9:56 PM: Sanders really is not comfortable talking about Afghanistan.
10:03 PM: For whatever reason, in my mind I keep coming back to the metaphor of a boxing match in thinking of the exchange between these two. You see this pattern where they keep looking for broad thematic disagreements, past votes, etc. But on the specifics, they so often support very, very similar policies. So, looking for fights but then frequently just hanging on to each other.
10:10 PM: Okay, good counter-punch from Sanders on Obama’s ‘naïveté’.
10:11 PM: I’m frequently amazed by how evenly matched these two are. Just in the back and forth of these exchanges.
10:14 PM: I’m not sure how much you can actually make a simple list of who’s the biggest threat. But Russia is a great power with a vast military and nuclear arsenal, with borders or near borders in most of the key regions of the world. Of course, Russia is a bigger threat than North Korea and Iran. And to understand that you don’t need to be a Russia hawk. But Iran and North Korea are simply not major threats to the US at all. These are third rates military powers at best. Obviously, North Korea having nuclear weapons is a big deal. But that’s basically al they have.
