LAS VEGAS — A confident Hillary Clinton was the easy winner of the first Democratic presidential debate Tuesday night.
Her main rival, Sen. Bernie Sanders, largely fell flat and was forced onto the defensive as the debate spent substantial time on foreign policy and gun control, subjects on which he is less comfortable than he is on issues such as economic equality and climate change.
The other three candidates confirmed their status as also rans, stumbling, complaining about the lack of time they were given by CNN, and avoiding throwing heavy rhetrorical punches at Clinton.
As the debate progressed Clinton frequently spoke as though she were already the nominee rather than merely the front runner for it. She said she could “take the fight to the Republicans” and she often did so in a dominant performance.
But Clinton did occasionally hit her four opponents, especially her main challenger, Sanders. Communications director Jennifer Palmieri told the Washington Examiner before the debate that Clinton planned to focus on her own platform but “but she’ll be prepared if people go on the attack to defend herself, and she’s capable of doing that.”
Within ten minutes of the debates start, Clinton distanced herself from Sanders’ attacks on “casino capitalism.” She said, “I don’t think we should confuse what we have to sometimes do in this country which is save capitalism from itself. But we would be making a great mistake to turn our backs on what built the greatest middle class in the history of the world.” The crowd cheered.
Each time Sanders attempted to stand up to Clinton, he was shot down by the former secretary of state and made to appear too far to the left. The two only agreed at one point during the debate, when Bernie became frustrated and loudly exclaimed that “the American people are tired of hearing about your damn emails!” The rest of the Democratic field, aside from some vague jabs by Lincoln Chafee, basically circled the wagons around Clinton on the private email scandal.
After the two leading Democrats’ brief agreement and handshake, Clinton again trumped Sanders in a discussion about gun control. She went after Sanders, who represents a state with low crime and little gun control, for voting against the Brady Bill and not supporting liability for gun manufactureres. When Clinton was asked if Sanders’ stance is tough enough she responded, “No, not at all.”
“It wasn’t that complicated to me,” Clinton said of her gun manufactuer votes. “It was pretty straightforward to me that he was going to give immunity to the only industry in America.”
O’Malley, Chafee and Jim Webb were a lesser presence in the debate, with Webb in particular protesting he wasn’t getting enough time. The former Virignia senator frequently took positions at odds with other Democrats on the stage.
Chafee said Hillary Clinton’s Iraq war vote she be disqualifying, but then said he voted for financial deregulation because he had just gotten to the Senate.
