Political director Lisa Desjardins reports on what we learned from their first five-way face-to-face encounter. “Wall Street regulates Congress”.
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While that is record viewership for a Democratic primary debate, it was a far cry from the 24 million people who tuned in to Fox News on August 6 for the first Republican clash of the cycle, featuring the party’s frontrunner Donald Trump and nine challengers.
Mrs. Clinton found unlikely support during the debate when Mr. Cooper inquired of her email scandal.
Hillary Clinton took the opposite tack.
But she concluded, “I am still standing”. “If I tell you I will do something, I will do everything I can to make it happen”.
Sanders, who has opposed a few gun controls, endured sharp criticisms from the other candidates.
Hillary Rodham Clinton’s polished performance in the first Democratic debate served more than anything as a warning to the chaotic Republican field about her likely strength in a general election.
Clinton laughed when we asked her about it, but said she’s had to deal with Republican attacks for years – all the way from the time she lived in the White House to present controversies over Benghazi and her emails.
“If you’re a Hillary supporter and you were anxious for whatever reason, you should feel very good about yourself”, said Rodell Mollineau, a Democratic strategist who attended the debate in Las Vegas. Chafee said of Clinton, “You’re looking at someone who made that poor decision in 2002 to go into Iraq when there was no real evidence of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq”. Me too. Me too.
Both Clinton and Sanders camps declared the debate a success. Each spoke for about 30 minutes, according to NewsHour’s analysis, twice as long as anyone else on stage.
For more on former Maryland Gov. Martin O’ Malley see page D1.
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LISA DESJARDINS: Sanders jumped in. Bernie Sanders does what he does, which is OK, but it isn’t created to appeal to anyone outside of a fairly narrow niche.
“I believe that the signal that we sent to the region when the Iran nuclear deal was concluded was that we are accepting Iran’s greater position on this very important balance of power, among our greatest ally Israel, and the Sunnis represented by the Saudi regime, and Iran”, he said. “I mean, Jiminy Christmas, stop givin’ him the business, why doncha ask Jim Webb somethin’; he hasn’t talked in like 10 minutes!” Voting in favor the bill, Clinton said, “I was in the Senate at the same time, it wasn’t that complicated to me”. And I think what Sen.
Early in the debate, former Rhode Island governor Lincoln Chafee told the audience that his state “had the biggest drop of the unemployment rate over my four budgets of all but one state”, but the numbers don’t add up.
For the PBS NewsHour, I’m Lisa Desjardins.
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Voters can next judge the Democratic hopefuls side by side one month from today in Des Moines.
