CBS Democratic Debate: Live Coverage

First applause line — Sanders saying he’s not as much of a socialist as Eisenhower in relationship to taxation.

As for a point earlier made by Farai, I think that any discussion involving Iraq isn’t helpful to Clinton in a Democratic primary. But that Iraq War vote was 13 years ago. It just doesn’t have the same effect among Democrats as it did eight years ago, as I’ve written about previously.

We just got our first mention of the “middle class” tonight; expect to hear it many more times. The phrase appeared, on average, 4.5 times in the four main stage Republican debates so far this year, but 12 times during the Democratic debate in October. The phrase “middle class” has become popular among politicians since the recession and has been used much more frequently by Democrats than Republicans in Congress. Bernie Sanders, not surprisingly, is among the most prolific users of the phrase, having used it almost twice as much as anyone else in Congress since 2008. Bernie has also used the words “rich,” “millionaires” and “billionaires” on the floor of Congress more than any other congressperson since the recession. Appealing to the middle class resonates partly because most Americans believe the label applies to them. When survey respondents were asked to choose from five names for social classes in a recent Pew Research Center poll, 87 percent reported being in the middle class, upper middle class or lower middle class.

Micah Sifry, who tweeted us, co-directs a tech/democracy project and space in New York called Civic Hall. So, to his question — should the Democrats be contrasting themselves on foreign policy to the GOP vs. their Democratic debate-mates? One thing that brings to mind for me is that no one on stage has mentioned ANY Republican candidates. But this week’s GOP debate saw Chris Christie and Jeb Bush reference Clinton multiple times, and a smattering by other candidates. It’s just another sign of an asynchronous primary season, where Clinton is in the pole position and the GOP slate is still fighting to figure out which pole they are positioning for … the inside (establishment party) track or the outsider-as-leader.

A lot of viewers tuning in to tonight’s debate are likely wondering who the candidate that isn’t Hillary Clinton or Bernie Sanders is. According to a Monmouth University poll taken last month, 60 percent of Democrats couldn’t form an opinion of Martin O’Malley. If he doesn’t solve that problem, he’ll continue to be the third wheel.

Definitely. For as long as I’ve been pumping Clinton’s odds for the primary, I’ve said that it’s best a tossup for her in the general election. This debate isn’t helping her cause on that front.

If I’m a Republican candidate though, Harry, I’m looking at Clinton’s performance so far and wondering if she’ll also be playing defense on foreign policy when it’s my turn to debate her.

Nate, Clinton is definitely playing defense here. She’s smart enough that she can talk her way out of it. She hasn’t said anything foolish. The real problem here, though, is it’s a Saturday night. The Iowa Hawkeyes football team is playing as the debate takes place. It’s as if the Democratic National Committee doesn’t want anyone to watch.

https://twitter.com/Mlsif/status/665717842004844545

As our hearts go out to Paris, which can’t help but frame tonight’s debate, it’s worth remembering that parts of the city are as diverse and gentrified as, say, Brooklyn, and that parts of the suburbs of Paris are also heavily segregated, dominated by lower-income West and North African immigrants. I had a chance to visit Paris and report on its ethnic culture and also give some history:

The Algerian War of Independence, [said Professor Andrew Newman of Wayne state University], “spilled into the streets of Paris in the early 1960s.” “At the Pont Saint-Michel, in the city center,” he continued, “one can find a memorial plaque to the 17 October 1961 massacre of Algerian demonstrators (including women and children), many of whom were thrown in the Seine to drown.” The tension between France and its immigrants more recently came to light nearly a decade ago, when riots overtook the Clichy-sous-Bois banlieu, or suburb. Like many banlieues, it consisted of undistinguished working-class apartment blocks surrounding the city, home mainly to people of North and West African heritage who find themselves labeled immigrant. This duality — French, or not truly French — is distinct from, but could be compared with, America’s own struggles with otherness, here mainly explored through a newly sharpened racial identity in the wake of Ferguson.

A study by France’s National Institute of Statistics and Economic Studies shows that while most immigrants and their children feel themselves to be French, they also worry that they are not perceived as French by their countrymen.

Across the board, the candidates seem to be less sharp than they’ve been in any of the six debates so far this year. Clinton is playing prevent defense, Sanders seems slightly lost, and I’m not sure what Martin O’Malley is trying to accomplish.

One thing I always pay attention to: audience reax. Maybe the room isn’t miked well, but it sounds very quiet. Not a referendum on how much people are listening, but a different vibe than the clapping during the GOP debates.

My supposition that Sanders and O’Malley would refrain from being super critical of Clinton is looking … foolish.

We’re just 20 or so minutes into this debate, but for context, here’s where the candidates stand in the first two contests on the calendar:

It should be noted that Bernie Sanders isn’t out of line with the Democratic base when it comes to climate change being a global threat. A Pew Research Center survey from earlier this year found that the percentage of Democrats (62 percent) who were very concerned with climate change as an international threat was nearly the same as the percentage who were very concerned with ISIS (64 percent).

Sanders and O’Malley are going for the rope-a-dope on Clinton for voting for the Iraq War. That also happened in the last debate. That time, Clinton said, “I recall very well being on a debate stage about 25 times with then-Sen. Obama debating this issue. After the election, he asked me to become secretary of state. He valued my judgment, and I spent a lot of time with him in the Situation Room going over some very difficult issues.” Do we think what happened in Paris may change how voters view her choice to support the war?

Hey, Steve, these are the Democratic National Committee rules. Why hold a debate on a Saturday night this early in the campaign? I cannot answer. It certainly doesn’t help bring in more viewers.

Clinton’s been cagey so far on the specifics of what she might do against ISIS, but overall she’s taken a more dovish line than I might have expected. The potential political context here is that, before the Paris attacks, most Americans opposed committing ground troops to fight ISIS, and Democrats were more likely to be opposed than Republicans.

One of the biggest problems that I hinted at in my post before the debate is there is a great division between the Democratic base and the overall electorate on how they feel about President Obama’s handling of the Islamic State. According to a CNN/ORC poll from August, only 33 percent of Americans approved of Obama’s handling of the Islamic State, but 60 percent of Democrats did.

Foreign policy choices are a morass of unintended consequences. Clinton, Sanders and O’Malley all call for collaborating with other nations, which is widely viewed as critical. But in just one example of the complexities, some U.S.-trained Iraqi forces are accused of being “dirty brigades” that use terror tactics. An ABC News investigation found: “The investigation, being conducted by the Iraqi government, was launched after officials were confronted with numerous allegations of ‘war crimes,’ based in part on dozens of ghastly videos and still photos that appear to show uniformed soldiers from some of Iraq’s most elite units and militia members massacring civilians, torturing and executing prisoners, and displaying severed heads. “The videos and photos are part of a trove of disturbing images that ABC News discovered has been circulating within the dark corners of Iraqi social media since last summer. In some U.S. military and Iraqi circles, the Iraqi units and militias under scrutiny are referred to as the ‘dirty brigades.’ ”

Bernie Sanders mentioned how hard Americans work. Not only do we have some of the longest working hours globally, we leave 577 million vacation days unclaimed each year, collectively. Some business analysts see it as fear that even taking vacation will be seen unfavorably by company managers.

Well, I have the benefit of having seen his opening statement, but it seems like Sanders is going to draw plenty of contrasts on economic policy, while perhaps minimizing contrasts on foreign policy. That may be because Sanders is in the campaign mostly to shift the economic conversation rather than to maximize his (slim) chances of becoming commander in chief.

I would think so, Micah … I mean, this will inevitably become a political discussion, but we’re only 24 hours after the attack. There was a moment of silence at the beginning. It feels too soon. You don’t want a moment like what occurred in Minnesota in 2002. Where people thought that a Paul Wellstone (who died in a plane crash) memorial service was too political, and it may have cost Democrat Walter Mondale the election.

Hey all, Bernie Sanders had been more aggressive on the campaign trail recently in emphasizing policy differences with Hillary Clinton. But with the terror attacks in Paris yesterday, it seems likely we’ll see a more staid debate tonight, right?

It had the makings of a “debate about nothing.” Scheduled on a Saturday night in Iowa — opposite an Iowa Hawkeyes football game, no less — viewership was likely to be low. Hillary Clinton, who remains in an extremely strong position for the Democratic nomination for president, had every incentive to take a risk-averse approach. A forced joke here, a perfunctory shout-out there to the predominantly white and liberal part of the Democratic base that currently supports Bernie Sanders, and Clinton could run out the clock. All of that changed with the terrorist attacks Friday in Paris, which have killed at least 129 people. In the context of the Democratic primary, a shift in the conversation toward foreign policy is probably helpful to Clinton. She’s the former secretary of state, and a CBS News/New York Times poll last month unsurprisingly found that Democrats trust Clinton more than Sanders in the event of a hypothetical international crisis. (It’s Sanders’s campaign, instead, that tried to push back against CBS’s proposed shift in focus for the debate.) But the substance of Clinton’s remarks on Paris, the Islamic State group and Syria could have resonance around the world, and all the way through next November’s general election. So far, both President Obama and the Republican candidates have been relatively circumspect in their comments about the attacks — understandably, since so much remains unknown. Clinton, however, will be on stage for two hours and will presumably receive some very pointed questions from the moderators. With NATO-led action against the Islamic State potentially on the table — French President Francois Hollande pledged a “war which will be pitiless” against the attackers — we’ll be looking carefully at how Clinton positions herself.

After the terrorist attacks in Paris yesterday, the CBS moderators for tonight’s Democratic debate will put more emphasis on foreign policy. Most analysts, and even the Bernie Sanders campaign, believe the shift in focus will give Hillary Clinton, a former secretary of state, a leg up. And although that may be the case, it could also pressure Clinton into defying an increasingly liberal Democratic base that she’s been hesitant to go against. Clinton has given in to the Democratic base on two key issues so far this campaign: the Keystone XL pipeline and the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) trade pact. She waffled for months on the former, as a clear plurality of Americans were for it and a clear plurality of Democrats were against it. She defied the Obama White House and flip-flopped on the TPP, announcing that she opposed it as her Democratic opponents lined up against her on the deal. Polling showed that neither the Keystone pipeline nor the TPP was at the top of Americans’ minds, so Clinton has faced minimal backlash. Clinton may be in a more difficult political position when it comes to public opinion and the Islamic State group, which French President François Hollande said was responsible for the attacks in Paris on Friday. Gallup this past week and Quinnipiac at the end of August found that just 37 percent of Democrats favored putting troops on the ground in Iraq and Syria to fight Islamic State. Just 31 percent of liberals favored doing so in the Gallup poll. Americans overall were far more split, with 52 percent favoring ground troops in the Quinnipiac poll and 43 percent in favor in the Gallup survey. With the public divided and Democrats clearly against sending in troops, Clinton had an obvious public opinion play: Don’t call for troops on the ground. That’s exactly the course she has followed. But that was before the attacks Friday. There is already pressure on the United States to be more proactive against Islamic State, including potentially sending in troops. Will Clinton change her position? She can stall for a little bit to see how the situation unfolds and how the public responds to the Paris attacks. Eventually, though, she may be forced to choose between a policy favored by the American public and one favored by the liberal base of the Democratic Party.

Going into the second Democratic debate, here’s how popular the candidates are:

Seeing as the Democratic National Committee, in all its wisdom, decided to schedule this presidential primary debate for a Saturday night, our live blog is going to be a little different: more intimate, more interactive and a little slower. Instead of the full FiveThirtyEight debate SWAT team, you’ll be settling for Nate Silver, Harry Enten, Farai Chideya and yours truly. Still, it’ll be interesting. Bernie Sanders has been more willing to highlight policy differences with Hillary Clinton recently. And Martin O’Malley will be on stage. So send us your questions via Twitter @FiveThirtyEight, leave a comment and settle in for a couple of hours.