The Democratic candidates for US president held their first debate of the 2016 election campaign in Las Vegas on Tuesday. Here’s a summary of the key points:
- The candidates – former secretary of state Hillary Clinton, Vermont senator Bernie Sanders, former Maryland governor Martin O’Malley, Virginia senator Jim Webb and former Rhode Island governor Lincoln Chafee – galloped across a field of solid policy questions, from gun control to climate change to wealth inequality to immigration to criminal justice reform to recreational marijuana – you name it, they likely touched on it.
- There were some policy clashes – Clinton was attacked over Syria and her vote in favor of Iraq, Sanders was attacked on guns – but moments of cooperation too, as when Sanders bailed out Clinton on her use of private email as secretary of state: “The American public is sick and tired of hearing about your damn emails,” Sanders said, to big applause in the room.
- Sanders scored by slamming “casino capitalism” and calling on “millions of Americans” to confront the “business classes” and fix an economy that awards most of the wealth to the 1% while failing on healthcare and education.
- In the face of Sanders’s populist gusto, Clinton asserted that she could get results, not just take stances: “I’m a progressive who likes to get things done.”
- Clinton also sold herself as the candidate best suited to take on the GOP. “I think I can take the fight to Republicans, because we cannot afford to have a Republican succeed Barack Obama as president,” she said.
- Sanders took it on the chin for past votes against gun control. But his attempts to defend himself by saying he was from a rural state and people had to understand the practicalities of actually legislating on the issue were overwhelmed by lines like this from Clinton: “It’s time our country stood up to the NRA.”
- Clinton pulled off carefully practiced answers to some difficult questions – on her changing positions, on her emails, on Libya and Benghazi, on her personal wealth and on being named Clinton.
- Did she slip? The former secretary of state wasn’t as exciting or convincing as Sanders on wealth inequality and the sins of Wall Street. Her claim to have marched down to Wall Street as a senator – “I basically said, cut it out” – fell flat. She declined to take a stand on recreational marijuana.
- Did the other candidates register? Webb and Chafee seemed to sideline themselves, Webb with repeated complaints about not getting enough speaking time and an allusion to killing a man in Vietnam, and Chafee by calling himself a block of granite with no scandals to his name.
- O’Malley managed to point to his record as a leader on gun control and climate change, but half-hearted attempts to hit Clinton on Syria didn’t really land.
- Clinton played the “first woman president” card a few times, including in response to a question about how her presidency would not constitute a third term for Obama.
- Clinton slammed Republicans on reproductive rights. “They [the GOP] don’t mind having big government to interfere with a woman’s right to choose and [attack] Planned Parenthood,” she said. She also mentioned single women and widows as groups in need of extra social security help.
