9:20 PM: I disagree with Hillary on the no-fly-zone. But this idea that you have to make definitive decisions about every possible eventuality in advance on a major foreign policy venture is just silly. I think Sanders, as I write, is making a much more valid and substantive point. Martha Raddatz’s point is just not a strong one.
9:25 PM: “Different generation” … not subtle, not smart.
9:27 PM: The debate over foreign policy in this debate is bracingly, frighteningly substantive. The contrast between this conversation and that from the Republican debate is simply amazing. It’s not even a matter of thinking the Democratic approaches are better than the Republicans’ (though obviously I believe they are); but here you have a conversation based more on factual information than a kind of febrile apocalypticism.
9:30 PM: One thing that strikes me about the Middle East foreign policy part of this debate is how relatively little there is separating Sanders and Clinton. I think it’s quite fair for supporters on both sides of the divide to assume that the nominal similarities conceal deeper differences. But there’s really little here of a hawk-dove divide.
9:39 PM: I’m starting to be reminded of the 2008 primary campaign – where like half our reader email was aggrieved or rageful or outraged emails about how we were either in the tank for Hillary Clinton or Barack Obama. Not that I’m complaining. It goes with the turf. But I think one of things that is behind it is that a lot of our readers are more or less used to being in line with the broad editorial outlook of the publication. Then suddenly there’s a divide like Obama-Clinton or Clinton-Sanders and they see something that seems like a betrayal one side or an endorsement of the other. And it’s a shock – much more than it might be if not with a site that were used to feeling very at home on.
9:46 PM: Every time I hear Martin O’Malley talk in these debates I have this feeling of someone who is opportunistically grasping onto any opening between Clinton and Sanders he can grab onto without any ideological rationale or logic behind it.
