Rarely in America do we get to watch a billionaire get what’s coming to him, so we have to savor it when we have the opportunity. For two glorious hours during last night’s Democratic debate in Nevada, Americans of various political stripes — centrists, liberals, progressives, socialists, people with inchoate political ideologies but gut-level hatred of the obscenely wealthy — united in celebrating Michael Bloomberg’s humiliation. It was the political equivalent of a nineties summer camp movie climaxing with a bratty rich kid face down in a pile of mud.

If only we could walk out of the theater and never see that smug villain again. Instead, he will resume appearing on every other commercial we see, as if the debate never happened.

If you’ve posted angrily about Bloomberg this last week, you probably know that a surprising number of people will rush to defend this outrageous oligarch’s flex, usually with some version of “sure, but if this is how we can defeat Trump, I’ll take it.” Humiliating as is to have your party bought by a Republican tycoon, their argument goes, perhaps Bloomberg really is more likely than Bernie Sanders to beat Trump. And isn’t that all that matters?