Democratic Debate Review: Hillary and Bernie Assert Their New York Values
“I love bein’ in Brooklyn — it’s great,” said Hillary Clinton early on during the Democratic debate that aired on CNN Thursday night. She said that in response to boisterous cheers, hoots, hollers, and scattered boos that greeted nearly every answer Clinton and Bernie Sanders gave.
The debate, held in a warehouse on the grounds of the old Brooklyn Navy Yard, was frequently so impassioned, it found the candidates shouting over the CNN panel questioning them to complete their answers. The questioners were Wolf Blitzer, Dana Bash, and Errol Louis, the NY1 political reporter and editor whose sharp questions and follow-ups demonstrated firmly that he should have moderated this debate instead of wearisome Wolf Blitzer, The Drone That Walks.
If you were scoring debate topics like boxing rounds, you’d have to say that Clinton landed solid body-blows to Sanders in the segment on gun control. By contrast, Sanders came across as the more generous humanitarian in their exchange about Israel, when Sanders’s statement that Israel and the rest of the world needs to “treat the Palestinian people with respect and dignity” was not met with a similar sentiment by Clinton.
The contrast I drew above was true of the debate overall: In general, Clinton was more specific in her answers and solutions, Sanders more general and philosophical, which may, broadly speaking, define their constituencies as well. In issue after issue, whether it was the minimum wage, Wall Street, gun control, or a host of others, Sanders versus Clinton frequently comes down to idealism versus realpolitik.
Too frequently, Sanders asserted, “You didn’t answer the question” even when Clinton had. In one miraculous moment of actual moderating on the part of Wolf Blitzer, he corrected Sanders in pointing out that Clinton had answered a question about Wall Street regulation that Bernie incorrectly said she’d dodged.
Throughout the night, Clinton increased the strategy of suggesting that Sanders’s critiques of the current American situation is often an implicit criticism of President Obama and his policies over two terms, which is a good debate tactic, since all the Dems that filled the audience share enthusiasm for Obama. It also, of course, reminds the audience that Clinton was Secretary of State under Obama, which in turn emphasizes her more extensive experience in a wider range of decisions to be made in the presidential arena.
What the night clarified is that Sanders has, over the course of this campaign, become a much more — well, “savvy” if you like him; “cynical” if you’re dubious — politician. He hit all the applause-buttons that provoke full-throated cheers from his supporters: free college tuition; Wall Street is evil; assertions that he brings more young voters into the party; and “we’ll win the nomination.”
By contrast, Clinton has struggled to shape her detailed policy positions into cheer-eliciting soundbites — which of course her supporters should rightly say suggests her disinclination to pander to the crowd. At no point was this more clear than after each of the candidates’ closing statements, when Sanders revved up tremendous, raucous cheers, while Clinton provoked enthusiastic but polite applause. The division between them was stark this night: Sanders used the idea that Clinton is a “member of the Establishment” as a cudgel; Clinton wields her Establishment status as proof of righteous efficacy.
