Kent Bush: Saturday Night not so lively, Americans disregard Democrats debate

If three Democrats have a debate in the forest and no one listens, does it make a difference?
Everyone is pretending to be surprised that a three-person debate featuring one serious candidate had a small audience. Could it be because it was held on a Saturday night when people are watching football, movies and going out on the town? You had to know the audience would plummet when Lincoln Chaffee left the show to become an Emo Phillips impersonator and Jim Webb took time off to ponder existential questions that have concerned mankind for generations.
We are left with Hillary Clinton, who has more scandals than she has Wall Street donors who wrote her checks because of the September 11 attacks.
Sharing the stage with her is a guy who looks like Larry David whose popularity is equivalent to Clinton's unpopularity.
Then you have Martin O'Malley whose main success has been making Baltimore all it is today. The only people that select him when pollsters call are the ones who know they don't want Clinton. They are left to choose between a Bernie or a Martin. That's one heckuva coin toss.
The timing of the debate was atrocious. The content of the debate was lackluster. The outcome was predictable.
I would submit that if the horrific attacks in Paris hadn't just happened, the audience would have been far more sparse.
So 8.5 million people wasted almost two percent of their Saturday evenings this year watching the three amigos talk about domestic and international issues. Nothing was off limits. Nothing but admitting that ISIS is a group of radical Muslim terrorists.
I'm not someone who believes that all Muslims are bad people. I have Muslim friends. I have done stories on young ladies who were dedicated enough to their Muslim faith to wear a hijab while they played soccer at a high level. But they weren't isolationists. When their team prayed before games. They stood respectfully with the team even though their beliefs differ greatly.
Alas, the radicals who misinterpret the Koran are equally as ignorant as those who misquote the Bible. But instead of wearing white hoods and harassing minorities or carrying signs and harassing gay people, radical Muslims wear vests made of explosives and carry out elaborate plans to create carnage and disrupt the lives of people in western civilization.
It is difficult to attack this monster. They intentionally congregate in hospitals, schools, and in close proximity to civilian areas. They can't match us weapon for weapon, but there is no better defense to hellfire missiles than injured and dead children displayed on television screens across the world.
These radicals know that they have one advantage over us and that is our basic civility. Our society will never celebrate beheadings and or honor those who call themselves soldiers while they put children in danger to secure their own safety.
But you didn't hear that Saturday night. All three candidates were forced to say it was important to take the fight to the terrorists. But you can't blame former wars for creating ISIS and suggest only future wars as the solution.
After the debate ended, the candidates stopped talking about the enemy outside our borders and immediately turned on their own party. Sanders and O'Malley both leveled accusations that the debate was staged and scheduled to hide it from the public to benefit the party's presumptive candidate.
They also complained that the Democrats only have six debates compared to 12 for the Republicans. However, six debates with three candidates are far more than enough. On the Republican side, there is a lot more ground left to cover. A dozen debates might not be enough.
The candidates who are complaining about the debate schedule and lack of frequency didn't do anything Saturday night that made me think that more debates at more favorable times would make any difference.
Kent Bush is publisher of Shawnee (Oklahoma) News-Star and can be reached at kent.bush@news-star.com.