PBS Democratic Debate: Live Coverage

And that’ll do it for tonight. If you’re coming to this page after the debate, start reading at the bottom and scroll up from there. Henry Kissinger makes several cameos, so you have something to look forward to. We’ll have more about the election in the coming weeks, of course, and be sure to keep an eye on our primary forecasts as more polls come in. Thanks for reading!

Our post-debate grades — which FiveThirtyEight’s debate-watchers submit anonymously and grade based on how much the candidates helped themselves in the quest for the nomination — saw this as another close debate, with Hillary Clinton getting a B-plus grade and Bernie Sanders a B.

FiveThirtyEight’s Democratic debate grades

CANDIDATE	AVERAGE GRADE	HIGH GRADE	LOW GRADE
Hillary Clinton	B+	A	B-
Bernie Sanders	B	B+	B-

I’ll de-anonymize myself to say that I thought the difference was a little clearer between the candidates (I graded Clinton as an A-minus and Sanders as a B-minus). There are two reasons for that. First, while there’s room to argue about whether Clinton’s constituency-building approach or Sanders’s more targeted one is a more effective strategy overall, I think Clinton did a better job of executing her strategy tonight. She was able to present herself as a full-spectrum Democrat, especially in her closing statement. Sanders, conversely, had more trouble focusing on his core issues such as income inequality. Second, Clinton appeared more relaxed and confident tonight than she did in the New Hampshire debate. I’m generalizing from small samples, but it was more reminiscent of the first Democratic debate (after which Clinton rebounded in the polls) than some of Clinton’s more recent efforts. Conversely, Sanders dated himself a bit with references to Henry Kissinger and Winston Churchill, something he’s perhaps been smart to avoid given his supporters’ demographics lean younger. I could be completely wrong. As I’ve said after the past few debates, it’s hard for journalists who are knee-deep in the campaign to see the debate through the relatively fresh eyes of viewers at home. Nothing tonight was a “game-changer,” I don’t think. But my opinion is that Clinton did a better job of speaking to the more diverse audience that the candidates will be seeing in Nevada and South Carolina.

Clinton’s closing statement spoke directly to Wisconsin politics, while Sanders didn’t really seem attuned to the local political environment. This could be read a couple of ways, though: as Clinton being carefully handled, or as Sanders taking the 10,000-foot view of politics.

Clinton finished strongly with her closing statement. She managed to make the case that she agrees with Sanders on his core issue of income inequality and its roots in corrupt campaign finance. At the same time, she said, she is also the candidate for voters who care about many other issues. Clinton also briefly cited the poisoned water of the children of Flint, Michigan — which is a good reminder that if you haven’t yet read our colleague Anna Maria Barry-Jester’s article on what went wrong in Flint and who gathered the data to show it, you really should.

Sanders is trying to be the successor candidate to Obama and the candidate of revolution. Probably not sustainable.

As his former secretary of state and someone who holds 97 percent of the same policy positions, Clinton’s not going to be able to gain any separation from Obama even if she wants to. So she might as well embrace him now — and hope that Obama’s approval rating is 53 percent and not 42 percent in November.

It’s a smart strategy. Obama’s approval rating is basically even among all Americans. Among Democrats, it’s north of 80 percent.

Hillary Clinton is really trying to highlight that she believes she’s the only pro-Obama candidate in this primary. Is that a wise move in a primary where the voters are stalwart Democrats?

Nate mentioned Sanders’s curious decision to go back to the 1970s. Now he goes back to the 1930s and 1940s in citing Franklin Delano Roosevelt and Winston Churchill as leaders who would influence his decisions on foreign policy. Clinton goes with more current choices: She cites Nelson Mandela, who died in 2013, and then gives fulsome praise to sitting President Obama — praise she contrasts with Sanders’s recent criticism of Obama.

Lots of polls on this, but even in this September Quinnipiac University poll in which just 26 percent of all voters supported the Iran nuclear deal, 52 percent of Democrats did.

All of this talk about Iran has me wondering what the voter opinion splits were by party on the Obama administration’s Iran deal. Harry, that’s what you’re here for, right?

Bernie Sanders has about three times as many Facebook likes as Clinton nationwide, but the former secretary of state does lead in a few South Carolina counties!

In Nevada … it’s a clean sweep for Sanders.

The European migrant crisis is highly divisive along partisan lines: According to a September Pew poll, “by more than two-to-one (69 percent to 29 percent), Democrats approve of the U.S. decision to increase the number of refugees it accepts. By about the same margin (67 percent to 30 percent), Republicans disapprove.” Half of Democrats say we should go even further, while just 11 percent say we should do less.

https://twitter.com/FreddieCampion/status/697986442002358272

Debate No. 6 is more than 90 minutes in and abortion has barely come up. Rubio complained in the last debate that the Democratic candidates have not been asked about their stances on abortion once in their past five debates, and even Sanders’s digital director Mike Casca is getting impatient. https://twitter.com/cascamike/status/697816779540672512

We can’t find any recent favorability ratings for Henry Kissinger — yes, we looked — but it’s interesting that Bernie Sanders has brought the debate back to the 1970s, when that’s generally something he has avoided. Usually, it’s Clinton whose answers are steeped in historical references while Sanders is more focused on the here-and-now — perhaps a small part of the reason why younger Democrats prefer Sanders while older ones prefer Clinton.

I think these debates could matter more, if Sanders continues to do well.

They’re going to matter less, in my opinion. The simple reason is that this race will become one of demographics. We saw how much demographics mattered in 2008 on the Democratic side and in 2012 on the Republican side.

As primary campaigns go on, do debates matter more or less?

https://twitter.com/danpfeiffer/status/697986005257728000

Although Clinton would dispute the relevance of 2002 on foreign policy in 2016, a 2002 poll did find that 56 percent of Americans approved of Henry Kissinger to head a commission to investigate the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks; just 22 percent disapproved.

No: 24 percent of New Hampshire Republican voters said in exit polls that terrorism was the issue that matters most; just 9 percent of Democrats did.

Is foreign policy the issue on the Democratic side that it is on the GOP side?

Sanders’s snide remark that Clinton isn’t in the White House yet wasn’t great for him, but I agree with Harry that there haven’t been any moments like Rubio’s repetition at the last Republican debate. Which is to be expected — there are lots of debates and few have a major, immediate impact on the race.

I’ve seen nothing. No terrible moments for either one. No “game changers.”

Has anything happened so far that’s going to nudge this race one way or another?

If you put any stock in the grades the FiveThirtyEight staff issues after each debate, which are intended to reflect our impressions of how much each candidate helped his or her nomination chances, then both Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders are consistent but somewhat risk-averse debaters. Other than Clinton’s A-minus in the first Democratic debate, all of the other grades we’ve given to Clinton and Sanders are B’s and B-plusses.

FiveThirtyEight staff grades for previous Democratic debates

DATE	CLINTON	SANDERS
Oct. 13	A-	B
Nov. 14	B	B
Dec. 19	B+	B
Jan. 17	B+	B+
Feb. 4	B+	B+

Clinton spoke forcefully against Donald Trump’s comments that could alienate American Muslims, such as calling for a temporary ban on Muslims entering the country. She said American Muslims must feel welcome in the United States. Democrats have warmer feelings toward Muslims than Republicans do, but the sentiment remains chilly, according to my colleagues Ben Casselman and Harry Enten.

https://twitter.com/jodyavirgan/status/697980310303145984

Although Sanders is often viewed to be weaker than Clinton on foreign policy, he did well among those in New Hampshire who fear terrorism. According to Edison Research, 61 percent of those who voted for Sanders said they were “very worried” about terrorism as opposed to 39 percent of Clinton voters.

About a year ago, political scientists Matt Grossmann and Dave Hopkins published a paper arguing that Democratic voters base their decision on which party is better for different social groups (“group benefits,” in polisci speak), while Republicans vote more based on ideology. This thesis, like several important political science theories, isn’t an obvious fit for what we’re seeing in this nomination season. What’s interesting in the Sanders-Clinton contest is that the terms of debate seem to encompass both ideology and group interests. Sanders invoked ideology when he said that you can be either a progressive or a moderate, but not both. This kind of impulse toward ideological purity is what Grossmann and Hopkins identify as being far more common among Republicans. But there’s been a lot about group benefits too. Obviously, which candidate is better for women has been the subject of hot debate – Gloria Steinem and Madeleine Albright’s controversial comments are the most prominent but hardly the only ones in that vein. Two top African-American intellectuals, Michelle Alexander and Ta-Nehisi Coates, weighed in for Sanders this week, citing their experience as black Americans. In the opening statements, Clinton drew on pretty standard Democratic group benefits language. Sanders invoked group benefit language in a slightly different way – talking about ordinary Americans and the abuses of the campaign finance system. This is a different kind of group benefit, but it also invokes the ideological purity point that he keeps raising against Clinton. One thing I wonder going forward is whether these two streams of argument – group benefits vs. ideologies – merge or remain distinct.

Having either a woman president or a Jewish president would be a first for the United States — but fortunately, these characteristics may no longer be as much of a barrier to being elected. According to a 2012 Gallup poll, only 5 percent of Americans said they wouldn’t vote for an otherwise well-qualified female presidential candidate, while 6 percent said that about a Jewish one.

Sanders said earlier that a Sanders presidency would be historic, too. This isn’t mainly what he meant, but he’d be the first Jewish president, and the first with a home state (but not birth state) of Vermont.

https://twitter.com/WSJThinkTank/status/697979473325637632

As you heard in that debate over donor size, Sanders does do much better than Clinton with small donors. He has a much larger base of donors, and raised twice as much money as Clinton from donations under $200 as of Feb. 1, 2016.

Sanders is right that the big banks have gotten even bigger since the financial crisis. But they’re also much more heavily regulated, and being forced to hold much more capital. So they remain “too big to fail,” but also less likely to do so.

Ideology is notoriously hard to measure — especially for presidents like Franklin Roosevelt who didn’t serve in Congress — but it looks like Sanders would stand out as quite a bit more liberal than the last three Democratic senators who became president. Looking at congressional voting scores provided on voteview.org (for economic issues), Sanders stands out from the rest of the group. With a score of -.368, Obama was more liberal than John F. Kennedy (-.308) and Lyndon Johnson (-.236). (The more negative a score, the more liberal a candidate was.) Sanders was even more liberal than that. His score was -.523 in the 113th Congress.

Julia, would Sanders be the most liberal president since FDR?

Making prescription drugs more affordable is a winning issue for voters from both parties. A Kaiser Health Tracking Poll released in October found that 85 percent of democrats and 73 percent of Republicans surveyed said that the president and Congress should prioritize making sure that high-cost drugs for chronic conditions are available to people who need them. Similarly, 74 percent of Democratic and 56 percent of Republican respondents wanted “Government action to lower prescription drug prices.”

My guess is that the low-key but wonky and detail-oriented tenor of the conversation tonight is more helpful to Hillary Clinton than to Bernie Sanders. Compare the candidates’ “issues” pages on their respective websites: Clinton’s is an alphabetized laundry list of topics, while Sanders’s is prioritized, with the top two issues being income quality and free college tuition. This has been a substantive but laundry-list type of debate so far.

It’s true, as Clinton just said, that super PACs are technically independent of the campaigns they support. But in this campaign cycle, more than ever before, many of the PACs are clearly coordinating with campaigns and splitting up duties. As the Washington Post reported last year, Clinton’s campaign is coordinating with a super PAC that is supplying it with opposition research. Many Republican candidates are going even further and having the super PACs pay for television ads while they spend their money on other expenses.

The debate moved onto senior citizens for a little bit. A lot of the focus of this campaign has been on Clinton’s problem with young voters. Sanders, though, has a problem with older voters. He lost them by 11 percentage points in New Hampshire, despite winning statewide by over 20 percentage points. In Iowa, he lost them by 43 percentage points even he basically tied the state with Clinton

https://twitter.com/mollyesque/status/697979131296931844

Officially, 4.6 million American seniors were living in poverty in 2014; the senior poverty rate was 10 percent, lower than the 14.8 percent figure for Americans as a whole. But those numbers understate the level of poverty among seniors. The official definition of poverty is decades old and underestimates the cost of health care and other major expenses for seniors. Under an alternative definition of poverty that most economists consider superior, the poverty rate for seniors was 14.4 percent in 2014.

This conversation on meeting the basic needs of seniors is happening on Clinton’s turf — voters 65 and older were the only age group she won in New Hampshire, and they’ve made up a disproportionately large share of the audience for previous debates, both Democratic and Republican.

Clinton’s callout to coal country makes me wonder whether the moderators will ask about President Obama’s Clean Power Plan. On Tuesday, the Supreme Court issued an order preventing the Obama administration from taking steps to enact or enforce the CPP pending a decision on a court challenge to the plan filed by 29 states and numerous industry groups and stakeholders. The CPP is a cornerstone of President Obama’s climate policy and provides many of the emissions reductions that the administration pledged the Paris climate conference in December. An overturning of the CPP could pull the rug out from under the Paris treaty, much like how the 1997 Byrd-Hagel resolution weakened the Kyoto Protocol.

https://twitter.com/alec_h_tyson/status/697975636778840066

Sanders is definitely right about the disappearance of manufacturing jobs, and of the erosion of wages in those jobs. And he is likely right that global competition has played a significant role in that decline. Whether trade has been bad for less-educated workers overall is a harder question. Economists broadly agree that trade, like immigration, is good for the economy as a whole. But a policy that helps the economy can still be bad for individual workers.

Sanders is far from the only prominent Democrat who disagrees with the Obama administration’s deportation of immigrants.

Bernie Sanders said that if necessary, he would use executive action to create a path to citizenship. If so, he’d follow a long line of presidents — President Obama included — who have used executive action on immigration.