MARCH 7, 2016
It was the most limited debate in subject matter, but it was one of the most revealing of the candidates.
On Sunday night, the two remaining Democratic contenders, Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders, met for their seventh debate, this time in Flint, MI, the site of the current water crisis in which the city’s water supply was contaminated by lead poisoning. Four government officials have already resigned over the negligence, and during Sunday’s debate, both Clinton and Sanders urged Gov. Rick Snyder (R-MI) to resign as well.
With the water crisis hanging over the city’s head, the questions largely stuck to domestic policies, particularly when they opened the questioning up to Flint residents. One mother described what it’s like have to use bottled water to clean her children’s hair, wash their food and brush their teeth. Another questioner cited his daughter, seriously injured in a recent Kalamazoo mass shooting, as he asked both candidates what they really plan to do without lip service to clamp down on this shooting epidemic (Sanders, who has voted against a bill holding gun manufacturers accountable, had a particularly difficult time with this one). In the most pointed interaction with voters, one journalist asked if both candidates were simply using the city and its problems to score political points. Ouch. (These questions were good, better than some asked by moderator Anderson Cooper.)
Other than that, many of the topics were strictly political geek stuff — trade, bank bailouts, tariff laws, that sort of thing that makes the average voter’s eyes glaze over. Still, it was far more useful than the dick-measuring debate that the GOP conducted last Thursday in Detroit. Both candidates’ voices were a bit hoarse, and it was another one of those shouting debates (every point seemed to be made at the top of the candidates’ lungs) that flatters neither Clinton nor Sanders. The Vermont senator did have an unfortunate incident at one moment when, as he was making a point, he momentarily paused, and Clinton began to respond when Sanders sternly said “Excuse me, I’m talking.” The Sanders team explained that he said it because Clinton was regularly interrupting him. No matter — it was not his best moment.
To this observer, here’s tonight’s scorecard:
WINNER: Hillary Clinton
Not a dominating performance on the debate stage, but good enough to eke out a win. Her refusal to release transcripts of her speeches that were paid for by Wall Street firms still comes across as if she’s hiding something, and she missed a golden opportunity with the Flint audience by whiffing on the question as to whether some Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) administrators should lose their jobs over the water poisoning. But she scored a solid punch against Sanders when she reminded the audience that the Vermont senator had voted against bailing out the auto industry, a sensitive topic here in Michigan. And she showed a personal side when she talked about the people and things for which she regularly prays. It registered as sincerely heartfelt.
LOSER: Bernie Sanders
It’s not that Sanders did a bad job — he more than held his own throughout most of the evening — but, falling behind in the delegate count, he needed a knockout of Clinton to shake up the Michigan race, and he didn’t get it. He did a better job at this debate in empathizing with those hardest hit by the economy, though he undercut his message somewhat by, in a failed attempt at pandering, alleged that white people don’t have the experience of living in a ghetto or being poor. Still, he had what probably the evening’s most affecting moment when he discussed for the first time his Jewish heritage. (In other debates, he declined to mention being Jewish when discussing why his Presidency would be groundbreaking.) He cited how he father’s family was wiped out in Hitler’s concentration camps, as well as his own memories as a child seeing store clerks with numbers on their arms from their time in the camps. His assertion of his pride in being Jewish offered us a fuller glimpse into the Vermont senator.
The next Democratic debate will be held this Wednesday (whaa???) in Miami. This race is moving very quickly, so if you want to catch up, be there or be square!
