The insurgent candidacy of Bernie Sanders has been almost polite, in a Vermont kind of way. And that has been more than okay for the DNC and the Clinton campaign. A deep, scarring split among Democrats is the last thing either wanted. But this press conference by Sanders campaign manager Jeff Weaver just now was anything but polite.
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For most of today I was preoccupied trying to resolve some management issues at TPM. So I barely had enough time to keep tabs on the Sanders/DNC story through headlines and the barest skimming of articles. The first information I heard led me to think the DNC had wildly botched the situation. This is exactly the sort of situation where the head of the DNC needs to immediately get in touch with the heads of the two campaigns, resolve whatever needs resolving, fire whoever needs firing and get everything settled before anything goes public. Whatever the Sanders campaign did, suspending a campaign from access to its own voter file is a hugely draconian step which threatens to unleash an unpredictable and volatile chain of events.
Then later in the afternoon I got more confused. Because it looked like the Sanders campaign was taking a scorched earth tack when they’d actually got caught red handed trying to access the Clinton campaign’s data. Now, late this evening, I’m seeing new information which suggests those ‘caught red handed’ reports may have been overstated.
8:33 PM: Okay, cranking down the Dylan and cranking up the ABC News, let’s do this.
8:38 PM: “We will rise to the challenge of ISIL. And we will rise together to the challenges that we face in our economy. But we will only do so if we hold true to the values and the freedoms that unite us. Which means we must never surrender them to terrorists, must never surrender our American values to racists, must never surrender them to the fascist pleas of billionaires with big mouths. We are a better country than this. Our enduring symbol is not the barbed wire fence. It is the statue of liberty.”
8:39 PM: It’s almost worth electing Bernie Sanders simply to see him negotiating with the King of Saudi Arabia on building that coalition.
8:44 PM: Okay, I’m not sure that exchange between Sanders and Clinton amounted to bickering. It’s like O’Malley has data breach envy. Does he even have any data?
8:45 PM: This frustrates me so much. When the President says we know of no credible threat and some crazies turn out to be building pipe bombs in their basement and about to mount an attack. That’s not a contradiction.
8:55 PM: “Let’s calm down there, Martin.”
8:59 PM: “Use bluster and bigotry to inflame people.”
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.
9:54 PM: I want to go back to the latest statistics. But Martha Raddatz’s question on Obamacare here seems misleading to the point of dishonesty. Premiums were of course going up year by year by huge amounts before Obamacare.
10:05 PM: Okay, I don’t think Hillary is responding to Sanders’ point; and I’m not sure he’s making his case well enough. If you get a tax hike of $5,000 a year and no longer have to pay $10,000 on health care insurance, that’s a more complex exchange than just getting a tax hike.
So, good debate for each of the candidates. And that’s good for Hillary Clinton since she’s already in a strong lead. Thankfully, Clinton and Sanders put the data breach nonsense to bed quickly and I think basically ended it as a story, at least as a controversy between the campaigns. The discussions on economic policy were about what we’ve seen before, with each candidate staking out their different positions – with Hillary hugging as close to Sanders’ populism as she feels she can and Sanders simply not temperamentally inclined to go after Clinton as ruthlessly as he might.
What interested me most in this debate was the discussion of foreign policy, particularly national security policy on the Middle East. It was wildly more substantive than the histrionic ranting and demands for fear from the GOP debate. But I continue to be struck by how relatively close – at least nominally – Clinton and Sanders appear to be with respect to ISIS and Syria and counter-terrorism policy generally. The hawk/dove debate we expect to play in Democratic primary races – especially what we might have suspected between Bernie Sanders and Hillary Clinton is highly, highly muted in this case.
All that said, Hillary has a big lead. And this performance will maintain that lead.
That’s all I got.
As you probably saw, I immediately reacted to Martha Raddatz’s question about rate hikes for private insurance with Obamacare. On its face the question was, what’s wrong with Obamacare that it made rates go up so much?
First, yes, rates continue to go up. But they went up substantially more before Obamacare. And the timeframe in question actually covers before and after Obamacare. None of this proves that Obamacare is awesome. But the question is misleading to the point of flat dishonesty or just complete ignorance of health care policy – let alone being botched even in the timeframe referenced. Tierney Sneed gives us a quick run through the details.
Perhaps this is stating the obvious. But the new Clinton-Trump ‘feud’ over being the top recruiter for ISIS plays completely into Clinton’s strategy which is, in essence, to bring the Republican primary battle to a close with Donald Trump as the winner.
California Trump supporter arrested for making bombs to attack local Muslim community.