Hillary Clinton is blowing away the other candidates.
She is frigging AMAZING tonight!
11:00p EDT update
It’s done.
For me, Hillary Clinton is the obvious winner tonight.
I was impressed by Martin O’Malley, but more as VP than as President.
I was disappointed by Bernie Sanders. He seemed crotchety, defensive, and somewhat stale.
The other two are just non-players, neither belongs on the same stage.
At the moment, I think a winning Democratic ticket is Hillary Clinton for President and Martin O’Malley for Vice President. I will enthusiastically work to support that ticket.
My heartfelt congratulations to Ms. Clinton. I think I’m a tough audience for her, and she persuaded me.
10:30p EDT update
The high point of the evening for me, so far, was when Bernie Sanders told the moderator and the world that it’s time we stopped talking about Hillary Clinton’s emails. The two candidates then shook hands in moment of genuine accord.
Tonight is Hillary Clinton’s night.
I completely agree!
Webb is completely tone deaf and irrelevant on racial questions, it’s over for him (if it ever began). Chaffee is a big wimp. Nights biggest loser was O’Malley, Hillary got him good pulling out his endorsement of her and how much of a phony he is on his newfound leftism. She successfully boxed Biddn out-where is there room for him here? As the pro-TPP Clinton who didn’t get bin Laden? Successfully invoked Warren.
Sanders gave his standard stump and got some dings in on Iraq, Patriot Act and expanding social security. His line on emails was classic Bernie-but it really takes away an issue he could use to draw contrast. He also stumbled really badly on guns and foreign policy-his advisors said they were spending today in prep tackling this-they did a piss poor job.
She was the only President on that stage, and it was a marked contrast to the Republican debate. Webb aside-everyone supports diplomacy first in the Middle East, strongly considers climate change and loudly feel black lives matter.
The statements he got to put forward on national TV about the nation veering toward oligarchy are powerful, and he made a case for democratic socialism.
I support it would be better for him to say, “capitalism is going to happy no matter what–but are we going to let it run roughshod over our children, our new parents, our elderly, our poor?”
He was downright excellent in the second half, but real first half stumbles on gun control and foreign policy. Two issues primary voters are going to increasingly care about. I have to emphasize that he has gone from worst to first on racial justice questions, and really shows quick thinking and a capacity to listen to folks he didn’t have to deal with in his home state. I suspect a similar listen and evolve phase will happen on gun control and foreign policy.
Geesh, POTUS can’t make excuses for a vote. My son had a LOL moment with his granite remark. WTF?
Webb, don’t know why he’s even on the stage.
I want to like O’Malley, not there.
Sanders, economic issues is where he is most comfortable. But got beat up on gun positions. Foreign policy ok at times, the moment after Webb, Sanders had nothing to say. odd moment.
HRC, while she did have some good responses on Iran and being progressive. Slick when going after Bernie at the beginning. Didn’t do it for me with her answers about pandering.
Anderson Cooper – Coop settle down, it’s not about you.
… Anderson Cooper only went to the Latino reporter for the immigration & marijuana question.
And then to the female reporter for the paid family leave question.
Sheeeeesh.
on the Black Lives Matter question
there were no black or Latino reporter in the entire world that could ask intelligent questions about Putin, Syria, tax policy, or climate change.
Hey, come on! How will the media continue to keep us informed if it confuses us with actual reality?
After all, blacks and Latinos care about racism, women care about sexism, students care about student debt, and whites care about the things that count, like money. Right?
Don’t you know we live in a “post affirmative action” society? Your concerns are SO quaint. After all, we have Barack Obama as President, Clarence Thomas on the Supreme Court and Sarah Palin nominated for Vice President.
That MUST mean that racism and sexism is dead, except for some special-interest groups. Right?
But he had a pretty low bar to pass, considering how invisible Jake Tapper was in the GOP debates. Also how come they get Hugh Hewitt asking base questions in their debate, where’s Rachel Maddow or another neutral in the primary Dem leaning journalist (Jon Stewart isn’t busy!) to ask similar questions our base cares about?
At this stage of the debate (about 15 minutes left), I think I have been turned. This is why we have debates.
I agree with jconway upthread — the only President I see on tonight’s stage is Hillary Clinton.
I wonder if Bernie Sanders is our next VP.
“The American people are sick and tired of hearing about your damn emails!”
My impression of Webb is that he would have been the most reasonable contender in a Republican debate.
Webb… he filled an important role back in 2006, when he beat George Allen for the Virginia Senate seat and helped flip the Senate to D.
And in 2007, he gave a good speech after Bush’s State of the Union address, dealing with 2 issues: When do we get out of Iraq? and Income inequality is growing too wide!
That was my point. In a GOP that hasn’t gone off the deep end he would fit right in. In a healthy two-party system he is where Republicans would be, and were a few decades ago.
Even the first question on electability came off better than it sometimes does. Also, only one question I would categorize as moderator trying to start a fight, which I hate. Cooper asked Jim Webb what he thought of Sanders’ conscientious objection to Vietnam which I think Webb handled graciously rather than take the bait. Sanders was in turn quick to express appreciation for Webb’s service despite strong disagreement engaging that conflict.
has convinced our candidates to avoid playing the media’s stupid games:
“sick and tired of hearing about the damn emails”
plus this avoidance of Cooper’s setup for a spat between Webb & Bernie
plus when Lincoln prattles on about ‘ethics’ and Cooper says to Hillary, “Do you want to respond to that?” And she smartly says, “No.”
I’m more optimistic now that we might see some good changes in 2016.
BUT HILLARY SOUNDED AND ACTED MORE PRESIDENTIAL.
I was just proud to be a Democrat tonight watching with my daughter, family and close friend Terry.
Fred Rich LaRiccia
On pure oratory, I’d hand it to Hillary. Sanders had a strong performance too, but I thought O’Malley put the most substance on the table. More than that, I thought his closing remarks were exceptional. If they held a primary tomorrow, my vote would go to O’Malley. I doubt he’ll have anything like a surge coming out of this (the media outlets are fixated on Hillary and Bernie with their post-debate coverage), but I found him consistently coherent on the issues they debated.
Webb came across as gruff, but knowledgeable on foreign policy issues. Chaffee probably ought to fold the tents.
He’s winning Google.
He’s winning twitter.
He’s winning the focus groups.
He’s winning the internet polls by hugely giant numbers.
We’re all pundits, and we, like all pundits, can say whatever we want to say. But where it counts, Bernie won tonight, and won by huge numbers. He introduced himself to millions of Americans, held strong, spoke with gravitas and spoke some serious truth to power. This debate not only won’t slow Bernie’s momentum, but almost certainly will do a lot to increase it.
Time currently has Sanders at 61% to Clinton’s 12%
polldaddy has Sanders 78% to Clinton 16%
I don’t think Clinton has the clear win being claimed here.
While in general I agree, we’ll see the impact in polling. Referencing Intranet Polls is desperation. It’s been talked to death here in many elections. Internet polls are useless.
In this case, we have a tiny group of political junkies on BMG saying how Clinton owned the debate, and a presumably much larger group of people saying Sanders pwned her. Those are the only currently-available polls, and citing them is not “desperation,” any more than citing the NYT is.
USELESS.
Flash Polls are better. We’ll see how the needle moves, if at all when post-debate polls are published.
Sorry that’s absurd.
I’ll say this, I’m not expecting any real shifts in polling, if there were going to be shifts it was from very soft support to begin with.
The fact that Google search results, Twitter results, twitter follower results, focus groups and, yes, internet polls at high-traffic sites are larger groups and more representative of the general democratic voting public than a few BMG commenters?
Really?
you should know better.
…only focus groups might have some validity. Just because I search for Sanders online doesn’t mean I support him or think he won. Just because I like a campaign page on FB, follow on Twitter, or signup for emails doesn’t mean I support them. Certainly online polling of all things has no scientific validity. Sanders base does seem to be the bloggerati, so I’m not the least bit surprised he lit up the internet.
That said, I’m not a fan of discussing who won the debate anyway. This isn’t the National Forensic League; there is no point system or judges. The mark of a successful debate is did the voters learn more about the candidates and their issues, and I would argue they did last night.
And he just raised $2 million. His support is very deep but becoming rather narrow, while Clinton’s is soft but broad. This means that Bernie’s existing supporters are unlikely to change their mind while more of Clinton’s supporters are picking her as a default. That said, she just boxed Biden out of the ring and gave her donors and backers in Washington a real reason to stick with her. O’Malley will probably get a bounce from this too, as will Bernie. Let’s wait on the scientific polls a week or so from no before passing premature judgments either way.
points in one direction, then generally that says something — even if you’d like to have better, more authoritative data points. When those more authorative datapoints don’t exist, then you move to the next best things. Hence, Google search results, Twitter followers, Facebook, online polls, focus groups and anything else measurable.
I’d also suggest that when twice as many people follow someone on Twitter or Facebook during a debate (and the number of people is measured in the tens of thousands), it’s much more meaningful and telling than, say, what a few dozen voters in a few focus groups think. So, honestly, I’d say the focus groups are the least authoritative of what I linked to, and the ones that measure the highest numbers of people are the better sources.
It’s haughty in my view to dismiss internet polls as entirely meaningless, especially when that’s where the bulk of the under 30 demo is getting it’s news and our turnout will be critical to the primary and general election. He raised a boatload of money after the debate, we can’t discount that either. So I agree that using the datapoints we have, those are fair things to look at. It’s unfair to dismiss them. But it is also unrealistic to infer more meaning from them than what the data is really deriving.
I think Phillip Bump of the Washington Post, a Bernie skeptic on most days, had a good point in his piece on this:
Yet, as Bump also points out, it is worth mentioning that nobody really needs to google Hillary Clinton to know who she is or look up her twitter account to see what she’s been saying. That’s not a dig at Bernie-he had a good night and this has given his campaign significant positive exposure to voters who have not heard about him. That is never a bad thing for a campaign or a candidate, but this is a strong indicator that more people now recognize his name and want to learn more about him, it is not a strong indicator that they are more inclined to vote for him in the primary.
Sorry. It’s spin. Sanders did not have a good debate, so the spin masters are weaving their story. That what is going on.
The article I cited and the majority of what I wrote was primarily in support of your argument and against jumping to conclusions as Rye and other Sanders supporters seem to be doing. That said, I disagree with you that internet polls are entirely meaningless, they just do not have the significance weight of meaning Rye subscribes to them. But they do not mean nothing.
I accidentally downrated by the way, I was trying to expand it on my phone to see who uprated. I disagree that Sanders had a bad debate, but in my subjective judgment, he had a worse debate than Hillary Clinton. We will see how the polls bare out.
I’m the guy bringing in the only real data we have, and that’s “spinning.”
You’re the guy that’s rejecting data, and accusing someone of spinning for thinking more highly of that data than what JohnK thinks.
Take from that what you will.
Online polls are not data, they are there for entertainment. Real polls and real data have a very specific process.
Online poll results show that Sanders has a lot of existing energetic supporters like yourself. So they went crazy online, reloading a page and clicking a button doesn’t mean anything. This in not real data.
If Sanders does well in the real polls with real data, it would have absolutely nothing to do with online poll results. These twitter, online poll stuff is spin, convincing people of a result that has no supportable evidence. IMO it’s desperate.
Don’t know why you are even push this non-sense. Good read. I even see the best info we have line you’ve used.
Google search and twitter results captures literally everything, respective to Google and Twitter. Bernie captured over twice as many new followers on twitter during the debate than the rest of the Democratic field combined. The Google search results were equally dominant — far more people searched for Bernie Sanders during the debate than the other candidates.
I referenced multiple focus groups from undecided voters, all of which went heavily for Sanders.
I linked to all of those things above; you ignored them and cherry picked one thing instead.
And, yes, I referenced some internet polls which went toward Sanders by extremely high margins. I’m not aware of any big internet polls from during or immediately after the debate that went in any other direction.
None of those are the best scientific standards available in polling. No shocker there. That’s why I didn’t reference them exclusively, and only as part of a very large trend that night, which showed “the people” thought Bernie won, while the MSM and most pundits gave it to Hillary. And what I listed, while not perfect, is more representative of the general democratic voting public than the pundit class, the MSM, or us commenters on BMG.
I agree with your post below: I’d have loved a flash poll. Unfortunately, none was done. Alas.
Given all of them that were done during ‘for the 08 and ’12 elections, I think it’s a good idea to ask why that’s the case. My guess is the media learned that doing flash polling prevented their pundits from framing the debate, and also cost more than already-hired pundits, which is two points in favor of the MSM skipping flash polls entirely.
We’ll see new polling in the days ahead, polling that will be impacted by the debate (and, unfortunately, by all the pundits, as well). Ultimately, that will tell us more about who won the debate, as well as the spin room, than anything else.
no matter how a candidate performs, it’s all about how the coverage afterwards. The spin rooms going crazy minutes after the debate. Most people don’t watch, so it’s the spin of what happened. Clinton’s performance was good, but it wasn’t all that great. But if she didn’t do well she would have been crushed by the media. So it works both ways. She didn’t answer a lot of questions, many I was interested in hearing.
Clinton lost me as a supporter in ’08. The racial tone late during the primary made me drop her. She need to at a minimum address the flip flops and she didn’t.
Bernie laid an egg on gun manufactures question and foreign policy. He just did.
The pundits declared Rubio the winner of the first debate, had next to nothing to say about Carson and initial focus groups showed voter disgust with Trump. Then he and Carson climbed to double digit leads over their next competitor and have basically stayed there. Fiorina was declared the winner of the kiddie table, arbitrarily booted up, got more positive pundit press, and briefly moved into third place but has since fallen back to fifth or sixth. Granted, their base and race is more volatile and leads of a few percentage points become much lager orders of magnitude than in our five, and to be really honest, three candidate field.
So time will tell. I know who lost the debate-Chafee, Webb, Lessig and Debbie Wasserman Schultz. The other three had good nights. Hillary a particularly good one in this viewers opinion. When I say Hillary won-that’s all in expressing my own subjective opinion.
Maybe it’s because the Republican field is enormous and no one has taken a truly commanding lead, but it is interesting how much more media oxygen has been spent on the second, third and fourth tier candidates in that race than on the Democratic side. We’ve see plenty of coverage on how Rubio, Kasich, Fiorina, Christie and Graham have had strong debate performances and the media gone into some depth concerning what they’ve said. Ben Carson continues to get “Who is Ben Carson?” coverage. The democracy of the coverage has been laudable and I suspect it’s creating a situation where voters are getting enough information to make some decisions even if they’re not the decisions the pundits expected.
Oddly, on the Democrat side it really has been Hillary, Hillary, Hillary with Bernie Sanders only recently forcing his way into the conversation (and the media coverage lagged well behind his rise). Biden got more coverage after this debate than the other three candidates. While I understand the will he or won’t he speculation on a sitting VP demands coverage, a guy like Jim Webb said enough on Tuesday to deserve more attention. While I think he had a generally poor debate (kvetching about his time, South China Sea, smiling about killing a guy), he did give an excellent answer on the threats we face at this moment and made a compelling case for why he’s a Democrat. At the very least shouldn’t someone be asking whether Webb is speaking for a wing of the Democratic Party that no longer exists or if Hillary Clinton has locked up the more hawkish elements inside the party?
Also, this debate featured some real substance. Our role in the Middle East, gun control and financial regulation got serious discussion and I think the media is glossing over it in the pursuance of horse race coverage. Meanwhile the Republicans, with a bigger horse race, are getting substantive attention.
So, to what you’re saying, it will be interesting to see how the media reaction to this debate shapes the fallout.
I watched the debate. I watched the candidates. I’ve been watching candidates and debates for fifty years.
I also know about social networks and how to manipulate them. Not to put too fine a point on it, but Google, twitter, and the internet also have global warming as a vast left wing conspiracy promoted by corrupt scientists manufacturing fraudulent data in exchange for rigged grants.
Hillary Clinton was the only president on the stage last night.
You get your own vote, not the vote of hundreds of millions.
I think the polls and other things tell us more than what SomervilleTom or Ryepower12 think.
They are indicating a significant rise in his name recognition and voter interest in his campaign. It is safe to say, Hillary Clinton is a known quantity to almost 100% of the electorate and most people have strong opinion of her one way or the other. This was free, largely positive, exposure for Bernie Sanders that can only help him down the line.. We won’t know who won one way or the other until we see better polling and more data-sets showing where voters moved.
I’m not arguing that search data is meaningless, or that polls are necessarily misleading.
This strikes me as perhaps another example of the distinction between “truth” and “facts”. I get far more meaning from your commentary here than I do from any poll or collection of search results. In that sense, your commentary tells me more than those polls and other things. Of course, an aspect of why that’s true is that your commentary is generally informed by such evidence — I enthusiastically encourage that.
In my view, the meaning of a particular collection of data mining results is often difficult and counter-intuitive. SOMETHING produced the data you cite. I suggest that neither of us has enough data to say very much about the factor or combination of factors that actually caused those results.
For example, “Google search interest” shows similar spikes for Donald Trump over the last 90 days, including a pronounced and labeled spike coinciding with the second debate. Does that mean that millions of Americans were swayed to support Donald Trump by his infamous debate appearances? Not to me.
Any competent media director today can cause similar floods of apparent support for an individual or organization on LinkedIn, Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, or any other comparable social network. Less ethical players with connections to the black-hat side of the world can use the worldwide networks of compromised sites (the same ones that generate mountains of email spam) to turn those floods into destructive tidal waves.
I’m not accusing any campaign of unethical behavior, I’m just saying that I think we need to be very nuanced in interpreting the results of such data mining.
I think it does. His polling went up subsequent to his debates, and has solidified. It doesn’t appear as if it will be going down anytime soon. So yes, the interest in his candidacy from those debates has been meaningful, and reflective of strong support in the Republican primary.
I certainly don’t dismiss your argument.
I suppose because I try to be an optimist, I try to keep other explanations for this data in mind.
After all, there is reasonably strong data that certain surface temperature measurements have slowed in their annual rate of increase during the past decade or so. There are some who argue that this factual observation means that global warming is a hoax.
No, I’m not comparing you with a climate change denier. I’m just saying that data like this both readily interpreted in multiple conflicting ways and also highly responsive to confirmation bias.
Denmark hosted the UN Exercises in 1982 during my 4th year in the USMC, and I absolutely loved Denmark when I was visiting there. So MSNBC (especially Chris Matthews) enough already with the insults about Denmark. We should be so lucky!
If your only answer to Denmark having a better healthcare system than the crappy one we have is “We’re not Denmark; we’re the US of A,” then you don’t have an answer. The rest of the Western world is doing this essential service so much better than we are, we should be ashamed, not proud. That “America is different” line is beyond lame. If we are so great a country, why can’t we do this one thing that affects all of our citizens right?
I believe I heard Clinton say that we needed to join the rest of the world in granting paid family leave.
was that the population was 4 million, kind of different to do that in the United States. That’s roughly the population of Los Angeles. Bernie didn’t have a response to that from what I recall.
Clinton had that one rehearsed and ready to go. In the next debate Sanders needs a good response.
The entire discussion is freighted with jingoistic American propaganda.
We should be talking about Germany rather than Denmark. Germany is FAR ahead of the US along the metrics we’re discussing:
– Health care costs and outcomes
– Access to college
– Unemployment
– Literacy
– Safety net
– Paid maternity leave
– Renewable energy
– Public transportation
– Wealth concentration
– Middle class prosperity
– Etc., etc., etc
We can apply whatever labels we like — the actual behavior of government and its results is where the rubber meets the road. By that standard, Germany has been a “socialist” nation since WWII (and the Nazis were NOT “socialist”, by any reasonable definition of the term).
The same is true for the UK and for most of Europe.
The media prefers to talk about Denmark because it trivializes the fundamental revolution must happen in America.
I think it’s a better place to look at than Denmark or Scandanavia since it has a more diverse population, is a successful economic powerhouse, and is a world power in a way those places are not. It also has a strong tradition of fiscal conservatism, so it shows we can have a social market without busting the budget.
Another thing nobody talks about is America is Europe’s army, something Bob Gates mentioned at the end of his DoD tenure, and something our nominee should bring up. They need to step up to the plate and defend themselves, so we can invest in our own infrastructure while maintaining a balance against Russia.
I know that you’ve been talking about Germany. I meant during the debate. My wife (who grew up there and whose family still lives in Bavaria and nearby Austria) was snickering during the debate exchanges about Denmark. Her summary was something along the lines of “I guess nobody in America wants to talk about Angela Merkel and Germany”.
Angela Merkel is to the left of ALL the candidates in this race, and she’s viewed as “conservative” and “center-right” in Germany. She’s also among the most powerful people in the world, and Germany is among the most prosperous nations in the world.
Three of my wife’s sisters retired from the German public school system. Each lives in a comfortable modern home, in comfortable modern neighborhoods, and drives a comfortable modern car. Each has superb health care, heats their home with clean energy, and has enough money in the bank to put healthy fresh food on the table, vacation when they want, and pursue the interests and hobbies they enjoy. Each is treated with respect, affection, and dignity by their neighbors (many of whom are former students).
America is a backwards third-world nation in comparison to today’s Germany. I’m not surprised that nobody on CNN wants to discuss Germany.
And so would most of my Republican friends, I do take comfort that Hillary has cited her as a friend and inspiration. Many folks expected her to be a Thatcher and dare down the welfare state, but she has strengthened it through prudent management. I think she was unnecessarily punitive towards Greece, but I also understand that it is the German taxpayer she ultimately represents, and they were tired of shouldering the burden of preserving the EU alone.
Hillary should use Merkel as a model, and all the candidates could do well to talk about Germany. It truly is a market economy that works for everyone, at least compared to the US. Anti semitism and xenophobia are still big problems, just as racism is here, but inequality really is not.
This was in my head last night, question at the end of the debate about enemies? Webb talked about someone throwing a grenade at him would be on his list, but they weren’t around anymore. Heh heh … don’t know if I recall that correctly. I’ll look for a video.
Kind of think Cooper was asking in a “political sense” since it was a political debate.
https://vine.co/v/eE1HBMZPpbE
at least for me — even more awkward than when Lincoln Chaffee was talking about how his dog ate his homework.
Hillary was focusing on looking best prepared to be president. She had a strong command of the legislative process, strong command of foreign policy, and a strong command of her priorities and how she expects to achieve them. No question she was the best prepared to be President tomorrow on that stage, and I say this as a committed Sanders supporter. The fire and passion that’s been missing from her on the stump was there-ready to go toe to toe with the Republicans.
Bernie articulated a compelling case for why we need to do better than Clintonomics and really push for substantive and dare I say, revolutionary change to our campaign finance system, our infrastructure, and our economy. His domestic policies are still bolder. I also might add-he has gone from worst to first on responding to the racial justice issue. There is no doubt about that, and even gave a good defense of his immigration vote. He sucked on guns and seemed lost on foreign affairs-he simply can’t be a viable general election candidate without doing significant homework on that issue and boning up in it. Calling climate change our biggest security threat was perceived by the beltway as a gaffe but is completely true, and it has been proven to effect Mideast instability.
He looked better than O’Malley on those issues. Obama spoke out passionately against the war, as did Bernie on the floor of the House-where was O’Malley? Hillary got him pretty good on that, though I agree we saw more
passion from him and he did a better job than any challenger, Bernie included, on why we need an alternative to another Clinton. Did he make he case he is that alternative? It was a mixed bag. But he could be a contender in Iowa, which seems to be drifting from Bernie but is still suspicious of Clinton. Time will tell if he becomes the Kerry to their Dean and Gephardt.
Among political junkies and progressives, I think Sanders may have helped himself. However, in terms of overall electability, and looking and sounding presidential, HRC looked like the clear winner from my vantage point. Sanders is turning into a two trick pony—economic fairness and campaign finance. Two good tricks to be sure, and it may help him with primary voters. I hate to say this about Bernie, but he’s starting to remind me of Don Berwick (who I supported). He needs to broaden the range of issues on which he’s compelling. Clinton, on the other hand, seemed to have appeal and command on a broader range of issues. I think you can stick a fork in Chaffee and Webb. O’Malley was overshadowed but I think that he hit some good points along the way. Overall, great debate that I think made the Republicans—as a group—look like little kids having fun but accomplishing nothing.
I love Bernie. I nod my head in agreement almost every time he speaks. However, he gets stuck on bemoaning our problems and forgets to present the positive vision for where he wants to lead us. I thought it stood out in the closing remarks where O’Malley hit it out of the park, appealing to our better angels. The audience popped for him. Bernie needed to pivot to something similar, but he went back to his stump lines and it made him sound too one-note. Frustration needs to give way to hope.
Anger mobilizes the party faithful, who pay a lot of attention to the nation’s constant political infighting. However, swing voters react to a more positive message. They want to know how things are going to get better.
He needs to expand his issues or find a way to link all the other issues to income inequality and hammer that home. He needs a progressive foreign policy, as others have pointed out, so that people can believe he will be a better commander in chief than Clinton, he is not there yet. She also has gaping vulnerabilities on civil liberties issues, and as some libertarian critics have less generously pointed out, we would be voting for an Iraq War, Patriot Act, security state interventionist and we are supposedly the party that cares about those issues. Bernie should start caring about those issues.
And Clinton is no Coakley, she is prepared to lead and has an agenda. Still not sure if I prefer her’s to Sander’s, but by God did she sell it last night.
There was a moment during the first half of the debate when I found myself wondering if she or her staff reads our exchanges here on BMG, when she clearly and explicitly talked about her values, how they have not changed, and how they inform her agenda.
I’m a cynical old fart when it comes to material like that from a candidate, and she convinced me.
Meanwhile, I found myself missing the wit and humor of Barney Frank in Bernie Sanders. He struck me as overly strident, and perhaps over-coached.
And poorly, since he still didn’t have any good responses for foreign policy or gun control questions. And I think he was told to down down his aggressive stance and persona, but he ended up being somewhat deferential to Clinton and then just resuscitated his stump speeches.
I will say-Rye is correct about twitter and google searches. For many people this was the first they heard of Bernie, and they liked what he had to say. So he definitely made the best of this free media, but he treated it more like a commercial than a debate, not really contrasting with Clinton’s approach to policy until the last thirty minutes or so.
She had an excellent debate, and maybe it’s my bias as a History and Poli Sci major, but I disagree with the data guys at 538 on the media narrative underselling her before and overselling her after. She did have a real problem coming in, and she came out looking like a plausibly progressive President.
Clinton had oratory and command working for her last night. She came across as prepared and capable. I find her policy proposals to be overly modest and that she spends too much time trying to align her opinions with what she thinks is popular, but she came across as ready for primetime.
I think what she did last night is demonstrate to the party that she can outshine any given Republican that gets on the stage with her. Electability remains hr strong suit.
I think Sander’s biggest vulnerability is that he currently has no concrete way to turn his platform into law. He has admitted this, and wants to rely on a mass movement to make the change. I think if we were electing a party spokesmen, than Sanders is by far better equipped than Hillary to articulate our platform and values in simple, stark terms any voter can understand. It’s why he has such heartland appeal in Iowa and why even West Virginians get where he is coming from. Yet we are electing a President, not a spokesperson, and I think Hillary has a concrete agenda for getting from point A to point B that I have yet to see from Bernie. I hope to see it, and he long ago earned my primary vote, but I am far more confident in her than I was yesterday.
She will not get such an easy pass during the general. But as far as powder puff debates go, she did well as long as we don’t look at her decision making ability.
who have this pipe dream are the ones not voting for any Democratic candidate anyway. Funny this is the only thing you can offer here. we had a debate about the future of our country and this is all you have. Sad, but fitting.
LOL – yeah call me crazy, but I think the SoS decision to use her own email server (instead of her gov assigned server) exclusively for personal and gov emails was a bad decision.
Infact, I’d like to quote SomervilleTom who said
http://vps28478.inmotionhosting.com/~bluema24/2015/09/hillary-clinton-insults-the-rest-of-us/
So yeah, I wouldn’t feel very safe with Hillary Clinton usine a gmail account to conduct official gov business.
nice platform.
Your comment is hilarious, although perhaps unintentionally.
The email issue is done, and is relevant only to people like the “birther” crowd. Most Americans would rather talk about income and wealth concentration. Perhaps some prefer the vulgar and boorish mud-slinging of the GOP clowns to “powder puff debates” like we saw last night. I guess somebody listens to Rush Limbaugh and the various Maroon-In-The-Morning right-wing talk shows.
Perhaps the ever-dwindling number of people who think the Earth is flat and 6,000 years old, the Apollo landings were faked, the US government planned, executed, and covered up the 9/11 attacks, Barack Obama is not an American, climate change is a hoax, and similar garbage will continue to bleat about the emails. So what.
That crowd will never vote for any Democrat and they won’t vote for any Republican who has enough brain cells to actually serve as President. The current implosion of the GOP House delegation demonstrates what happens to the maroons that crowd DOES support when they take office and must actually govern. Massachusetts again leads the nation in demonstrating what happens to the GOP when it purges everyone with a room-temperature or higher IQ from its ranks.
I’m still optimistic enough about America and Americans to believe that most Americans are embarrassed by such rubbish, regardless of what Rupert Murdoch and Fox News think about their audience.
Last month our left-wing extremist was a Sanders supporter who could look at Hillary’s decision to use her own server as a stupid “blunder” … How did you say it Tom
http://vps28478.inmotionhosting.com/~bluema24/2015/09/hillary-clinton-insults-the-rest-of-us/
I think Hillary was right, you are confused. Luckily I’m hear to clear things up for you … Quoting yor own posts. LOL
I stand by the comments I made then, and now.
As far as I can tell, the main thing you’re “hear” for at the moment is trolling.
And for what it’s worth, I stand by your comments as well. Thank you for making them. ; )
Cooper asked something to the effect of “How will you not be a third Obama term?” Hillary Clinton: “Isn’t it obvious?” Meaning, I guess, “I’m a woman, he’s a man”. So I guess that means only superficial differences exist between Hilary and Obama? I don’t remember Obama ever trying to say that people should vote for him merely because he’s black, but Senator Clinton seemed to be saying people should vote for her because she’s a woman.
That said, her performance was indeed very strong, and Sanders had better “evolve” on gun control. Not as “substantial” a debate as the candidates seemed to think, though always better than a Republican circus.
When Obama was running in the primary in 2007, I asked the following question. I said: If you are elected President, are you really going to be different?
His charming answer to me was: “Just look at me. I am different!”
Where was this? Was it at a debate?
I saw then Senator Obama at a very early event during the primary. He shook hands with many people when he entered the room, and that’s when I asked him the question.
During the early part of presidential primaries, it’s actually pretty easy to see candidates and ask questions, especially if you go to New Hampshire. I similarly spoke with Hillary Clinton and John Edwards in 2007.