2016 Democratic candidates treat America to a real presidential debate about serious issues

Well, that was refreshing!

This evening, at the Wynn Las Vegas resort-casi­no in Nevada’s largest city, five of the six Democ­rats who have declared them­selves to be can­di­dates for Pres­i­dent of the Unit­ed States met onstage, face-to-face, for the first Demo­c­ra­t­ic pres­i­den­tial debate of the 2016 cycle, which was mod­er­at­ed by CNN’s Ander­son Cooper.

As sev­er­al of the can­di­dates them­selves not­ed dur­ing the course of the evening, the debate was stark­ly, sharply dif­fer­ent than the cir­cus-like car­ni­vals orga­nized by the Repub­li­can Par­ty and its media part­ners. It was, for the most part, a con­ver­sa­tion about sub­stan­tive issues like gun vio­lence, the cli­mate cri­sis, the need for clean ener­gy jobs, income inequal­i­ty, mon­ey in pol­i­tics, and immi­gra­tion. There was no child­ish name-call­ing, and the can­di­dates were respect­ful in their disagreements.

Five can­di­dates took part in the debate: For­mer Sec­re­tary of State Hillary Clin­ton, Ver­mont Sen­a­tor Bernie Sanders, for­mer Mary­land Gov­er­nor Mar­tin O’Mal­ley, for­mer Rhode Island Gov­er­nor Lin­coln Chafee, and for­mer Vir­ginia Sen­a­tor James Webb. Law pro­fes­sor Lar­ry Lessig, the sixth declared can­di­date, was not invit­ed to par­tic­i­pate in the debate, which is sad — there would have been room for him.

CNN did its best to sug­gest there was a chance Vice Pres­i­dent Joe Biden might show up and par­tic­i­pate, and amus­ing­ly, they even kept a spare podi­um on hand for that pur­pose — as if they real­ly believed Biden was going to sud­den­ly announce a cam­paign for the Pres­i­den­cy on a momen­t’s notice and para­chute in to Las Vegas.

(They should have giv­en the sixth podi­um to Lessig. What does it mat­ter what his poll num­bers are? There’s sim­ply no jus­ti­fi­ca­tion for exclud­ing any of the declared Democ­rats, giv­en that the field isn’t large enough to war­rant hav­ing a cutoff.)

Unsur­pris­ing­ly, Hillary Clin­ton took cen­ter stage at the debate — lit­er­al­ly and fig­u­ra­tive­ly. As the fron­trun­ner, CNN posi­tioned her in between Webb and Sanders, on her right, and O’Mal­ley and Chafee to her left. And mod­er­a­tor Ander­son Coop­er point­ed­ly direct­ed plen­ty of ques­tions at her. An analy­sis by the New York Times reveals she spoke the most dur­ing the debate — a total of 31:05 min­utes.

Clin­ton turned in a strong per­for­mance. She was relaxed, yet ener­getic; con­fi­dent, yet self-con­scious. She field­ed tough ques­tions masterfully.

For instance, when the sub­ject of her vote to autho­rize the inva­sion of Iraq came up, and her judg­ment was called into ques­tion, she smooth­ly point­ed out that she had already been held account­able for her vote in the 2008 Demo­c­ra­t­ic debates, and not­ed that the man who defeat­ed her, Barack Oba­ma, ulti­mate­ly select­ed her to be his Sec­re­tary of State because he trust­ed her judgment.

She also expert­ly han­dled a ques­tion about her emails, con­ced­ing that it was a mis­take to use a pri­vate email serv­er, but that she has been com­mit­ted to trans­paren­cy and account­abil­i­ty, and asked to be able to tes­ti­fy pub­licly on the mat­ter for that rea­son. She then pro­ceed­ed to slam the House Select Com­mit­tee on Beng­hazi as an arm of the Repub­li­ca­tion Nation­al Com­mit­tee (which every­one knows is true, even if they won’t admit it.) Nat­u­ral­ly, she put Kevin McCarthy’s state­ment to Sean Han­ni­ty to good use dur­ing the course of her answer.

She also made the most of oppor­tu­ni­ties to go on offense, dif­fer­en­ti­at­ing her posi­tions from those of her fel­low Democ­rats. Notably, she drew a con­trast between her­self and Bernie Sanders on the issue of tack­ling gun violence.

But she shared the biggest moment of the evening with Sanders, who took the oppor­tu­ni­ty to scold the mass media for its obses­sion with Clin­ton’s emails:

SANDERS: Let me say some­thing that may not be great pol­i­tics. But I think the Sec­re­tary is right… and that is that the Amer­i­can peo­ple are sick and tired of hear­ing about your damn e‑mails.

CLINTON [laugh­ing]: Thank you. Me too. Me too!

SANDERS: You know, the mid­dle class, Ander­son… and let me say some­thing about the media as well. I go around the coun­try, talk to a whole lot of peo­ple. The mid­dle class in this coun­try is col­laps­ing. We have 27 mil­lion peo­ple liv­ing in pover­ty. We have mas­sive wealth and income inequal­i­ty. Our trade poli­cies have cost us mil­lions of decent jobs. The Amer­i­can peo­ple want to know whether we’re going to have a democ­ra­cy or an oli­garchy as a result of Cit­i­zens Unit­ed. Enough of the e‑mails — let’s talk about the real issues fac­ing America.

CLINTON: Thank you, Bernie. Thank you.

At the con­clu­sion of this exchange, a vis­i­bly thrilled Clin­ton turned to Sanders and offered her hand, all smiles. Sanders shook it and grinned as well, and the Democ­rats in the audi­ence lept to their feat for a stand­ing ovation.

On Twit­ter and Face­book, Demo­c­ra­t­ic activists and pro­gres­sive com­men­ta­tors cel­e­brat­ed the moment. “Sanders for the win. That was a tri­umph. Coop­er should just slink off now,” tweet­ed David Roberts.

“Ladies and gen­tle­men, there was your debate moment. Bernie Sanders defends Hillary Clin­ton on over­hyped email sto­ry,” agreed Peter Daou of Hillary­Men.

Demo­c­ra­t­ic Par­ty staff also reg­is­tered their approval, tweet­ing a GIF of the hand­shake with the cap­tion “#WeAre­De­moc­rats and we love sub­stan­tive debates!”

Through­out the debate, Sanders was his usu­al pas­sion­ate self. But he seemed to tru­ly hit his stride as the evening went on and the debate segued away from for­eign pol­i­cy. He repeat­ed­ly spoke truth to pow­er, at one point declar­ing, “Con­gress does­n’t reg­u­late Wall Street; Wall Street reg­u­lates Con­gress” (which is sad­ly true).

He called for the big banks to be bro­ken up, and for the nation to take seri­ous action to address the cli­mate cri­sis, income inequal­i­ty, and mon­ey in pol­i­tics. He ref­er­enced the Supreme Court’s dis­as­trous Cit­i­zens Cor­po­ra­tions Unit­ed rul­ing sev­er­al times. He tout­ed his plan to make col­lege free. He gave an excel­lent response to a ques­tion about Amer­i­ca’s bro­ken jus­tice sys­tem, affirm­ing that Black Lives Mat­ter, and recount­ing the hor­ri­fy­ing sto­ry of San­dra Bland.

Mary­land Gov­er­nor Mar­tin O’Mal­ley like­wise turned in a sol­id per­for­mance, mak­ing the most of the oppor­tu­ni­ty to intro­duce him­self to Demo­c­ra­t­ic vot­ers across Amer­i­ca. O’Mal­ley dis­tin­guished him­self by talk­ing at some length about the need to build a clean ener­gy econ­o­my by 2050, not­ing that the tran­si­tion away from fos­sil fuels rep­re­sents an oppor­tu­ni­ty to cre­ate good pay­ing jobs in low or non-pol­lut­ing indus­tries. O’Mal­ley also artic­u­lat­ed a strong pro­gres­sive posi­tion on immi­gra­tion, cor­rect­ly describ­ing the nation’s most recent immi­grants as new Amer­i­cans.

While Clin­ton, Sanders, and O’Mal­ley show­cased their smarts and exper­tise, for­mer Repub­li­cans Jim Webb and Lin­coln Chafee were some­what disappointing.

Webb, who has pret­ty much been invis­i­ble for the dura­tion of the cam­paign thus far, raised eye­brows when he repeat­ed­ly com­plained about not being giv­en an oppor­tu­ni­ty to speak by Coop­er and the oth­er CNN moderators.

“Atten­tion Jim Webb: You might be able to make your case bet­ter if you spent your time mak­ing that case, and not com­plain­ing about lack of time,” tweet­ed for­mer Wash­ing­ton State polit­i­cal reporter Ken­neth Vogel.

Oth­ers were even harsh­er in their assess­ments, feel­ing that Webb had not demon­strat­ed that he had much to offer.

“Webb should use his clos­ing state­ment as a con­ve­nient chance to announce the end of his cam­paign,” tweet­ed Dan­ny Edgel.

Lin­coln Chafee did not fare much bet­ter. Chafee, who pre­vi­ous­ly served in Con­gress as a Repub­li­can before becom­ing an inde­pen­dent and final­ly a Demo­c­rat, told Coop­er that even though he’s changed his par­ty affil­i­a­tion a cou­ple of times, he’s akin to a slab of rock with respect to his posi­tions on the issues.

“Ander­son, you’re look­ing at a block of gran­ite,” he declared.

But lat­er on in the debate, Chafee seemed at a loss to explain why he vot­ed for the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act of 1999 (which gut­ted the Depres­sion-era Glass-Stea­gall Act that had estab­lished a fire­wall between com­mer­cial and invest­ment bank­ing) and the Patri­ot Act (which led to a huge expan­sion of the NSA’s uncon­sti­tu­tion­al spy­ing regime). Chafee’s lame response boiled down to, I was new to Con­gress, it was my first term, and I did­n’t real­ly know what I was doing.

Reac­tions on Twit­ter were not kind.

“Lin­coln Chafee explain­ing that the dog ate his home­work,” tweet­ed Bob Mey­er.

“I think Chafee needs just not to be here any more. That was just about the worst answer in a debate I’ve heard,” tweet­ed David Atkins.

Chafee did, how­ev­er, give one exem­plary answer, which counts for a lot in our esti­ma­tion. Asked what should be done about Edward Snow­den, Chafee spoke of bring­ing the for­mer NSA con­trac­tor home — with­out jail­ing him.

“I would bring him home. The courts have ruled that what he did — what he did was say the Amer­i­can gov­ern­ment was act­ing ille­gal­ly. That’s what the fed­er­al courts have said; what Snow­den did showed that the Amer­i­can gov­ern­ment was act­ing ille­gal­ly for the Fourth Amend­ment. So I would bring him home,” Chafee said.

Clin­ton and O’Mal­ley, on the oth­er hand, argued Snow­den should see the inside of a cell. Sanders agreed some form of pun­ish­ment was war­rant­ed, but offered sev­er­al words in Snow­den’s defense, unlike Clin­ton and O’Mal­ley, not­ing that he had helped expose the NSA’s vast uncon­sti­tu­tion­al spy­ing regime.

Webb was the least def­i­nite of all the candidates.

“I — well, I — I would leave his ulti­mate judg­ment to the legal sys­tem,” Webb said, going on to say that the NSA’s bulk col­lec­tion of phone records and oth­er data (which he the­o­rized could be har­vest­ed by hack­ers) need­ed to be stopped.

My guess is that Chafee and Webb won’t stay in the race too much longer. They weren’t get­ting much trac­tion before tonight’s debate and it’s not like­ly their polit­i­cal for­tunes are going to improve in the wake of their lack­lus­ter performances.

Clin­ton, Sanders, and O’Mal­ley will cer­tain­ly be back, however.

There are two more Demo­c­ra­t­ic pres­i­den­tial debates on the cal­en­dar before year’s end (one on Novem­ber 14th and anoth­er on Decem­ber 19th). Addi­tion­al­ly, there is also going to be a First in the South pres­i­den­tial forum on Novem­ber 6th, host­ed by MSNBC’s Rachel Mad­dow, in which the can­di­dates will appear one at a time.

Mar­tin O’Mal­ley and Bernie Sanders would cer­tain­ly like for there to be more debates. O’Mal­ley has been par­tic­u­lar­ly vocal on this point, even going so far as to sin­gle out DNC Chair­woman Deb­bie Wasser­man-Schultz for crit­i­cism — at the recent DNC sum­mer meet­ing in Min­neapo­lis, on the trail, and from the podi­um tonight.

While O’Mal­ley’s own cam­paign would cer­tain­ly ben­e­fit from an expand­ed debate sched­ule (hav­ing far few­er resources than Clin­ton or Sanders), he’s cor­rect in assert­ing it is in the Demo­c­ra­t­ic Par­ty’s best inter­est as well. Each time the Demo­c­ra­t­ic can­di­dates gath­er on stage togeth­er for a con­ver­sa­tion, the par­ty gets an oppor­tu­ni­ty to reshape and reframe the nation­al dialogue.

As we saw tonight, Hillary Clin­ton is a fan­tas­tic debater, and she excels when she’s onstage with fel­low con­tenders. She’d ben­e­fit from addi­tion­al debates, too.

Tonight, Amer­i­ca was treat­ed to a real pres­i­den­tial debate about seri­ous issues. The Demo­c­ra­t­ic can­di­dates showed it’s pos­si­ble to spend a cou­ple of hours pri­mar­i­ly focus­ing on what’s ail­ing our coun­try and what can be done about it.

Con­trast that with the spec­ta­cles Fox and CNN host­ed in con­junc­tion with the Repub­li­can Par­ty last month and the month before, which con­sist­ed most­ly of bick­er­ing, trash talk­ing, and fin­ger point­ing. The Repub­li­can can­di­dates repeat­ed­ly attacked each oth­er while also com­pet­ing to see who could be more vicious towards Amer­i­ca’s immi­grants and health­care provider Planned Parenthood.

CNN may have wished that Trump were onstage, but plen­ty of vot­ers who tuned in were grate­ful he was­n’t there. As Dante Atkins astute­ly not­ed lat­er on in the evening, “Seems some media fig­ures thought debate was bor­ing. We’re pick­ing a pres­i­dent, not a real­i­ty TV star. It was infor­ma­tive and substantive.”

“Sor­ry #Trump2016 fans, no racism or sex­ism in #DemDe­bate tonight, but I have some crayons you can play with while the grown-ups are talk­ing,” anoth­er activist tweet­ed, lay­ing the snark on rather thickly.

“Who won or lost is pun­dit dri­v­el,” agreed Bill Mad­den. “The real win was for the Amer­i­can peo­ple & the [un]common sense expo­sure of pro­gres­sive ideas.”

“Only in #DemDe­bate is there pol­i­cy talk about the poor, help­ing immi­grants, new Glass Stea­gall, end­ing Cit­i­zens Unit­ed, income inequal­i­ty,” added Miles Tache.

All in all, it was a won­der­ful debate and a refresh­ing change from the non­sense that we’ve had to put up with from the Repub­li­can can­di­dates for months. We’ll be look­ing for­ward to the next debate in about a month, and hop­ing that when the DNC’s Exec­u­tive Com­mit­tee meets in Novem­ber, it will sched­ule at least one or two addi­tion­al debates ahead of the first cau­cus­es and primaries.

Con­grat­u­la­tions, Democ­rats, on a fine first pres­i­den­tial debate. The team at NPI enjoyed it and we know mil­lions of oth­er Amer­i­cans did, too.