Bernie Sanders and Hillary Clinton continued to draw differences with each other Monday night at a forum in Des Moines — a last attempt to sway voters in Iowa days before the caucuses. Sanders said in order to make this nation a social democracy that wages war against the rich, he wants to bring back “the era of big government,” and cause government spending to increase about 10 times the amount the government planned to spend on ObamaCare. Meanwhile, Clinton painted herself as a “proven fighter” (though she would be more honest to describe herself as a morally ambiguous anti-hero) who will, somehow, do what Barack Obama didn’t and work with Republicans. A fighter who wants to bury the hatchet. Ironic.

As for Obama, it’s pretty clear his choice for an heir is his former secretary of state. “[The] one thing everybody understands is that this job right here — you don’t have the luxury of just focusing on one thing,” he told Politico in an interview about the Democrat primaries. But Obama’s pick is a pragmatic one. Clinton will preserve what Obama created. Sanders wants what Obama originally envisioned. Commentator Charles Krauthammer said, “Sanders is the one who wants to achieve the ultimate dreams of Obama over the ones he couldn’t. He was the one who openly said he would prefer a single-payer system like the Canadian system. He obviously wasn’t able to achieve it. Sanders is the one you would expect to be his ideological heir.” And thus, Democrats continue their slow, incremental push toward ever more socialism.