Last week, Donald Trump told late-night television host Jimmy Kimmel that he would debate Bernie Sanders, so long as ABC agreed to make a hefty donation to charity. It was a joke, but the Sanders campaign responded seriously — bring it on.

Less than a full day after Sanders accepted his challenge, Trump announced he wouldn’t take part. I don’t debate losers, Trump explained.

The prospect of a Trump-Sanders debate slipped away, at least for the time being. But in the twenty-four hours when it seemed a possibility, people of all political stripes understood that pitting the two anti-establishment candidates against one another would be a significant political event.

Granted, some liberal commentators were quick to dismiss the proposed debate as nothing more than a distraction. Of course, this objection fits their pattern of painting Sanders’s continued participation in the Democratic race as a irresponsible breach of party etiquette, potentially destructive to Hillary Clinton’s chances in the general election.

But the country needs a Trump-Sanders debate, if only to show the increasingly out-of-touch punditry what most ordinary voters already know — the two candidates may rail against the same broken system, but they’re not “making the same pitch,” as the Washington Post claims. A huge chasm separates Trump’s politics from Sanders’s.

Read the full article at Jacobin.