One of the measures of the ham-handedness of Democratic National Chairman Debbie Wasserman Shultz is that she didn’t want to schedule a presidential debate just before the New Hampshire primary for fear that it would hurt Hillary Clinton—and that a debate was scheduled nonetheless, and that Clinton did pretty well. She radiated self-confidence, aplomb and energy after her far from impressive—and perhaps dubious—narrow victory in the Iowa caucuses and in the face of poll numbers showing her trailing far behind challenger Bernie Sanders in New Hampshire.
Clinton may have been performing better on style than substance, however. She skated over a late-in-the-debate, soft-ball-worded question on the top secret material transmitted on her home-brew hackable email system with assertions incapable of standing up under even the most modest sort of scrutiny. She avoided the cluelessness shown when she told CNN’s Anderson Cooper that she accepted $675,000 in speech fees from Goldman Sachs because that was what they offered her. But Sanders still got in some nicks on how she supposedly did the bidding of Wall Street. What neither of them addressed, nor was asked to address, is why the Dodd-Frank legislation that they supported conferred too-big-to-fail stautus on financial institutions which, as Sanders noted, have increased their share of the financial services sector since the president they professed they support took office in 2009 and signed Dodd-Frank in 2010.
Sanders was not pressed hard on his promises to provide free health care and free college for everyone (even if everyone doesn’t profit from college) by taking away money from Wall Street billionaires. One would not expect that from MSNBC questioners, although Chuck Todd and Rachel Maddow did frame at least a few questions in ways not simply catering to Democrats’ preconceptions. Of course we heard almost nothing from these candidates (and to be fair have not heard a lot on this from Republican candidates either) about policies that could promote the kind of economic growth that would enable more people to find not just remunerative but satisfying work.
I found it interesting that both Clinton and Sanders spoke affirmatively about a comprehensive immigration legislation that would provide a path to citizenship for illegal immigrants. I’m not sure this has the kind of positive political payoff they expect — or that a Republican nominee will not be able to use the issue to advantage.
And I’m fascinated that both Democrats continue to decry the influence of large campaign donors, even though their party has raised and spent more money in each of the last three presidential cycles (including one where there was an incumbent Republican president) and even though the candidate of the other party for whom the biggest money has been raised, Jeb Bush, has been doing poorly while a candidate who has spent relatively little and has no major contributor money (though he could spend some of his own), Donald Trump, has done much better. If any campaign cycle provides evidence that there is no straight line relationship between amont of campaign contributions and number of votes, this one does. But still the Democrats (though they were not pressed on this by the MSNBC moderators) want to abolish First Amendment protections for political speech so that, as was the precise issue in the Citizens United case whose result they could decry, the government could ban a movie or book critical of Hillary Clinton.
Clinton was careful from time to time to praise and tie herself to Barack Obama — a smart tactic given the solid support he continues to receive from black voters whose virtual unanimous support she is hoping for and will probably get, and which if she does will guarantee her the Democratic nomination.
I doubt that this debate will prevent Hillary Clinton from absorbing a drubbing from Bernie Sanders in next week’s New Hampshire primary. But it gave Clinton a chance to present an optimistic affect and to advance, with little fear of challenge given the moderators, self-serving arguments which are likely to serve her well in Democratic primaries to come.
