For the Record: Clinton vs. Sanders, plus some other guy

The DNC scheduled all their debates at such inopportune times (Friday nights, Saturday nights, that one on 3 a.m. Christmas morning) that we feel a little socially insecure every time we're available to watch. We checked our Facebook events tab, our Evite account, our Google calendar — nothing. Our social life is a disaster. So here's some debate stuff.

Drop the "fr"

The DNC has scheduled all six of its debates as a fun hide-and-seek game for voters, and Sunday night was the final debate for the Democrats before voting begins. You may not have noticed that it was happening, seeing as how it was scheduled for 9 p.m. EST in the middle of a three-day weekend, but that's the fun little challenge in all this.

Sunday's was the fourth of six debates on the schedule, pitting Hillary Clinton vs. Bernie Sanders, with Martin O'Malley playing the role of pointless Scrappy Doo. Judging from last night's interactions, it seems the onetime frenemies are now just straight-up enemies:

• Clinton "congratulated" Sanders for reversing his position on guns
• Sanders brought up Clinton's ties to Wall Street and a "corrupt" campaign finance system so often that it made Pharrell Williams' "Happy" seem underplayed in comparison
• Clinton implied that Sanders wanted to scrap the Affordable Care Act, GOP-style
• Sanders defended calling Bill Clinton's sexual misconduct "deplorable," but insisted the only reason he said it was because some reporter asked him about it and of course it would be rude not to answer, and honesty is always the best policy

O'Malley, who at one point before a commercial break was begging for "just 10 seconds" (he didn't get it), got a whopping 842 seconds total during the debate to make his case to voters. He's probably not going to get that 50-point swing he was hoping for.

In fact, this whole campaign is due to get nastier

Things have been civil so far in the presidential race (no, really!) But with two weeks to go before voting starts, things could get ugly. So what's left to say about any of the candidates that Donald Trump hasn't already said? Hillary tried out painting Sanders as pro-gun and anti-Obamacare last night. On the GOP side, Jeb Bush is calling Marco Rubio a flip-flopper on amnesty in a recent TV ad. Trump has been attacking Ted Cruz' potential citizenship issues this month, and is now blaming Cruz, via bank shot, for Obamacare (because Cruz supported John Roberts' nomination to the Supreme Court; Roberts' votes preserved Obamacare.) And then to take it one step further, Trump invoked 9/11 in a tweet in response to Cruz' criticism of "New York values." (Cruz really should have seen this coming, right?)

Still, as we've said before: If you're not being attacked by another candidate at this point in the game, do you really have a shot? Which brings us to those candidates who are ...

Clinging to unjustifiable hope

O'Malley's campaign is about to shift into "available as VP, or possibly secretary of energy" mode, but there are still several GOP candidates still holding out hope for some misguided reason. Who's still waiting, and what irrational thing are they hanging their campaigns on?

• Carly Fiorina: Undecided voters suddenly breaking toward her campaign like a herd of wildebeest
• Rick Santorum: Same
• Chris Christie: Undecided voters who have self-limited their choices to only governors
• Mike Huckabee: People who hate lawyers
• John Kasich: South Carolina voters, because Southern social conservatives can't wait to pick a moderate Northerner
• Rand Paul: Old-school Ron Paul supporters
• Jim Gilmore: Coordinated zombie attack on Jan. 28 debate venue leaves him as the only not-undead GOP candidate

More from the campaign trail

• US-Iran prisoner swap: Candidates check party affiliations, respond accordingly (Paste BN OnPolitics)
• Trump is going way too far, says segregationist's daughter (Paste BN OnPolitics)
• Rubio says Reagan dealt with Iran the right way. Heads up, Nicaragua (Paste BN OnPolitics)

Peak Bernie

Argue all you want about who came out on top overall, but we're pretty sure Bernie won the side eye portion of the debate.