Live Coverage Of The First Democratic Debate

Yes, it’s a crude measure of candidate quality. But watching Lincoln Chafee struggle tonight — a man who has been elected both governor and senator in Rhode Island — is a reminder that it’s much easier to be elected in a little state than a big one. In fact, the average Democrat on stage tonight is from a state with just 12 electoral votes. (That average will fall to 11 if Joe Biden enters the race later.) By contrast, the average Republican this year hails from states worth 19 or 21 electoral votes on average, depending on whether you count Carly Fiorina as being from Virginia (where she currently makes her residence) or California (where she ran for senate in 2010).

David Leonhardt asks on Twitter: Not sure if it’s considered an effective move or not, but Clinton is the only candidate who has used the word “plan” in tonight’s debate:

• “I have a five-point economic plan because this inequality challenge we face … it hasn’t been this bad since the 1920s.”
• “The plan that I put forward would empower regulators to break up big banks if we thought they posed a risk.”
• “My plan would have the potential of actually sending the executives to jail.”
• “But I know if we don’t come in with a very tough and comprehensive approach like the plan I’m recommending, we’re going to be behind instead of ahead in the next crisis to be.”
• “Well, let me address college affordability because I have a plan that I think will really zero in on what the problems are.”
• “My plan would enable anyone to go to a public college or university twice free.”

Bernie Sanders and Martin O’Malley often seem to be competing over the same bloc of liberal voters (with Sanders seemingly getting the decisive upper hand). But one place they genuinely differ is immigration. O’Malley has laid out a detailed immigration plan that would offer legal status to millions of undocumented immigrants, reduce deportation and detentions, and expand access to health insurance benefits that are now denied to many immigrants. Sanders has likewise called for immigration reform and has endorsed President Obama’s “deferred action” policies that provide legal status to immigrants who entered the country illegally as children. But he has been far more cautious than O’Malley about promoting policies that might encourage more immigration. In 2007, he helped kill a bipartisan immigration bill that he worried would drive down wages for low-wage American workers. In July, he told the Hispanic Chamber of Commerce that “open-borders” proposals were a Wall Street attempt to suppress wages. Sanders stresses that he is not anti-immigration and, even more emphatically, not anti-immigrant. The immigration page on his Web site argues that the free-trade policies he opposes have hurt workers on both sides of the U.S.-Mexico border. Still, Sanders has thus far struggled to win much support among Latinos. (O’Malley, despite his more full-throated support for immigration, hasn’t seen much support among Latinos either.)