And so we have reached national consensus on at least one political issue. When the former chair of the Democratic National Committee goes on the air to complain about liberal media bias against Republicans, we have truly reached the brotherhood of Americankind, my friends. On top of that, the DNC chair in question is better known for throwing elbows than reaching across aisles:

Gov. Terry McAullife said the Wednesday debate was like a “circus” and compared the spectacle to the 1970s game show “The Gong Show.”

“This is about democracy — we have the greatest democracy in the world,” McAullife told host Bill Rehkopf on 99.1 WNEW on Friday. “That was like ‘The Gong Show’ the other night.”

He added that the debate was “an embarrassment to our country.”

“I thought it was an absolute farce. I thought it was a joke,” McAullife said. “I thought it was an embarrassment to our country to have those folks up there with the questions they were doing.”

One might wonder whether McAuliffe is pandering to a purple state, but he’s not eligible to run for another term as governor due to a one-term limit. He might be a good Democratic option for the Senate, except that Democrats already have both Senate seats in Virginia, and neither Tim Kaine nor Mark Warner show no signs of imminent retirement. Most curiously, McAuliffe is working behind the scenes for Hillary Clinton in this election cycle. One might expect a surrogate (or at least an envoy to the big-ticket donors) to use this opportunity to sneer at Republicans rather than John Harwood, Carl Quintanilla, and Becky Quick — or to at least defend NBC News, which isn’t exactly unfriendly territory for Democrats.

Instead, McAuliffe is comparing the debacle to “The Gong Show,” which is a bit unfair to Chuck Barris. At least “The Gong Show” had no pretensions about its cultural value. Barris played the whole gag for laughs, using it as a parody of talent shows and the thirst for celebrity. Harwood et al think they defended democracy against the Republican horde, and want to blame the candidates and the voters for not submitting quietly to their abuse.

This will make it much more difficult for CNBC, NBC, and its defenders to push their revisionist narrative about the debate. It wasn’t going to succeed anyway, but McAuliffe’s broadside should sink it for good.