Top 3 Take-Aways from The 4th Democratic Debate

The fourth debate between the candidates for the Democratic nomination for President was an exciting affair if you had never seen, heard of or had any familiarity with the candidates. But, if you are like most Americans who have any interest in politics, there was not much last night that happened that will change how you plan on voting.

If you’re a Republican, nothing that was said tonight was going to change your mind. If you’re a Bernie Sanders supporter, or a Hillary Clinton supporter, your confidence in your candidate was restored. If you’re a Martin O’Malley supporter, your participation trophy will be in the mail shortly. So while no minds may have been changed tonight, there were some new contours of the race that popped up, that are going to play a major role in these final two weeks before the first primary.

Hillary Clinton was hugging Obama so hard during last night’s debate I thought Michelle was going to have to step in. Clinton, always concerned about a repeat of her 2008 loss to the surging Obama, went on the offensive last night against Bernie Sanders and did so from a perspective and mindset that you wouldn’t expect. Clinton actually attacked Sanders from the left, both on gun control and the Affordable Care Act.

Her first claim, that Sanders is soft on guns, is pretty difficult to back up, no one believes Sanders is soft on guns just because he didn’t vote in favor of every piece of gun control legislation he saw in Congress, and it’s a stretch to argue that Sander’s plans to improve the ACA amount to tearing it up. However, Hillary is not lying or even exaggerating when she points out that Bernie Sanders suggested that someone pose a primary challenge to President Obama when he was running for re-election in 2012. Her overall strategy, that she will continue Obama’s legacy and that Sanders will jeopardize everything in favor of his socialist utopia may work in the primary season, but she’s underestimating one key factor — many of the left wing Democrats who vote in primaries agree with Senator Sanders that Obama didn’t do enough for the progressive agenda. So Clinton’s super strong backing of the sitting president may not win her as much enthusiastic support as she’d like.

2. There is No Black Agenda

While the Congressional Black Caucus Institute’s debate isn’t explicitly a forum designed to address African American needs this was supposed to be a debate that focused on some key issues dealing with African Americans. And generally no one did it. While all of the candidates get credit for mentioning the shooting at Mother Emmanuel AME and the killing of Walter Scott they were thin on solutions any of those problems. No one specifically related the importance of healthcare to the black community, no one specifically related jobs to the black community. Hillary Clinton deserves some credit for criticizing Governor Snyder of Michigan for his Flint debacle, which certainly has racial elements to it, but overall again, issues specifically dealing with the African American community were ignored or generalized by the candidates.

3. The Moderators Continue to Disappoint

It has become somewhat of a cliché to attack moderators in this primary debate season, and some of that criticism is unfair. Trying to squeeze the truth and a straight answer out of one politician in a one-on-one interview is hard enough. Trying to get straight answers out of three or more is even more difficult. That being said, more pointed, specific and substantive questions could have made the debate more informative if not more riveting.

There were too many ‘strategy’ questions from moderator Lester Holt. Asking Bernie Sanders why the Congressional Black Caucus endorsed Clinton over him or why he isn’t connecting with black people isn’t a policy question, it’s a strategy question and ultimately those types of questions are irrelevant to a debate. The Youtube questions were worse.

While I understand the value in getting ‘regular people’ to ask questions of candidates all to, “How will you engage young voters” or Francesca Ramsey asked what would the candidates do about country prosecutors’ conflict of interest in investigating cops neither question was going to elicit an actual policy response from anyone on stage. Every campaign is trying to engage young voters, so this question amounted to “Please tell me how you’ll pander to me in 2016.” A better question might’ve been, “What are you doing to make it easier for young people to vote?” Moreover, a president can’t do anything about local district attorneys, that is a state issue (what they can do is federally address police union contracts, which protect cops from prosecution) so at best Ramsey was going to get a stump speech answer as opposed to something that anyone could actually do.

With only two weeks until the Iowa Caucuses the vast majority of Democrats already know if they’re Feeling the Bern or on #TeamHillary anyway, so these debates aren’t driving the decisions in the way that they still do for Republicans. However if the Democrats are going to host debates ostensibly about black issues, and try to get diverse medians in which to field questions the least they could do is give us a debate full of substance, instead of stump speeches book ended by campaign strategy notes.