Van Jones tosses wet blanket on Democrats' 2020 hopes with sobering debate reaction: 'Cold oatmeal'

CNN political commentator Van Jones tossed a wet blanket on the Democratic Party's 2020 aspirations after Tuesday's debate, explaining without mincing words that Democrats have their work cut out for them if they want to defeat President Donald Trump.

"I came away feeling worried for the Democratic Party," Jones said during a panel discussion after the debate. "It felt like a big bowl of cold oatmeal, and I got to say this: I missed Andrew Yang tonight."

The debate was the seventh of the Democratic primary and the final debate before the Iowa caucuses on Feb. 3. The debate also had the smallest and least diverse field of any preceding Democratic debates this election cycle: just six candidates, all of them white, and only two women.

The result was a "dispiriting" event, Jones said.

"There's something that this party has got to figure out. How can it light that fire again? This felt like drudgery tonight," Jones explained.

"Tonight for me was dispiriting. Democrats are gonna have to do better than we saw tonight," he continued. "There was nothing I saw tonight that would be able to take Donald Trump out and I want to see a Democrat in the White House as soon as possible. There was nothing tonight, if you were looking at this thing, that you could say any of these people are prepared for what Donald Trump is gonna do to us."

Jones also took a direct shot at Sens. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) and Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) — who tussled over whether or not Sanders privately told Warren last year that a woman would not win the race for president — condemning their "vitriol" for one another.

Van Jones on the Debate: "It Felt Like Cold Oatmeal - I Missed Andrew Yang"www.youtube.com