What Went Down At The CNN Democratic Debate

“If you’re both screaming at each other, the viewers won’t be able to hear either of you,” a plaintive Wolf Blitzer said just a moment ago. The touchy topic they tussled over? The minimum wage, very apropos for New York, home to the progressive Working Families Party, which has championed the fight for a $15 minimum wage. New York recently approved a plan to raise the minimum wage gradually to $15.

https://twitter.com/jbouie/status/720786701677830145

Clinton has supported a $12-an-hour minimum wage but has been reluctant to embrace a national $15 minimum. Many economists support her position. A $15-an-hour wage goes a lot further in some parts of the country than in others, and its impact on employers will be a lot greater in lower-cost areas. How big will that impact be? No one really knows — there is little research on a minimum wage as high as $15 in low-wage areas.

https://twitter.com/TheFix/status/720786818623545345

Wolf Blitzer asks Sanders how he would bring back manufacturing jobs without raising prices. That’s being too generous. As I wrote in a recent column, it isn’t realistic to think that a large number of manufacturing jobs will return from China under any circumstances.

Tax inversions occur when U.S. companies relocate to a foreign country, often through a merger or acquisition, with the intent of lowering their tax bill. In recent weeks, the Treasury Department has released new, expansive rules to limit tax inversions. And because of that, a $160 billion mega-merger between Pfizer and Allergan was called off.

A big cheer from the audience when Dana Bash asked Clinton why she won’t just release the transcripts of her Wall Street speeches — there were a few stray heckles it sounded like, too. Clinton pretty much did as much as she could to pivot away from answering the question about the transcripts, talking about legislation after the financial crisis. “There are certain expectations when you run for president, and this is a new one,” Clinton said when Bash followed up. This is the kind of issue that really irks voters about Clinton and feels a bit in the vein of the private email servers to a lot of people — a niggling sense that she has something to hide. Clinton is pretty famously averse to public scrutiny and press incursions into her life, feelings pretty well cemented in the late 1990s when … well, if you don’t know what happened then, ask your parents.

Clinton tries to pivot away from the issue of her Goldman Sachs transcripts by pointing out that Sanders hasn’t released his full tax returns. (He has released part of last year’s return.) Based on the crowd reaction, her attempt to change the subject wasn’t well-received. But she’s right that in recent elections, it has become standard practice for candidates to release their tax returns. This year is an exception; not only has Sanders kept his returns private, so has Donald Trump (whose return is likely to be a lot more interesting).

Sanders’s sarcastic tone — for instance, saying he’ll release the transcripts of all of his nonexistent paid speeches to Wall Street — might put off some people, but at this stage of the race, he has to take some risks if he wants to catch up. It’s like a football team down late in a game trying onside kicks. It might lead to a blowout loss, but you have to risk that if you’re trying to maximize your chance of winning.

CNN interviewed Debbie Wasserman Schultz before the debate started and asked her about super delegates. Wasserman Schultz has had an unusually prominent and controversial term as DNC chair. She’s been accused of trying to steer the nomination toward Clinton when the party organization is supposed to be neutral. On her answer tonight, once again what struck me is how much norms have changed about party control over nominations. A hundred years ago, presidential primaries were new. Now the role of party elites in choosing nominees is considered illegitimate. This also makes me wonder about party differences. Democrats, like Republicans, used to select their candidates in the infamous “smoke-filled rooms.” But the party always had a more (small-d) democratic bent. No one imagined primaries in, say, the 1840s, but the mass mobilization tactics of the Democratic Party were arguably the most participatory process the Western world had seen. The early Republicans (and Whigs) were more comfortable with a limited role for the people. They brought voters to the polls, too, but took a less celebratory stance toward representing every day Americans. In the 20th century, the Democrats and Republicans adopted primaries and then larger reforms around the same time. But after this year, maybe the two parties will move in opposite directions again, with Democrats cutting back on the influence of unpledged delegates and Republicans building it up.

Clinton remarked that she loves Brooklyn after a boisterous reaction from the crowd, and she has her headquarters in the borough, which is hosting the debate. So it was puzzling when her chief strategist said last month, apparently pejoratively, that Brooklynite Sanders would “campaign like a Brooklynite.”

Clinton called for cracking down on not only big banks, but also the “shadow banking system.” It was activities by institutions like A.I.G. and Countrywide Financial that were a huge part of the financial crisis in 2008. Those aren’t technically banks, in that they don’t take deposits and make loans, like Bank of America for example. Instead, they engaged in less regulated activities like issuing mortgage-backed securities and credit-default swaps. Addressing the weaknesses in the shadow banking system was a major goal of the Dodd-Frank legislation, however.

Andrew, one more point on “living wills”: This week’s news strangely fits into both candidates’ messages. Sanders can argue that the banks’ failure to develop adequate crisis plans proves that the banks need to be broken up. Clinton can argue that the tough position taken by regulators shows that Dodd-Frank is working as intended.

Here’s why that $5.06 billion that Goldman Sachs agreed to pay to the government because of its role in the 2008 financial crisis — which Sanders mentioned — could really set the bank back only about $4 billion.

https://twitter.com/pewresearch/status/720782714471899137

Things getting spicy up top here with Sanders having to address his comments last week about calling Hillary Clinton “unqualified” to be president. I wrote about that with my colleague Julia Azari last week — Sanders unintentionally walked into dicey territory while trying to call out Clinton’s connections to Wall Street — but tonight he’s switched from calling Clinton “unqualified” to questioning her “judgment.” Semantics matter, folks! And bringing up the word judgment — still a harsh critique — let him pivot away from an inherently flawed attack on her resume. Sanders was trying to slice his attacks on Clinton a bit finer than he did last week, making it about her weighing of right and wrong, not about whether she’s done enough in her life to qualify for high office. Clinton, politician that she is, spun Sanders’s attack into an attack on President Obama, which isn’t a bad way to turn, since the guy’s still pretty popular among Democrats.

Sanders has gotten beaten up repeatedly for his New York Daily News interview, in which he seemed to stumble over questions about breaking up the big banks, which is a core part of his platform. But while Sanders’s answers weren’t smooth, he was clear about the main parts of his message. There’s no question, though, that Clinton came across as better-prepared in her own Daily News interview. She later won the paper’s endorsement.

Regulation of Wall Street and the question of whether the “big banks” should be broken up have been major issues in the Democratic race — and in this debate. This week, several of the nation’s largest banks, including Bank of America and JP Morgan Chase, received failing grades from regulators on their “living wills” — plans for how they would wind themselves down, entering bankruptcy in an orderly fashion, should it come to that. By forcing banks to plan ahead, regulators are hoping to avoid the kind of panic in financial markets that occurred in 2008 when the likes of Lehman Bros. went belly up. These banks are legally required to submit these plans by the 2010 Dodd-Frank financial regulation law. However, the two candidates have different views on Dodd-Frank. Clinton is supportive of the law and this week said in a news release that the banks need to “live up to their obligations” and that regulators should take actions like raising capital requirements (essentially forcing banks to operate more conservatively). If banks don’t shape up, “then regulators need to break them apart,” Clinton said. But Sanders is not enamored with Dodd-Frank; he vows to go right ahead and initiate a breaking up of the banks. Looming in the background of this arcane debate about financial regulation is the issue of Clinton’s paid speeches to major financial companies like Goldman Sachs — something Sanders has repeatedly hammered Clinton about.

Sanders laughed as Clinton said he couldn’t answer questions “even about his core issue” of breaking up banks — in this interview last week with the New York Daily News editorial board.

Clinton’s invocation of New York values got a big cheer — a clear reference to Ted Cruz’s renunciation of New York values in a Republican debate in January.

No surprise here: Sanders concludes his opening statement by talking about the need for an economy that serves more than just the richest 1 percent. There’s no mystery as to why that message is resonating; despite nearly seven years of economic recovery, many Americans still don’t feel like they’ve made much progress. But there is finally some evidence that’s changing. Wage growth remains slow, but it has shown some sign of improvement. And the strong job market is drawing more Americans back to the labor market.

It’s striking that Sanders is starting his opening statement with his rising standing in the national polls. He apparently feels that the most important pitch he must sell to the television audience is that he still has a chance in this nomination contest. The only way he does is if he can win remaining primaries, including New York’s on Tuesday, by big margins. He’s right that he has just about caught up in the national polls, but merely keeping remaining contests close won’t be good enough for Sanders to catch up.

Question

https://twitter.com/TribeWM/status/720776347052863488

Answer

Maybe if it turns out to be close, but I doubt it. Super delegates are likely to be the most attentive to politics, which suggests that they would be most likely to already know where they stand ideologically — closer to Sanders or closer to Clinton.

Question

Can you clarify the meaning of net favorability? Confused since I thought Clinton was ahead in popular vote/polls in upcoming states. Thanks! — Zo Ha

Answer

Favorability is a different thing than what we call “topline results” in polling, aka the juicy part where people say who they’re planning on casting their votes for. When you see something about a candidate’s favorable or unfavorable rating, it’s referring to the results of a polling question along the lines of, “Is your opinion of Joe Schmo favorable or unfavorable, or do you not know enough to say?” So, basically what those favorability ratings tell you about Sanders, for instance, is that people like him quite a bit personally — he has higher net favorables than Clinton — but that doesn’t necessarily mean they’re voting for him.

Want to spice up this debate a bit? Take a shot of whiskey (or milk) every time Clinton or Sanders repeats a favorite talking point:

https://twitter.com/micahcohen/status/720778242869878784

Even as Sanders has closed in on Clinton in national polls, Democratic party bigwigs have stayed in Clinton’s corner:

Sanders needs a major breakthrough to have a chance to catch up to Clinton in the delegate count. He’s not getting many opportunities to break through at debates — and fewer people are watching every time. In 2008, Clinton and Obama debated 25 times. Ratings were low at first but picked up late. We have ratings data from Nielsen for 15 of their 25 debates: 10 before Jan. 21 and five after. None of the first 10 debates reached 5 million viewers, and they averaged 2.6 million. (These are average figures during the debate, among viewers age 2 or older.) The last five all topped 7.5 million viewers, and they averaged 8.8 million. Curiously, as the primary calendar wore on and fewer Democrats had to decide whom to vote for — and as Obama’s nomination became more of a sure thing — ratings kept rising.

2016 Democratic debates

		AVERAGE FIVETHIRTYEIGHT STAFFER GRADE
DATE	VIEWERS	CLINTON	SANDERS
10/13/15	15.8m	—	—
11/14	8.6	B	B
12/19	8.0	B+	B
1/17/16	10.2	B+	B+
2/4	4.5	B+	B+
2/11	8.2	B+	B
3/6	5.5	—	—
3/9	6.0	B	B+

Tonight’s debate is just the ninth in the 2016 Democratic race, and ratings have been declining, not rising. More than 15 million people watched the first debate, in October; no debates since Iowans voted on Feb. 1 have reached 9 million viewers. Just getting people to tune in is only part of the battle for Sanders. He also needs to sway them to vote for him. By our reckoning, at least, he hasn’t done enough at debates to accomplish that. The average of grades awarded by FiveThirtyEight staffers to Clinton and Sanders after the six debates we graded show that they’ve both delivered solid performances. Sanders needs something bigger at this stage of the campaign if he is going to have a chance at the nomination.

Sanders has been criticizing Clinton and the super PAC supporting her for taking money from Wall Street, and if you look at the candidates’ contributions by the industry of the contributor, Clinton’s top group is … “securities and investment.”

Contributions to Clinton campaign and outside groups

INDUSTRY OR INTEREST AREA
Securities and investment	$21,030,361	–
Retired	16,929,596	–
Lawyers/law firms	14,425,731	–
Building trade unions	9,537,850	–
Nonprofit institutions	9,339,955	–
TV/movies/music	9,023,435	–
Women’s issues	5,274,022	–
Education	5,023,279	–
Democratic/liberal	5,015,410	–
Miscellaneous finance	4,937,298	–
Real estate	4,293,118	–
Business services	4,018,558	–
Printing and publishing	3,757,785	–
Health professionals	3,229,666	–
Civil servants/public officials	2,396,570	–
Electronics manufacturing and equipment	2,302,322	–
Pro-Israel	2,240,783	–
Pharmaceuticals/health products	2,044,065	–
Miscellaneous business	1,665,797	–
Hospitals/nursing homes	1,240,581	–

Contributions to Sanders campaign

INDUSTRY OR INTEREST AREA		AMOUNT
Retired	$3,088,249	–
Education	2,503,620	–
Health professionals	1,117,431	–
Miscellaneous business	1,080,059	–
Electronics manufacturing and equipment	1,043,381	–
Lawyers/law firms	1,012,393	–
Civil servants/public officials	829,780	–
Business services	709,929	–
Democratic/liberal	702,846	–
TV/movies/music	653,840	–
Other	596,615	–
Hospitals/nursing homes	567,101	–
Printing and publishing	530,819	–
Internet	496,711	–
Real estate	442,374	–
Construction services	272,524	–
Miscellaneous services	223,473	–
Retail sales	198,972	–
Miscellaneous finance	186,574	–
Miscellaneous issues	178,834	–

Here’s how popular Clinton and Sanders are with Democratic voters heading into tonight’s debate:

Average net favorability rating

CANDIDATE		NET FAVORABILITY
Bernie Sanders	+55.0	–
Hillary Clinton	+46.3	–

Bernie Sanders comes into tonight’s Democratic presidential debate, sponsored by CNN in Brooklyn, with the hot hand. He’s gotten more votes than Hillary Clinton in seven of the last eight caucuses and primaries. But voting in the Democratic race has largely followed demographic lines, and the primary calendar in the second half of April shifts to the Northeast, which is more favorable terrain for Clinton — she’s favored to add to her lead in pledged delegates in states like Pennsylvania, Maryland and New York. All the polls for Tuesday’s New York primary have Clinton ahead by at least 10 percentage points. In order for Sanders to be “on track” to catch Clinton in the pledged delegate count, he needs to win New York by about 4 percentage points or more. A 10-point Sanders loss would add about 25 pledged delegates to Clinton’s lead, while a 14-point loss (the current margin in FiveThirtyEight’s New York polling average) would add about 35 delegates. Such a loss would take Sanders’s uphill battle and turn it into an 89.9-degree, somebody-have-a-net-ready climb. So Sanders needs to make something happen tonight. There are four days between tonight’s debate and the New York primary. Stick with us to see how it all unfolds.

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