Going into tonight, the conventional wisdom was that Bernie Sanders would try to genially introduce himself, the candidates would mostly stay in their own lanes, and that Hillary was a bleeding target. Not so much.
Instead, everyone came loaded for bear. Sanders was combative almost right away. Lincoln Chafee did go after Clinton from the start—literally from his opening statement (and his closing statement). And not only was Clinton tough, disciplined, and impressive, but she was, as Erick Erickson said, “the likable, reasonable candidate on stage.” Clearly, the firmware update worked. (I kid!)
Clinton’s challenge for the evening was difficult: She wasn’t there to debate Webb, Chafee, O’Malley, and Sanders. She was shadowboxing Joe Biden. And she did a pretty effective job.
First, Clinton was sharp, polished, and aggressive. The doddering and embattled Clinton of March was gone, replaced by an energetic, capable debater who was always driving toward her strategic goals.
For example, Clinton’s first priority for the cycle has been preventing anyone from getting to her left, as Obama did in 2008. So she savaged Sanders on guns when given the opportunity and dutifully mouthed just about every progressive piety she was presented with during the debate.
Because she understood that even “winning” an engagement with Lincoln Chafee was a loss, she deftly refused to engage him. When Chafee went after her for ethical problems for the second time, moderator Anderson Cooper asked if she’d like to respond. She delivered a curt, perfectly timed, “No.”
As for shoring up perceptions among wavering Democratic elites concerned that Clinton might be damaged goods? She was confronted with uncomfortable questions all night long: On ethics, Benghazi, Chris Stevens, flip-flopping, political dynasties, Wall Street, and more. And while Republicans might not have liked her answers, she was crisp and unhesitating, in total command of her stuff.
As for Biden, if (when?) he gets in, Biden’s candidacy only has two possible rationales. The first is that Clinton is so damaged and weak that Democrats need to replace her. The second is that he’s the guy who can openly run for Obama’s third term, which, while unappealing to the broader electorate, is a very saleable proposition in the Democratic primaries.
And here’s where Clinton’s most interesting strategic maneuver of the night came. Alone among the candidates, Clinton was eager to hug Obama at every turn:
On Syria: “I applaud the administration because they are engaged in talks right now with the Russians to make it clear that they’ve got to be part of the solution to try to end that bloody conflict.”
On Libya: “I understand Senator Webb’s very strong feelings about this, to explain where we were then and to point out that I think President Obama made the right decision at the time.”
On ISIS: “You’re talking about the tough decision that President Obama had to make about Osama bin Laden, where I was one of his few advisers.”
On foreign policy in general: “After the election, he asked me to become Secretary of State. He valued my judgment, and I spent a lot of time with him in the Situation Room, going over some very difficult issues.”
On climate change: “When we met in Copenhagen in 2009 and, literally, President Obama and I were hunting for the Chinese, going throughout this huge convention center, because we knew we had to get them to agree to something.” (The visual of Clinton and Obama literally hunting for the Chinese is hysterical, by the way.)
On race relations: “I think that President Obama has been a great moral leader on these issues, and has laid out an agenda that has been obstructed by the Republicans at every turn.”
In fact, if you look at the transcript of the debate, Obama was mentioned 34 times. The other four candidates mention Obama only a handful of times between them. Nearly every other mention of the president came from Clinton (or Cooper).
At the end, Cooper asked the candidates to name one way in which they would not be Obama’s third term and alone among the group, Clinton politely refused to offer even implicit criticism, saying only that she was a woman, which was different, and that “There’s a lot that I would like to do to build on the successes of President Obama, but also, as I’m laying out, to go beyond.”
In the same way that Clinton has determined not to let anyone—even a socialist—get to her left, she seems adamant that she won’t let even the vice president get closer to Obama than she is.
So if nothing else, we learned one thing from this first debate: Hillary Clinton is already working to box out Joe Biden. Mission accomplished.
