Live Coverage Of The First Democratic Debate

Young voters part with Hillary Clinton on her stance on Edward Snowden, who she said made the wrong choice in blowing the whistle on his employers at the National Security Agency for snooping on Americans. Of millennials polled by the ACLU and Pew Research, a majority back Snowden. Clinton was on firm ground with many Democrats, though, when she defended her vote on the Patriot Act. A narrow plurality of Democrats in a May YouGov poll, and a majority of Democrats in a CNN poll that same month, backed extending the act. (The difference shows how sensitive polling results are to question wording.)

Clinton says she’ll go “beyond Obama” on reducing prescription drug costs, which is interesting because provisions in the Trans-Pacific Partnership that are friendly to the pharmaceutical industry are among the reasons she says she opposes President Obama’s signature trade deal. Health care has always been a key issue for Clinton. So far this election season, she’s taken on the high cost of prescription drugs and the “Cadillac” tax in Obamacare. She has the support of the people on drug costs: Nearly three-quarters of people in the U.S. think drug costs are unreasonably high and blame pharmaceutical companies for the prices, according to recent polling from the Kaiser Family Foundation. The Cadillac tax is the rare policy issue that Republicans and Democrats agree on, with legislators across the political spectrum calling for its repeal.