One thing we didn’t hear much about tonight, at least directly? The middle class. Politicians of both parties usually love to talk about the middle class and, lately, its struggles. But the Republican candidates tonight seemed to spend more time talking about poverty — and how the number of poor has risen under Obama — than the middle class. According to a preliminary transcript of the debate, “poverty” and “poor” got 11 references tonight; the middle class just seven. (Jeb Bush got both terms into his closing remarks.)
Leah Libresco
Trump was one of the candidates to push for this debate to be shorter, and he was one of the candidates to suffer for it. He and Bush both got far fewer questions from the moderators than they did last time around. Overall, the moderators gave out questions much more evenly than moderators did last time.
