I am late in writing about the first Democratic debate because I missed the first 40 minutes of it and it took me a day or two to find the stomach for watching the whole thing. Because a few days have passed I am writing with the benefit of at least one post debate poll. That said, here's how I felt about the candidates' performance and how it will affect their chances of being nominated. For each candidate I give a letter graded followed by how I think the night affects their chances of being nominated.
1. Hillary Clinton: A- (Greatly improved).
Hillary had a bad summer. The only things keeping her in the news were the scandal related to her use of a private e-mail account and the continued stubborn surge in support for Bernie Sanders. The debate gave her a chance to finally be herself. She's not a great debater, but she's perfectly competent and she's always well prepared. This debate was no exception and the first post-debate poll in NH shows her taking the lead back from Bernie. But the best news of the night actually came when her primary opponent was speaking.
2. Bernie Sanders: A- (Significantly diminished.)
Bernie has a pretty straight-forward shtick. There's only two issues that he cares about: enhancing the social safety net and reducing income inequality. They are closely related and Bernie knows exactly which points play best, especially to a left-leaning crowd. He was predictably put on the defensive on the subject of gun control but his explanations were plausible enough, at least superficially. He did nothing to undermine his support among his most avid supporters.
But the moment of the night came when Bernie chimed in to respond to a question about Secretary Clinton's use of a private e-mail server. He could have kept his mouth shut. He could have offered a halfhearted comment about there being more important issues in the campaign. Instead, he sounded like a complete partisan: "Enough with the damn e-mails." The line brought the house down and got him some dap from the front runner. It also probably doomed his chances of being the nominee.
Bernie was always a long shot. He is doing far above expectations but he still needs to pull an inside straight if he wants to be the nominee. This answer seemed to indicate that he doesn't expect that to happen. Hillary Clinton is competent and well-liked by most Democratic partisans. Her positions are aligned with the party majority in almost every subject. Where they are not, she has bent to the political pull from her left, such as her opposition to the PTP trade deal. If she is to be beaten, it will be because of a scandal serious enough to make people believe she is unelectable. At this point, the e-mail survey does not rise to that level. But it has clearly hurt her polling numbers, especially with independents. She is vulnerable there, especially if more unfavorable details emerge in the next month or two. Bernie decided to take it off the table as an issue. He can't retract that.
The truth is Bernie doesn't expect to be the nominee. He wants to affect the race, and he already has. Clinton would not have come out for a repeal of the tax on Cadillac insurance plans or against the Pacific trade deal unless she was worried bout her left flank. What Bernie wants is to talk about the two very important issues that motivate him. He thinks Hillary's e-mails are just a distraction from time spent talking about those issues. So he gave up one very plausible rationale for nominating someone other than Hillary. Maybe he knows that he has his own issues related to perceptions of electability. Maybe he just genuinely does not care about Hillary's e-mail. Either way, his already slim chance of being nominated are now much slimmer than they were a few days ago.
This doesn't mean he won't get a lot of votes. He might win New Hampshire. If he does that he can probably win one or two states on Super Tuesday and of course he'll probably win Vermont. He might win 5 or 6 states, control a few hundred delegates and get a plum speaking spot at the convention. If Hillary really stumbles, he could do better than that and drag the race out into June. But it's very unlikely that he will be the nominee.
3. Martin O'Malley. A (Very slight improvement.)
O'Malley was prepared and he seemed confident and even presidential. If this was a competitive race, he would have stood out for sure. But it's not a competitive race for him and nothing that came out of his mouth was going to change that. Despite his strong performance, that NH poll showed him going down from 2 percent to 1 percent. The only scenario in which he is the nominee requires Hillary to drop out of the race and him to run as the mainstream alternative to Bernie. That's extremely unlikely.
4. Jim Webb B- (He won't be the nominee, but he will get more votes than I thought.)
I wish Jim Webb was running for the Republican nomination. He would be a breath of relative sanity on that stage. But on the Democratic stage, he looked awkward and uncomfortable and not just when talking about killing a Chi-comm during the Vietnam war. There is a small sliver of the Democratic party that Webb appeals to: working class white men who realize that Republican economics is harmful to them but who disagree with the Democrats or don't sufficiently care about issues like gun control, affirmative action and environmental protections. The first post debate poll shows him going from 1 percent to 3 percent. I think he can do better than that if he works a little harder over the coming months. (His campaign presence in the early states is almost non-existent.) He can get to high single digits in New Hampshire and he might do better than that in South Carolina. But the nomination? Impossible.
5. Lincoln Chafee: D- (Dead as a door nail.)
He was awkward and awful. He didn't say much of substance that was bad but his tone and body language were all wrong. He's a dead end. I'm still probably going to vote for him next year but that will almost certainly be a protest vote. I think it's very likely that he will drop out before Iowa.
The Wild Cards: Incomplete (But a bad night still.)
The most significant story line was Bernie's capitulation on the e-mail issue. But I thought a close second might be that Hillary did well enough to freeze out the candidates waiting on the sidelines, specifically Joe Biden and Elizabeth Warren. Right now there is no need to come to the rescue of the party. Hillary looked good and she will look even better next year when she's debating someone who believes crazy nonsense about economics, science and reproductive choice. She is very likely to be our next president.
But the rumor mill says Joe Biden is going to get into this race. I don't know exactly what the rationale of his candidacy will be. But politicians are not like regular folks. Joe has to know this is his last chance to be elected president. I don't know if he can live with saying no.
It's Not All Roses for the Frontrunner.
Secretary Clinton gave a strong performance but there was one point that she needs to work on. Twice during the debate, she replied to questions about her candidacy by saying that she is the best candidate because she is a woman. In 2008, Barack Obama let the significance of his race speak for itself. He would allude to it, but never make it an explicit reason to vote for him. Hillary does use gender as an explicit justification for her candidacy. That only helps here with people who are going to vote for her anyway. This tactic might hurt her in the general election.
Barack Obama's political brilliance was to make his race about the country, rather than about him. His comments about race had the cadence of a Yakoff Smirnoff joke: "Can you believe a skinny kid with a funny name is about to be elected president? What a country!" He left it for the audience to realize that the reason his name sounded funny was its African origins. He made people good about themselves for wanting to vote for someone who "just happened" to be black. He never would have been President, or even nominated if he framed his campaign as "It's about time we put a black guy in charge!" Even though it was. And now it is time to put a woman in charge. We all know that. We don't have to be told that. But Hillary seems incapable of that nuance. She needs to work on it.
Hillary's last hurdle might come next week. She is set to testify before the Benghazi committee on October 23rd. The Republican majority will grill her about her e-mails. She better be prepared. Her job is to make the casual voter believe this is pure politics. The GOP's job is to pretend that it's not and to state good reasons why her handling of these e-mails makes her unfit to be president of the United States. At least one e-mail apparently revealed the name of an intelligence source in Libya. That e-mail came from Sidney Blumenthal but Hillary forwarded it to others and apparently did not tell Mr. Blumenthal to not send such information to her by a private e-mail server.
This is fertile ground. If Gowdy is worth a warm bucket of spit, he will make some fodder for the general election. But Hillary just might have answers for most of the allegations and she has the benefit of facing some truly mediocre opponents. If that's the case, she will emerge unscathed. Not unlike the other night in Las Vegas.
UPDATED Nomination Forecast:
| Candidate | Nov-14 | Jun-15 | 15-Sep | 15-Oct |
Hillary
Clinton
|
70 | 95+ | 83 | 91 |
| Bernie Sanders | N/A | -1 | 5 | 3 |
Martin
O'Malley
|
1 | -1 | 1 | 1 |
Jim
Webb
|
10 | -1 | 1 | -1 |
Lincoln
Chafee
|
N/A | -1 | 1 | 0 |
| Undeclared | ||||
| Elizabeth Warren | 12 | n/a | 5 | 1 |
| Joe Biden | 5 | n/a | 3 | 2 |
| The Field | -1 | -1 | 2 | 1 |
For a sanity check I looked up a European betting website. They have Hillary at 78% and Biden and Sanders each at 10%. I think Hillary is a buy at that number.
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