Denver Democrats assembled at the Irish Snug on East Colfax last Wednesday night to monitor round two of the Republican slugfest intended to help winnow its ample field of Presidential candidates. A handful of diehards arrived from home after viewing the four “one-percenters” who failed to qualify for the main event. Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal, former New York Gov. George Pataki, former Pennsylvania Sen. Rick Santorum and South Carolina Sen. Lindsey Graham managed to conduct a conversation that strongly resembled an actual debate.

With just four squaring off, more was revealed regarding their character, humor and policy preferences in 90 minutes than viewers discovered about the 11 candidates who exchanged punches for three hours. Graham showed flashes of the wit that has made him popular with his colleagues on both sides of the aisle, though only Florida Sen. Marco Rubio would match Graham’s bellicosity at the adult table, also promising to dispatch troops to Iraq.

The topic of frontrunner Donald Trump dominated the opening minutes in the earlier debate, but the four slim-to-no-chance contestants dismissed him as an unqualified egomaniac. Jindal would throw the best punch the next day, after Trump botched naming his favorite passage from the Bible. No one should expect Trump to have read a book that didn’t have his name in it, the Cajun governor quipped.

The main event quickly turned into a food fight with Trump at its center. Denver Democrats cheered when New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie admonished Trump and Fiorina to stop jousting over their business leadership and start talking about issues that concern the voters. Trump promised to “make America rich again,” echoing this refrain several times. The Democrats seemed to believe that our country is plenty rich — rich enough to bail out criminal bankers and derelict auto companies, rich enough to fight wars of choice rather than those of necessity, and more than rich enough to support an aristocracy of billionaire greedheads whose fortunes have been larded up with tax loopholes and crony capitalism. America’s political challenge doesn’t seem to be one of insufficient riches but the distribution of that wealth. Even if a president could single-handedly “make us richer” — a dubious proposition under the best of circumstances — it would prove of little use so long as those additional dollars are funneled to the very top, the Democrats felt.

There appeared to be little cognitive dissonance about the fiendishly malicious President these candidates describe when they speak of Barack Obama’s liberal, nay socialist, machinations and the cowardly weakling who is reportedly undermining respect for America around the globe. Arizona Gov. Mike Huckabee bemoaned the “criminalization of Christianity,” while Rubio rattled his Glock and complained of “left-wing government.”

None of this squares with the world most voters are experiencing. At least in Colorado, the economy is more likely to overheat than it is to collapse into recession. Student debt is a far larger personal worry than interest rates. Our restaurants are packed, the Broncos are winning games (for now) and TABOR surpluses are funding refunds. Despite a lot of breast beating, marijuana legalization has produced far more tax dollars than social problems. Republican presidential candidates are left claiming, “We could have done better. The recovery hasn’t been fast enough. Only economic growth, stimulated by lower taxes, can solve our problems.” Democrats feel it takes a lot of brass for those who ran the economy into the ditch to complain about the speed of the rescue operation. Whether Obama merely muddled through or simply got lucky, things are measurably better today than they were seven years ago. You don’t have to be a raving socialist to recognize matters could have gotten much, much worse.

When Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul suggested Americans would be better off to let the warring factions in the Mideast “fight with each other,” most Democrats nodded in agreement. But his was a lonely posture among the hawks on stage. Rubio is the loudest and most avid of the alarmists. He sees a Russia intent on replacing us as the pre-eminent power in the Arab world, not that previous Russian adventurism has turned out well there. Ohio Gov. John Kasich’s assertion — “We are more effective when we bring our allies along with us” — also found approval among Denver Democrats. The Republicans’ next stop is scheduled for Boulder on Oct. 28 alongside the Colorado marijuana shops that Texas Sen. Ted Cruz is promising to close. The libertarian impulse that once dominated grassroots Republican populism is at risk of being replaced by a moralistic, nanny-style Puritanism that only satisfies the satisfied. Once CNN launched into the debate’s third hour, interest at the Democrats’ watch party waned, more beers were poured and the audience grew louder. Former HP CEO Carly Fiorina, however, earned a footnote in the history books for puncturing the delusional pomposity of The Donald. Not bad when nine guys beside her failed to land any telling blows.

Miller Hudson is a public affairs consultant and a former state legislator. He can be reached at mnhwriter@msn.com

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