Because I can’t help myself and I also like to know what I’m talking about, I stayed up super late and watched a replay of the first Democratic debate. This also meant that I overslept, but at least I now know what I’m talking about.
I have a lot of impressions to share about what I saw. For starters, there was a lot of novelty to the debate and it wasn’t really predictable at all, which made it much more interesting to watch than most debates. It’s a strange thing to watch two Democrats debate a socialist, a former Republican senator, and Jim Webb. We have a big tent, indeed.
What struck me about Clinton was that she appeared almost jovial and much more relaxed than she usually seems. She had some awkward moments, of course, and some of her answers were so scripted that they made me cringe. But she came across as happy to be there, mostly enjoying herself and the process, and ready enough to answer the questions that she had little difficulty adding little flourishes and quite a bit of passion to her answers. For a candidate who has been in a bit of a bunker and often displays a bunker attitude, this was a significantly better-than-average performance. I say this knowing that it’s focused on superficial aspects rather than the substance of her answers, but it isn’t substantive answers that Clinton needed to improve on. She has to be likable. She has to establish trust. She can’t appear defensive and secretive, and she definitely doesn’t want to come across as petulant or entitled. This is why the superficial stuff is so important for her. And I’d have to give her very high marks for style.
Bernie had an opportunity to do three things. First, he got to introduce himself to everyone who cares about politics more than baseball, which must be a few hundred thousand people, at least. Second, he got a chance to demonstrate that he can stand on the stage with a seasoned campaigner and debater and hold his own under hostile questioning. Third, he got a chance to create a sound byte that would be replayed all day today.
On all three tests, he did an outstanding job. Let’s face it, Bernie can be a little gruff. But he didn’t come across that way except when he was blasting the moderators and the media for obsessing over Clinton’s emails, and that was his sound byte and the highlight of the night. He got a good grilling from the moderators and some sharp criticism from Clinton and Jim Webb, but he stood up under the pressure. So, I think he’ll be fine in future debates and probably improve with each one.
Martin O’Malley has some crowd-pleasing moments and I can’t really find much to fault him on. If I have one criticism or critique, it’s that he doesn’t have a lot of presence. He seemed smaller somehow than the other candidates, even the meek Lincoln Chafee. Sanders, Clinton and Webb have a way of grabbing your attention when they speak that O’Malley lacks even when he’s speaking with passion. This was also his first stint on the big stage, and that could be part of the problem. He was willing to make some sharp contrasts with Clinton which earned him a withering gaze or two. This was good, because a lot of people suspect that he is auditioning for a place on the ticket and no one wants to see a tomato can of a debater. I suspect that there are lot of people who were seeing him for the first time, and there wasn’t much not to like. So, I think he helped himself.
A lot of people are talking about Lincoln Chafee’s supposedly flubbed answer for why he voted to repeal Glass-Steagall. I actually thought it was a refreshingly honest answer. It was his first vote in the Senate and he had just been appointed after the death of his father. The vote was overwhelmingly in favor of the bill, and he was basically unprepared to take a contrary position. In other words, if the bill had been contentious at the time and if he had had more time to prepare and understand the issues, he would have voted against repeal, but that wasn’t the situation he was in.
I think that’s an adequate excuse, frankly, and I’m grateful to see a politician explain why they screwed up and ask for people to give them a bit of a break.
That doesn’t mean that it will sell well after if goes through the post-debate media meat grinder, but I still liked his answer. Chafee seems to be there to be the peace candidate which is fine by me. It means he isn’t a waste of space. But he’s close to that because he doesn’t have any additional rationale for his candidacy other than that he’s scandal-free and didn’t get taken in by Dick Cheney’s information war machine the way that Clinton did back in 2002.
Jim Webb was interesting mainly because he is unpredictable. I didn’t really know what he was going to say until he said it. What he said, though, is not what a person says if they want to win the Democratic nomination. What he did was introduce some different perspectives that the other candidates had to adjust to on the fly, and that made his contribution worthy. It prevented the thing from devolving into an exercise is oneupmanship as each candidate tries to outflank the others from the left.
I might focus more on substantive aspects of this debate in a later post, but this superficial response is all I have right now. It was a much better discussion than what we see in the Republican debates. If there was any group-delusion is was that anything can get done as long as the Republicans remain locked in the grip of collective insanity. But even that bubble was pierced on several occasions.
