MSNBC Democratic Debate: Live Coverage

I thought it was the best debate for the things that happened toward the beginning: the two of them sort of poking at each other on questions of electability and progressivism. But I didn’t like some of the questions on points that I think voters won’t really care all that much about — TV ads, data breaches, scuffles with unions. They wanted Clinton to attack Sanders on that and she just didn’t bite and it felt like dead space in the debate. Although, I guess there’s only so much these two disagree on.

Yes, once they got their pre-written talking points out of the way early on, they gave the audience a fairly close look at their real selves, and not always in a flattering light. It was one of the best this season.

I found the one-on-one format refreshing — looser and more nimble than even the three-person debates with O’Malley, let alone the GOP debates with their much larger cohorts. The question is whether the congeniality these two contenders generally have shown each other (disagreeing on policy but not going ad hominem) will persist as these one-on-one debates continue.