ABC Democratic Debate: Live Coverage

The Trump existential crisis is an interesting presence in this debate. Clinton is making the point that guys like Lindsey Graham made the other night: Trump is making America more unsafe with inflammatory statements.

Hillary Clinton said: “The first line of defense against radicalization is in the Muslim-American community. … I worry greatly that the rhetoric coming from the Republicans, particularly Donald Trump, is sending a message to Muslims here in the United States and literally around the world that there is a clash of civilizations, that there is some kind of western plot or even war against Islam, which then I believe fans the flames of radicalization. So guns have to be looked at as its own problem, but we also have to figure out how we’re going to deal with theradicalization here in the United States.” There’s an interesting push-back that you can see in this tweet from entrepreneur Rafat Ali of Skift: I believe (and am willing to be corrected) that his comments are about who is asked to take responsibility for the behavior of others in their group. (E.g. are white Americans asked to answer for white shooters?) On top of that, the U.S. government has no concrete idea how many Muslims are in America because the government doesn’t measure their faith in the census and other surveys. The government’s estimates put the Muslim population in the U.S. between 2 million and 7 million.

We really need Donald Trump to get on the stage and remind O’Malley of where he’s polling.