Today’s Alpha debate: Seems as if almost all of the candidates who talked gained while they were talking, except maybe Paul and Kasich. The question is whether they made enough of an impression or faded into the woodwork. Trump and Jeb! helped each other by fighting it out (though Jeb!’s initial immigration answer was shaky, as was his  what-do-you-tell-the-troops Iraq answer).  … Since they can’t all gain–it’s a zero sum game–my reluctant guess is the loser is Walker. He did fine, but he now has rivals like Christe, Cruz, Rubio and Huckabee who might steal some of his votes. …

Update: Now watching Fox’s post-debate spin, which is all Oh-now-Trump-has-blown it. Theyv’e said this before! I’m skeptical. He was Trump. He did fine. We don’t have time for tone!  But I’ve been wrong before too. (I thought Rick Lazio cleaned Hillary’s clock.) …

Update: Fox also suspiciously Rubio-boosting — and Bret Baier says it as if he seems guilty about it … It also seems telling that Fox isn’t showing any of Trump’s sound bites (in which he allegedly blew it and began the end of his candidacy). If they’re so bad, why not show them? … … [OK, they’ve finally showed one answer.] …

More: They aren’t talking about Jeb! hardly at all on Fox. It’s almost as if he wasn’t there. But I’m not clear about the relationship of Fox to reality at this point  It’s like eavesdropping on an afterparty at the Comintern. …

The Larger Issue! Washington Post (finally) fingers immigration as the cause of Trump’s surge. But authors Jim Tankersley et. al. still manage to place the Trump phenomenon in a tradition of “less educated people” who think that “foreigners are to blame for [their] personal economic woes.” Perhaps these voters’ anger is self-serving, a belief that if they are falling behind they must be “being taken advantage of.” At best, they express a legitimate NIMBY-like interest that must, alas, be cast aside in the march of progress. … But there’s a difference between being a hand-loom weaver threatened by powered machines and being an uncredentialed, low-skilled worker when it looks like virtually all low-skilled work will be either shipped overseas or (if it must be done here) performed by hungrier, lower paid immigrants or guest workers. In that case, you aren’t saying immigrants are “taking our jobs” so much as that we’re heedlessly and unnecessarily creating a society where if you aren’t smart or schooled or beautiful (or lucky) or an upwardly-mobile newcomer you are a loser. [It’s odd, I agree, that Donald Trump would be the bearer of this grievance.]  If you prefer a country where anyone who works every day earns enough to live a life of dignity, does that make you “less-educated” or more American? …