Good evening, and wel­come to NPI’s live cov­er­age of the fourth Demo­c­ra­t­ic pres­i­den­tial debate of the 2016 cycle. I will be watch­ing and shar­ing impres­sions of the debate as it pro­gress­es. The debate is being broad­cast by MSNBC.

If you don’t have cable, you can livestream the debate online.

Cour­tesy of MSNBC, here’s how you can participate:

• The debate will air live on MSNBC, begin­ning at 6 PM Pacific
• You can also watch the live stream of the debate online on MSNBC.com.
• If look­ing for real-time reac­tions and analy­sis, you’ll find it at all at decision2016.nbcnews.com.
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• If you live in New Eng­land, you can sub­mit ques­tions through our local part­ners at New Hamp­shire Union Leader and NECN.

There are two can­di­dates left seek­ing the Demo­c­ra­t­ic nom­i­na­tion for Pres­i­dent of the Unit­ed States: Hillary Clin­ton and Bernie Sanders.

This fifth over­all debate will be the first one with just Clin­ton and Sanders. As with Clin­ton and Oba­ma eight years ago, there will be two can­di­dates at two podi­ums… and that’s it. Tonight’s debate will be the only one held between the Iowa cau­cus­es and the New Hamp­shire pri­ma­ry next Tuesday.

Orig­i­nal­ly, this debate was not on the sched­ule put togeth­er by the Demo­c­ra­t­ic Par­ty, but the DNC yield­ed to the cam­paigns’ desire for more debates.

Rachel Mad­dow and Chuck Todd will be the moderators.

6:02 PM: The can­di­dates have tak­en their places onstage!

6:03 PM: Sanders opens first, and wastes no time assail­ing the rigged econ­o­my that Wall Street has constructed.

6:05 PM: In her open­ing state­ment, Clin­ton acknowl­edges eco­nom­ic injus­tice and income inequal­i­ty, but adds we have oth­er prob­lems we need to deal with, like sys­temic racism in our crim­i­nal jus­tice system.

6:06 PM: Chuck Todd asks Clin­ton whether Sanders’ pro­pos­als are too ambi­tious. Clin­ton says, “I want to build on the progress we’ve made. I don’t want to rip away the secu­ri­ty that peo­ple have.” It should be not­ed: Even in the wake of the Patient Pro­tec­tion Act, not not every­one has health­care, Madam Secretary…

6:07 PM: “I haven’t quite run for Pres­i­dent before,” Sanders quips, before begin­ning to answer Chuck Tod­d’s ques­tion regard­ing the scale of his pro­pos­als. “I do not accept the belief that the Unit­ed States of Amer­i­ca can’t stand up to the ripoffs of the phar­ma­ceu­ti­cal indus­try,” he declares.

6:09 PM: This debate has been incred­i­bly live­ly and fun to watch.

6:13 PM: Clin­ton’s on a tear here, sug­gest­ing that under Sanders’ def­i­n­i­tion, every­one from Joe Biden to Paul Well­stone would­n’t qual­i­fy as a pro­gres­sive. Clin­ton may think she’s being clever, but we doubt Sanders would say that a sin­gle vote or pol­i­cy posi­tion dis­qual­i­fies some­one from being a progressive.

6:15 PM: We need to stand up to the big mon­ey, and when we do that, we can trans­form Amer­i­ca, Sanders says.

6:18 PM: “I know a lot of hard-fight­ing pro­gres­sive in the Demo­c­ra­t­ic Par­ty… and that’s what we ought to be cel­e­brat­ing, Clin­ton says.

6:19 PM: Sanders says he agrees with Clin­ton about focus­ing on a pos­i­tive vision for the coun­try… and goes on to say, “I am proud to be the only can­di­date up here that does not have a Super PAC.”

6:21 PM: “I am run­ning for Pres­i­dent as a Demo­c­rat,” Sanders says, earn­ing big applause for say­ing that we need a fifty-state strategy.

6:22 PM: Clin­ton jabs at Sanders by not­ing she has the sup­port of Gov­er­nor Howard Dean (the orig­i­na­tor of the fifty state strat­e­gy) and two oth­er Ver­mont gov­er­nors. (Ver­mont is Sanders’ home state.)

6:23 PM: Asked about Clin­ton’s endorse­ments, Sanders points out his cam­paign is of, by, and for the peo­ple, with an aver­age dona­tion of around $27, and has drawn tens of thou­sands of peo­ple to events all around the country.

6:26 PM: “I think it’s time to end the very art­ful smear that your cam­paign has been car­ry­ing out,” Clin­ton says, con­clud­ing a rant about Sanders’ com­ments regard­ing who and what represent.

6:31 PM: Bernie and Hillary are now tus­sling over dereg­u­lat­ing Wall Street.

6:33 PM: Head­ing to our first com­mer­cial break. “We’ve touched a nerve,” Rachel Mad­dow notes.

6:35 PM: We’re back. Chuck Todd is ask­ing about the pres­i­den­tial pri­ma­ry financ­ing sys­tem. Sanders says he’s not using it because it does­n’t work well.

6:38 PM: Have you have been too dis­mis­sive of vot­er con­cerns over your ties to Wall Street? Rachel Mad­dow asks Hillary Clinton.

6:39 PM: “I went to Wall Street before the crash,” Clin­ton says, sug­gest­ing that she warned them their behav­ior was set­ting Amer­i­ca up for disaster.

6:41 PM: Not one Wall Street exec­u­tive has been pros­e­cut­ed for wrong­do­ing per­tain­ing to the onset of the Great Reces­sion and the coun­try’s eco­nom­ic col­lapse, Sanders notes, draw­ing mas­sive applause.

6:42 PM: Sanders invokes Eliz­a­beth War­ren’s name and argues we do need a mod­ern Glass-Stea­gall Act, and goes on to invoke the name of trust­buster Ted­dy Roo­sevelt. “Time to break them up,” Sanders says of the big banks.

6:45 PM: Sanders and Clin­ton have been doing their best to prac­tice mes­sage dis­ci­pline in this debate, return­ing repeat­ed­ly to their main themes.

6:46 PM: “Are you will­ing to release the tran­scripts of your paid speech­es?” Chuck Todd asks. On the defen­sive, Clin­ton says she’ll look into it.

6:48 PM: “The busi­ness mod­el of Wall Street is fraud,” Sanders declares, assail­ing the pow­er­ful finan­cial indus­try for its real­ly awful, no good, destruc­tive behavior.

6:51 PM: We’re tak­ing anoth­er com­mer­cial break.

6:56 PM: We’re back, and switch­ing gears to for­eign pol­i­cy. First ques­tion is about our lev­el of com­mit­ment to fight­ing the Islam­ic State. Clin­ton says she’s com­fort­able with Pres­i­dent Oba­ma’s strat­e­gy. “I sup­port spe­cial forces, I sup­port train­ers, I sup­port air strikes,” she says.

6:59 PM: Sanders takes the oppor­tu­ni­ty to point out that he dif­fered with Clin­ton about whether invad­ing Iraq was a good idea. (He vot­ed against the inva­sion, she vot­ed to autho­rize Bush to go in.)

7:02 PM: Asked what they would do with respect to troop lev­els in Afghanistan, Sanders and Clin­ton basi­cal­ly say they’d have to eval­u­ate what’s needed.

7:04 PM: Chuck Todd asks Sanders to artic­u­late what his for­eign pol­i­cy doc­trine is, and he replies by talk­ing about his belief that the Unit­ed States should work coop­er­a­tive­ly with oth­er nations to solve world prob­lems, includ­ing terrorism.

7:13 PM: Asked by Chuck Todd what nation-states he would be most wor­ried about (seri­ous­ly, Chuck? You want him to rank a list of coun­tries?) Sanders says he’s very con­cerned about North Korea because it’s so isolated.

7:15 PM: Clin­ton says she’s absolute­ly against pri­va­tiz­ing the VA (our vet­er­ans health­care sys­tem), cred­it­ing Sanders for his work to improve care for our return­ing vet­er­ans, and Sanders agrees: we need to keep our pub­lic VA system.

7:18 PM: Head­ing to break. When we get back, we’ll be talk­ing Social Secu­ri­ty… sup­pos­ed­ly. It might not be the first thing the mod­er­a­tors ask about.

7:24 PM: The first ques­tion is actu­al­ly about the Iowa cau­cus­es. Chuck Todd asks Sanders if he agrees with the Des Moines Reg­is­ter about the need for an audit. Sanders says he does, but says we should­n’t blow the sit­u­a­tion out of pro­por­tion, not­ing not that many del­e­gates over­all are at stake, and that his cam­paign and Clin­ton’s would like­ly end up with about the same num­ber of del­e­gates after any recount, “at the end of the day.”

7:35 PM: Rachel and Chuck have been ask­ing a bunch of ques­tions about elec­tabil­i­ty which don’t break any new ground. Why are we wast­ing time going over old con­tro­ver­sies like Hillary’s emails and the Sanders/DNC Vote­Builder dispute?

7:36 PM: Anoth­er com­mer­cial break? We nev­er talked about Social Security…

7:40 PM: We’re back. Hillary Clin­ton was just asked if she still sup­ports the death penal­ty. She says she does, with caveats. (Boooo… it should be abol­ished.) Sanders explains why he’s for abo­li­tion: “In a world of so much vio­lence and killing, I just don’t believe that gov­ern­ment itself should be part of the killing.”

7:43 PM: Rachel Mad­dow asks Clin­ton and Sanders about the Flint water cri­sis. Clin­ton says she would go in imme­di­ate­ly over state objec­tions to address the emer­gency. She says she’s going to Flint next week to get a briefing.

7:45 PM: Sanders says he does­n’t go around ask­ing for the res­ig­na­tions of gov­er­nors every day, but that he believes that Sny­der should resign. “One won­ders if this had been a white sub­ur­ban com­mu­ni­ty, what kind of response there would have been,” Sanders says to applause.

7:46 PM: Chuck Todd asks Clin­ton about her record on trade and whether Democ­rats can expect her to become sup­port­ive of TPP if she’s elected.

7:47 PM: Clin­ton notes she vot­ed against CAFTA while a sen­a­tor dur­ing the Bush error, and says that she reserved judg­ment on the TPP until it had been nego­ti­at­ed. Now that the text is final, she says she is opposed.

7:48 PM: “I believe in fair trade which works for the mid­dle class,” Sanders says, when asked about his posi­tion on trade. “The cur­rent trade agree­ments were writ­ten by cor­po­rate Amer­i­ca, for cor­po­rate America.”

7:50 PM: Chuck Todd says they’re going to fit in one more break.

7:51 PM: It’s worth paus­ing to note what top­ics have not been the focus of ques­tions dur­ing this fifth Demo­c­ra­t­ic debate. Here is a par­tial list:

• Edu­ca­tion (and subis­sues like high-stakes testing)
• Trans­porta­tion (and subis­sues like Amtrak funding)
• Tech­nol­o­gy (and subis­sues like encryption)
• Envi­ron­men­tal pro­tec­tion (and subis­sues like fight­ing the cli­mate crisis)
• Media con­cen­tra­tion (and subis­sues like own­er­ship rules)
• Wom­en’s health (and subis­sues like attacks on Planned Par­ent­hood clinics)

7:54 PM: We’re back. Chuck Todd asks Clin­ton what she would focus on first: gun reform, immi­gra­tion reform, or address­ing the cli­mate cri­sis. Clin­ton rejects the premise of the ques­tion, say­ing she would work to plant the seeds of every­thing that our coun­try needs to have happen.

7:58 PM: Sanders points out that we’re just not going to get much done on any issue until we do some­thing about mon­ey in pol­i­tics, over­turn­ing bad U.S. Supreme Court deci­sions like Cit­i­zens Cor­po­ra­tions Unit­ed.

8:04 PM: Sanders has the line of the night: “On our worst days I think it is fair to say that we are one hun­dred times bet­ter than any Repub­li­can candidate.”

Bernie Sanders and Hillary Clin­ton shake hands and smile at the fifth Demo­c­ra­t­ic debate

8:06 PM: We’re on to clos­ing state­ments. Clin­ton is stick­ing to her theme of being a pro­gres­sive who gets things done. Sanders is remind­ing every­one that the sys­tem is cor­rupt and bro­ken, and we need a polit­i­cal rev­o­lu­tion to change it.

8:08 PM: We’re done. What a great debate! It was engag­ing, it was feisty, it was fun to watch. As has already been said on Twit­ter, it could be said that Clin­ton has the pol­ish, while Sanders has the pas­sion. What made this debate par­tic­u­lar­ly excit­ing and inter­est­ing was that it was just Clin­ton and Sanders togeth­er on stage, going at it, with­out overzeal­ous mod­er­a­tors inter­rupt­ing at every turn.