We begin today’s roundup with Dan Balz’s analysis of yesterday’s Democratic debate:
Thursday’s debate between Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders offered a revealing window into the current state of the Democratic campaign and a look at two candidates who have reached the limit of their patience with each other.
What started out many months ago as a relatively civil contest, in which both Sanders and Clinton seemed to resist negative attacks, has descended into the kind of competition that raises questions about how easily the party will come together once a winner has been crowned.
New York long has had a reputation for brawling politics, and the debate more than met that standard. Ahead of Tuesday’s crucial primary, the two presidential candidates staged the most acrimonious forum of their increasingly nasty campaign.
Alexander Burns at The New York Times:
Mrs. Clinton and Mr. Sanders displayed new flashes of impatience and even contempt toward each other. They raised their voices early and often, talking over and past each other.
Mr. Sanders, especially, turned sarcastic. When Mrs. Clinton boasted of having stood up to Wall Street banks, he noted that the banks subsequently paid her handsomely for speaking engagements. “They must have been very, very upset by what you did,” he said mockingly.
Later in the evening, Mrs. Clinton vented frustration with Mr. Sanders. Any time he disagrees with someone, she said, “then you are a member of the establishment.”
David Graham at The Atlantic:
The Democratic candidates for president hadn’t faced off on a debate stage for more than a month before they stepped on to a stage in Brooklyn Thursday night. And by all indications, they’d both been holding back a number of punches they were itching to throw.
The meeting between Bernie Sanders and Hillary Clinton was an often tense, heated affair, with each candidate taking hard swipes at each other. There was none of the kumbayah of previous debates, in which they had criticized each other but taken care to insist that their real opponent was the Republican Party. On Thursday, they targeted each other directly. At one point, Wolf Blitzer, like a disapproving national father, felt compelled to cut in. "You're both screaming at each other,” he implored. “The viewers won't be able to hear either of you.”
Peter Weber at The Week:
The problem for Sanders is that momentum doesn't count unless you can translate it into the currency of presidential nominating races: delegates. As such, Thursday's debate was aimed almost entirely at next Tuesday's primary in New York, the second-biggest pot of delegates, after California. Both campaigns have put all their chips on New York, Clinton to arrest Sanders' momentum and Sanders, down by at least 10 points in most polls, to try to score a Michigan-like upset that would finally cut into Clinton's delegate lead and raise real doubts about her electoral prospects with Democratic Party power players.
Clinton and Sanders had debated eight times before Thursday's face-off in Brooklyn. This one was different. With so much at stake, maybe it was inevitable that Thursday's debate would have a lot more sharp elbows. But for anyone pleased that the Democratic primary hasn't descended into the gutter fight between the "professional wrestlers emerging from the RNC's clown car," as New York's Rebecca Traister put it, well, the change wasn't a good one. ("Oh my god make it stop," Traitor pleaded.)
Probably the most replayed moment of the night, because it summed up the tone so well, was Wolf Blitzer's plea to the two candidates in the middle of a heated discussion over the minimum wage: "If you're both screaming at each other, the viewers won't be able to hear either of you.”
Turning to the Republican race, Claire Landsbaum at New York Magazine looks at how New York Republicans received the GOP candidates:
New Yorkers haven't exactly taken to Ted Cruz. After precious few supporters (and a hand full of protesters) attended his meet-and-greet in the Bronx, Cruz attempted to win the city over by bashing its mayor, but even bad-mouthing de Blasio wasn't enough to win him any favors among the city's constituents. This became apparent at the New York City GOP Gala Thursday night, where Cruz was ignored by a room of 800 Republicans.
All three GOP candidates were present at the event, and all three gave speeches in front of supporters who'd paid $1,000 per table to hear them. Kasich and Trump both spoke before Cruz, who began his speech by making a joke about his competition. "I haven’t built any buildings in New York City, but I have spent my entire life fighting to defend the Constitution and the Bill of Rights," he told the room.
That's about all anyone heard of his speech because, although Cruz kept talking, gala attendees suddenly decided they had much more important things to do than listen to him. Like, say, eat.
Steven Shepard at POLITICO:
Republican insiders have a message for Donald Trump in the wake of the GOP front-runner’s complaints that the party’s presidential nominating system is “rigged” against his candidacy: Stop whining about the rules.
That’s according to The POLITICO Caucus – a panel of operatives, strategists and activists in 10 key general-election battleground states. Ninety-two percent of Republican insiders said the system is fair and dismissed Trump’s claims, which came after a delegate shutout in Colorado’s district and state conventions last week.
Michael Daly at The Daily Beast:
Trump could easily have held last week’s rally at a similar soundstage in Brooklyn or at some other venue within the city limits.
He might have even held it at the Grand Hyatt.
But to have had a homecoming in his hometown would have drawn protesters such as those who gathered outside the hotel on Thursday night upon hearing he would be among the candidates attending the gala. The protesters were not there because of Ted Cruz or John Kasich.
And the protesters are only one raucous measure of the low regard with which Trump is held in the city of New York.
On a final note, Damon Linker at The Week runs down contested convention scenarios:
The idea that in this of all years, with an anti-establishment insurgency roiling the Republican Party (and not just the Republican Party), the leadership of the GOP is going to be able to herd 1,237 cats in the direction of its choosing is flatly ridiculous.
The most likely scenario remains that Trump will either reach 1,237 delegates by the time the last votes are counted in California at the end of primary season or he'll come close enough (within 50 delegates or so) that he'll be able to persuade a few dozen uncommitted delegates to come on board before the start of the convention six weeks later. If either of those things happen, Trump will be named the nominee on the first ballot, all the ballyhoo about a contested convention will have come to nothing, and the establishment will have gotten screwed.