Words cannot convey the excitement in my house for the Democratic debate on Tuesday evening – finally, real talk about American issues.

Obviously, this debate was mostly going to be void of the razzle-dazzle infuriating bigotry shown by the republican debate panel.

For the most part, we didn’t mind, naturally the democrats keep hitting the same chords they always hit during election years: equal pay for equal work, health care, raising the minimum wage, immigration reform, student debt, gun control, economic issues, income equality and, of course, the environment.

But only one of the candidates managed to elevate the room with his solos – Bernie Sanders.

Yes, his voice may have cracked and he may have mixed up a few of his notes but overall any member of the audience could feel his passion and dedication to his life’s work in politics.

He stood by his decisions, good or bad, and made enemies on Wall Street, NRA, Big Pharma and even his own party or groups. Something shocking about his past voting record came up; he didn’t vote for the Patriot Act.

Perhaps not enough attention was paid to this act when it was passed and the terminology of it is too vague. The treatment and usage of data collection is ambiguous, and many of the practices are largely unconstitutional.

Yet once again Native Americans as a group were largely left out of the discussion.

Over the course of two hours of debate, no questions were asked about Native American politics, sovereignty, the drug abuse, increased health care or the poverty.

Once again, Native Americans were invisible and are a footnote tacked onto the after-thoughts of closing arguments.

The major point is that Native Americans were on this land first; yet attention is drawn to the poverty plaguing Black and Hispanic communities, not even acknowledging that Native Americans communities exist or that they too are imprisoned disproportionately to white offenders in the same communities.

There is a deep level of sadness when Native people hear how those in power mismanage the environmental resources. Some feel our mother, the earth, is dying and we are killing her with our pollution and our ‘throw away’ society.

No one mentioned adding tribal leaders to the discussions on how to help preserve our planet, how to keep our water clean or how to deal with all the pollution from mining.

There was no mention of Environmental Protection Agency regulation changes, but rather candidates discussed they wanted to move to clean energy and off of oil. They failed to mention if they were in support or opposition of the Keystone pipeline, an issue which is central to many indigenous groups and small ranchers or farmers where the pipeline threatens the vitality of their crops, animals and even their lives.

Despite this lack of attention to an issue close to my heart, the debate at least was free of bigoted and racist comments, peacocking and lunatic ranting.

Did the lack of chicken clucking ruin the level of interest? To some degree, but at least the conversation felt a bit more sophisticated, even if it was a bit dull.

Besides, if you got too bored you could pull up Time’s democratic debate drinking game. The slogan was, “Grab a drink and lower your expectations.”

Basically, who do we want running this country? A bigoted sanitary wipe with various amounts of muck – the Republican hopefuls; captain 99 percent, Bernie Sanders; the “I am not cashing in on my name,” Hilary Clinton; Military Snooze Button Jim Webb, unknown Martin O’Malley; and Mr. I’ve-never-had-a-scandal Lincoln Chafee.

Overall, the discussed topics felt heavy like a good meat pie but some of the issues were simply glossed over like a candy heart. If the 2016 presidential race was compared to soufflé—we are sunk.

Jorden Wilson is a senior psychology major from Seattle. She can be contacted at 335-2290 or by [email protected]. The opinions expressed in this column are not necessarily those of the staff of The Daily Evergreen or those of the Office of Student Media.