MSNBC Democratic Debate: Live Coverage

The moderators tonight tended to step back and let the candidates question each other, so I tracked the topics being covered each time someone spoke, rather than by what the moderator said. Defining who counts as a progressive took up 20 percent of speaking slots, and discussion about the horserace and scandals made up an additional fifth of the comments. Still, more than 50 percent of comments spent on the issues is probably a win.

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.