor, sad) Jeb! Bush and John "Dishwater" Kasich. Marco Rubio is climbing furiously over the center console to try to get a front seat, and I'm guessing Chris Christie is on the roof rack, or tied to the fender or something. But it has to be a little more comfortable with three losers dumped out at the curb.

Likewise, the much smaller batch of Democrats can now focus a little better, being pared down to two after the departure of the dull but dreamy Martin O'Malley. Thursday night's debate, co-moderated by Rachel Maddow, will be the first one-on-one debate of the whole dang 2016 season. No kid's table, no extraneous candidates.

Buckle up kids, we're finally getting the whole thing in actual gear after sputtering around for over a year!