Liveblogging the sixth 2016 Democratic presidential debate from the great Northwest

Good evening, and wel­come to NPI’s live cov­er­age of the sixth Demo­c­ra­t­ic pres­i­den­tial debate of the 2016 cycle. I will be watch­ing and shar­ing impres­sions of the debate as it pro­gress­es. The debate is being orga­nized and broad­cast by PBS affil­i­ates like KCTS 9, and simul­cast by CNN. If you don’t get PBS over the air, or you don’t have cable, you can livestream the debate online with YouTube.

PBS will post peri­od­ic updates as the debate pro­gress­es on NewsHour’s Face­book page and on its @NewsHour Twit­ter feed.

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

This sixth over­all debate will be the sec­ond one with just Clin­ton and Sanders on stage, going head to head. Tonight’s debate will be the only debate held between the New Hamp­shire Demo­c­ra­t­ic pri­ma­ry and the Neva­da Demo­c­ra­t­ic cau­cus­es on Feb­ru­ary 20th. The next debate is sched­uled for March 6th, in Flint, Michi­gan, fol­low­ing the South Car­oli­na Demo­c­ra­t­ic pri­ma­ry and Super Tuesday.

The mod­er­a­tors will be PBS’ Gwen Ifill and Judy Woodruff.

We will begin our live cov­er­age at 6 PM, when the can­di­dates take the stage.

UPDATE, 6 PM: Here we go! Our mod­er­a­tors have arrived.

UPDATE, 6:04 PM: Bernie Sanders is giv­ing his open­ing state­ment first. He’s reit­er­at­ing his cam­paign themes — blast­ing income inequal­i­ty, mon­ey in pol­i­tics, estab­lish­ment pol­i­tics, and estab­lish­ment economics.

UPDATE, 6:08 PM: Hillary Clin­ton has now deliv­ered her open­ing state­ment, stress­ing her com­mit­ment to build­ing on the progress that Pres­i­dent Oba­ma has made (though she did not men­tion Oba­ma by name).

UPDATE, 6:11 PM: We’re back from a brief break. First ques­tion goes to Bernie Sanders — and sad­ly, it’s root­ed in right wing fram­ing: How big you believe gov­ern­ment should be? (Bad ques­tion, Judy. The big/small dichoto­my is not what’s impor­tant. What pro­gres­sives are after is gov­ern­ment that is effective.)

UPDATE, 6:12 PM: Sanders responds by point­ing out that we need to pool our resources to tack­le our gap­ing infra­struc­ture deficit and live up to our moral respon­si­bil­i­ty of pro­vid­ing health­care for all.

UPDATE, 6:13 PM: Clin­ton jumps in and sug­gests that imple­men­ta­tion of Sanders’ plan would make the fed­er­al gov­ern­ment 40% bigger.

UPDATE, 6:15 PM, “In my view, health­care is a right for all peo­ple,” Sanders says, defend­ing the idea of Medicare For All.

UPDATE, 6:16 PM: “I’ve set forth very spe­cif­ic plans on how to get costs down,” Clin­ton says, argu­ing that it makes more sense to incre­men­tal­ly build on the Patient Pro­tec­tion Act than to try to move quick­ly towards Medicare For All.

UPDATE, 6:18 PM: Sanders respond­ed by point­ing out the Unit­ed States is the only major devel­oped coun­try on Earth that does­n’t guar­an­tee health­care to its peo­ple as a right. Want­i­ng the last word, Clin­ton declares that we’re not France, the Unit­ed King­dom, or Cana­da, and again assails Sanders’ plans as unrealistic.

UPDATE, 6:24 PM: The can­di­dates are agreed on the prin­ci­ple of low­er­ing the cost of col­lege, but each claims the oth­er’s plan is infe­ri­or to theirs.

We’ve heard much of this exchange before…

UPDATE, 6:29 PM: “I’m not ask­ing peo­ple to sup­port me because I’m a woman,” Clin­ton says, after lis­ten­ing to Sanders field anoth­er sil­ly ques­tion about how he feels about his can­di­da­cy poten­tial­ly pre­vent­ing Amer­i­ca from elect­ing the first woman pres­i­dent in 2016.

UPDATE, 6:32 PM: Sanders just deliv­ered one of his finest debate answers yet, slam­ming Repub­li­cans for hyp­o­crit­i­cal­ly want­i­ng the fed­er­al gov­ern­ment to dic­tate wom­en’s repro­duc­tive deci­sions while non­sen­si­cal­ly push­ing for 1790s-size, 1890s-size, or 1950s-sized fed­er­al government.

UPDATE, 6:33 PM: Final­ly, a decent, sub­stan­tive ques­tion: How would you address the dis­pro­por­tion­ate­ly high black male prison population?

UPDATE, 6:34 PM: Sanders and Clin­ton agree: we need to demil­i­ta­rize our police and insist on crim­i­nal jus­tice reforms (polic­ing, sen­tenc­ing) that will end prej­u­di­cial prac­tices by law enforce­ment per­son­nel. Sys­temic racism needs to be com­bat­ed more broad­ly as well, as Hillary Clin­ton not­ed. “We have to talk about jobs, edu­ca­tion, hous­ing,” Clin­ton noted.

UPDATE, 6:38 PM: Stick­ing with the same theme, Judy Woodruff asks, “What would you do to improve race relations?”

UPDATE, 6:40 PM: Clin­ton prais­es Pres­i­dent Oba­ma for his work dig­ging Amer­i­ca out from the ditch Pres­i­dent Bush left the coun­try in, but notes we can’t rest. The advent of social media, she points out, has helped expose a lot of the dis­crim­i­na­to­ry prac­tices in our coun­try that have con­tin­ued, even in the wake of the civ­il rights vic­to­ries of the 1950s, 1960s, and beyond.

UPDATE, 6:45 PM: Sanders draws the con­nec­tion between dis­as­trous trade and eco­nom­ic poli­cies and under­em­ploy­ment, income inequal­i­ty, and eco­nom­ic injustice.

UPDATE, 6:47 PM: Mov­ing on to com­pre­hen­sive immi­gra­tion reform…

UPDATE, 6:48 PM: Sanders says new Amer­i­cans would not need to fear depor­ta­tion under a Sanders pres­i­den­cy. “I dis­agree with his recent depor­ta­tion poli­cies,” Sanders says of Oba­ma, after prais­ing Oba­ma for his exec­u­tive order on immi­gra­tion, which is being lit­i­gat­ed right now at the Supreme Court.

UPDATE, 6:49 PM: Clin­ton agrees… “I’m against the raids,” she says. “I was one of the orig­i­nal spon­sors of the DREAM Act,” she adds.

UPDATE, 6:51 PM: After being crit­i­cized by Clin­ton, Sanders defend­ed his 2007 immi­gra­tion vote by point­ing out that the leg­is­la­tion con­tained an awful, immoral guest work­er pro­gram that was opposed by the AFL-CIO, South­ern Pover­ty Law Cen­ter, and oth­er pro­gres­sive groups.

UPDATE, 6:56 PM: “If elect­ed Pres­i­dent, I will do every­thing I can to expand Social Secu­ri­ty,” Sanders declares, answer­ing a ques­tion from Face­book (“How will you ensure the basic needs of senior cit­i­zens are met?”)

UPDATE, 6:58 PM: Clin­ton agrees that Social Secu­ri­ty should be expand­ed, but says she wants to focus on help­ing those who are most at risk first.

UPDATE, 6:59 PM: Sanders chal­lenges Clin­ton on her com­mit­ment to expand­ing Social Secu­ri­ty, not­ing that groups like the Pro­gres­sive Change Cam­paign Com­mit­tee (PCCC) have asked Clin­ton to com­mit to scrap­ping the cap. Clin­ton reit­er­ates that she thinks she and Sanders are in “vig­or­ous agree­ment” about expand­ing Social Secu­ri­ty, but declines to endorse Sanders’ approach.

UPDATE, 7:03 PM: Next ques­tion… “What influ­ence will your cam­paign con­trib­u­tors have on your administration?”

UPDATE, 7:06 PM: We’re hav­ing quite a vig­or­ous debate about the influ­ence of mon­ey in cam­paigns affect­ing pub­lic pol­i­cy. Sanders is mak­ing the point that unfet­tered cor­po­rate elec­tion­eer­ing has had a neg­a­tive effect on our coun­try, and that Wall Street does­n’t donate to super PACs just for the fun of it. Clin­ton notes that Barack Oba­ma pushed for and signed Dodd-Frank into law even though he was the recip­i­ent of Wall Street’s largesse. Sanders retort­ed that while he sup­port­ed for Dodd-Frank and got an amend­ment into the bill, it did­n’t go far enough.

UPDATE, 7:10 PM: We’re head­ing to an intermission.

UPDATE, 7:16 PM: We’re back. And to our dis­may, the first ques­tion is a lame fol­low-up from the bad first ques­tion that was asked at the begin­ning of the debate (Is there any aspect of gov­ern­ment you’d like to reduce or get rid of?) Sanders and Clin­ton both gave short answers at first, though Sanders wise­ly opt­ed to tack on to his by not­ing that our defense bud­get is bloat­ed and has many waste­ful programs.

UPDATE, 7:17 PM: Next ques­tion is about whether we are ready for the next attack against the Unit­ed States. Clin­ton has the first oppor­tu­ni­ty to respond.

UPDATE, 7:23 PM: The back and forth is get­ting more live­ly now. Clin­ton is lever­ag­ing her expe­ri­ence in her answers, respond­ing to Sanders’ crit­i­cism that she vot­ed to autho­rize the inva­sion of Iraq by say­ing, “I do not believe a vote in 2002 is a plan to defeat ISIS,” Mean­while, Sanders con­tin­ues to points out that past Amer­i­can med­dling around the world has pro­duced unin­tend­ed consequences.

UPDATE, 7:29 PM: Wow. Sanders just unloaded, com­plete­ly, on Hen­ry Kissinger and attacked his record as Richard Nixon’s Sec­re­tary of State.

UPDATE, 7:34 PM: We’re still talk­ing for­eign pol­i­cy, dis­cussing what’s the best approach to Rus­si­a’s empire-build­ing ambi­tions and inter­ven­tion in the con­flict in Syr­ia. (Rus­sia has been mil­i­tary assist­ing the Assad regime in fight­ing the Syr­i­an rebels that nations in NATO and the West support.)

UPDATE, 7:40 PM: Next ques­tion is, “What more should the U.S. do to lead the effort to help refugees?”

UPDATE, 7:41 PM: Sanders is recount­ing his vis­it to a refugee camp in Turkey. He goes on to declare: “I very strong­ly dis­agree with those Repub­li­can can­di­dates who say, ‘You know, we’ve got­ta turn our backs on those women and chil­dren who are flee­ing’ ” from the vio­lence in Syr­ia and oth­er trou­bled places in the world.

UPDATE, 7:46 PM: Asked to name one Amer­i­can leader and one for­eign leader that would inspire his deci­sion­mak­ing, Sanders cites FDR and Win­ston Churchill.

UPDATE, 7:47 PM: Sanders and Clin­ton are going at it over Sanders’ sup­port (or lack there­of) for Pres­i­dent Barack Obama.

UPDATE, 7:50 PM: Sanders hit back at Clin­ton over her crit­i­cisms by not­ing he did­n’t run against Barack Oba­ma, then segued into his clos­ing state­ment, in which he explained why he believes a polit­i­cal rev­o­lu­tion is nec­es­sary to pre­vent our coun­try from head­ing down a very dark road.

UPDATE, 7:51 PM: Clin­ton’s turn for a clos­ing state­ment. She wast­ed no time in tak­ing an appar­ent shot at Sanders, say­ing she’s not run­ning as a sin­gle issue can­di­date. (Sanders would no doubt laugh at the crit­i­cism that he is a sin­gle-issue can­di­date.) “I’m going to keep talk­ing about tear­ing down all of the bar­ri­ers stop­ping Amer­i­ca from liv­ing up to its poten­tial,” she says.

UPDATE, 7:53 PM: And with that, we’re done. It was anoth­er feisty debate, par­tic­u­lar­ly at the end. We wish there had been ques­tions asked about edu­ca­tion, trans­porta­tion, and the cli­mate cri­sis, instead of how big gov­ern­ment should be.