What Went Down At The CNN Democratic Debate

As they say in the business — the debate business, I suppose — tonight’s tete-a-tete was spirited, sometimes just for kicks, it seemed; “We are in vigorous agreement,” Clinton said at one point. Sanders seemed a bit more aggressive tonight, laughing at points when Clinton talked. He hit Clinton hard on her Wall Street speech transcripts — it remains a bugaboo with many voters that she won’t release the documents. Clinton’s argument, a tepid one, was that it’s not the kind of thing, like tax returns, that presidential candidates are generally expected to release. Sanders, sensing an opening, cheekily said he would release his paid Wall Street talks (nota bene: the avowed Democratic Socialist doesn’t have any). Overall, the Brooklyn crowd seemed pretty Sanders-friendly, and Clinton had to wait for cheers of “Bernie! Bernie!” to die down before she could give her closing statement. Clinton looked strong in the foreign policy portion of the debate, often invoking President Obama’s name — something that Sanders called out at one point — and hit the Vermont senator hard on his gun control position, which is to the right of most Democratic voters. She’s a strong debater, typically a pretty controlled presence on the stage, although she and Sanders had one back-and-forth moment that ended with Wolf Blitzer pleading for calm, à la a GOP debate. Most polls show Clinton with about a 10-percentage-point lead in New York at this point, and it’s unclear if Sanders did much to make up ground in this debate. He was testy and still didn’t seem all that confident when conveying a more detailed outline of his plans to break up the banks — not a great look coming on the heels of an interview with the New York Daily News’s editorial board in which he seemed to lack a solid grasp of his marquee policy plan. But the voters will decide Tuesday! Thanks for spending the evening with us, and we’ll hopefully see you back here when we live-blog the results of New York’s primary.

Speaking of paid family leave! The city of San Francisco and New York state recently passed the most generous paid family leave laws in the country. But as I wrote last week, it’s actually dads who come out as the biggest winners. Compared with other rich countries, these new laws are relatively more generous for dads, offering six weeks of paid leave.

When asked if he’s a Democrat, Sanders touted his electability and mentioned his appeal to independents, although he noted that he is pursuing the nomination, of course, as a Democrat. The issue has come up before during this primary season. It opens up some questions about how we define political parties in the U.S. We do it pretty loosely, as evidenced by nomination rules that open up the process to candidates like Sanders and Trump — and, in some states, to independent voters. What it means to be a Republican or Democrat is generally in the eye of the beholder. I’ve generally argued that since Sanders caucuses with the Democrats, any distinction about his party ID is mostly semantic. But fundraising is an issue. Connections to other candidates are important. And so is ideology. Modern Democrats have generally embraced capitalism and business, and this has come up in debates. What does it mean for Sanders’s critique of capitalism for him to join the Democratic Party at last?