Francis Wilkinson:
Political scientists Thomas Mann and Norman Ornstein are longtime scholars of American politics in general and the U.S. Congress in particular. They were among the first mainstream analysts, and arguably the most influential, to make the case that the "broken" condition of Washington is actually a manifestation of a single broken political party. After House Speaker John Boehner announced his resignation, I began an e-mail conversation with Mann, of the Brookings Institution and the University of California at Berkeley, and Ornstein, of the American Enterprise Institute, about the dangerous state of Congress.
Matt Taibi:
The two top candidates in the Republican field are a Fox News contributor (Ben Carson opened his Fox career two years ago comparing Obama to Lenin) and a onetime Fox favorite who is fast becoming the network's archenemy: Donald Trump is the fallen angel in the Fox story, a traitor who's trying to tempt away Murdoch's lovingly nurtured stable of idiot viewers by denouncing their favorite "news" network as a false conservative God.
The fact that Trump is succeeding with this message on some level has to be a source of terrible stress to Murdoch. He must be petrified at the prospect of losing his hard-won viewership at the end of his life.
This, in turn, might explain last week. Otherwise: what was Rupert Murdoch doing tweeting?
More politics and policy below the fold.
Andrew Prokop making a good case for Bernie:
Overall, we won't know how or whether the debate moved the polls for some time. But over fifteen million people watched it — enough to make it easily the most-watched Democratic debate in history. And it's worth remembering that those millions of people might be impressed by very different things than DC insiders.
Peter Beinart:
The most revealing moment of last night’s Democratic presidential debate came near the end, when CNN moderator Anderson Cooper asked the candidates to “name the one thing—the one way that your administration would not be a third term of President Obama.” Bernie Sanders replied that, unlike Obama, he would “transform America ... through a political revolution.” Hillary Clinton answered that, unlike Obama, she’s a woman.
The responses reminded me of a distinction Chris Hayes makes in his excellent book, Twilight of the Elites, between “institutionalists,” who want to make existing institutions function better and “insurrectionists,” who want to tear them down and start again.
Jonathan Chait:
The Hillary Clinton Panic May Have Just Ended
Hillary Clinton’s campaign spent most of the last year descending inexorably into depression and even panic. But the first Democratic presidential debate may have finally turned the tide, or at least stopped her fall. Clinton demonstrated that she was, by far, the best presidential candidate onstage. Indeed, she may have been the only person onstage actually running for president. Lincoln Chafee touted his lack of scandals as an oblique contrast to the front-runner. Martin O’Malley tried to play up his more left-wing position on the Glass-Steagall financial regulations. But none of them waged the kind of frontal assault that would be required to dislodge a front-runner who commands Clinton’s breadth of institutional support. Indeed, in what may be the most important moment of the debate, Bernie Sanders declared, to her insufficiently suppressed delight, “The American people are sick and tired of hearing about your damn emails.”
A second, and related, source of Clinton’s triumph is that she alone displayed the performative talent necessary to win a major party nomination. As a sheer communicator, she may ever-so-slightly outclass a Scott Walker, but she pales in comparison to at least a half-dozen Republicans: Figures like Donald Trump, Marco Rubio, Carly Fiorina, Rand Paul, Chris Christie, Mike Huckabee, perhaps even Jeb Bush, can put together more memorable sound bites. But whereas Walker’s performance came off as so pathetic that he had to abandon his campaign in disgrace, Clinton easily lapped the field. None of her opponents can plausibly imitate the public’s conception of a presidential nominee. Lincoln Chafee looked like he wandered into the building after his yacht had been lost at sea for weeks. Jim Webb snarled angrily about obscure obsessions. Martin O’Malley seemed to crave consideration as her vice-presidential nominee. Bernie Sanders is running for co-op president.
James Fallows:
Why They're Running: Lessons From the Democratic Debate
A reader (who also happens to run a tech company) has an assessment of the debate that I find more useful than a lot of what’s coming from the political pros. Jeopardy-style, he formulates his observations in the form of a question:
Why is Chafee running? Or, more accurately, for what is he running?
My understanding is:
Hillary’s running for President.
Sanders is running to make an argument, to pull the Democrats away from becoming the Grand Old (but Sane!) Party. I think he’s also very eager to make the point that the Democrats should use their tech and communications advantage pervasively, not simply for fundraising and GOTV, and that’s a message he can deliver by running for president without winning anything.
Biden is “running” as Hillary’s VP pro tem through November 2016; if something happened to Hillary or if she had decided that she just couldn’t face two years of this, Biden would be there.
O’Malley is running for a cabinet position, or a job.
Webb is running to be one of the founders of a new center-right party that could grow out of the ashes of the Republican party. He’s running to be John C. Fremont. See also Jon Huntsman.
But Chafee? He was adorable last night, aside from his vote to repeal Glass-Steagall, a question he fumbled so terribly you’ve got to wonder if that was intentional. But what does he want that being a candidate could help him get?
The following are the poli sci profs I enjoy reading. Their inclusion is no coincidence as I feature them often (7 of them today!).
Mischiefs of Faction ( Richard M. Skinner and 5 others):
Hillary Clinton performed at an extremely high level throughout, and I doubt there were many Democrats anywhere who disagreed with anything she said. She faced sky-high expectations, and she met them. Most of the time she was running against the GOP rather than the other candidates — a good strategy for a frontrunner — but she was willing to challenge Bernie Sanders at time. She debated aggressively and assertively, when she could have played it safe. (I don’t see any opening for a Joe Biden candidacy after tonight, but I’ve never thought he has much of a rationale for running). She never missed an opportunity to point to her potential to be the first woman president, and (mostly) stayed loyal to President Obama — two points that can only help her with Democratic voters.
Sanders got the chance to make his pitch to a national audience, but those voters also got to learn about his record on gun control, which belies his claim of being a progressive purist on every issue. While he was in his element on economics, railing against "millionaires and billionaires," he seemed painfully uncomfortable discussing foreign policy. His constant shouting in an anachronistic Brooklyn accent certainly provided a contrast to Hillary’s smooth, confident, ready-for-the-Oval-Office demeanor. If you liked Sanders, you probably liked what you saw. Otherwise, I don’t know how many voters want to hear an extended lecture on the virtues of democratic socialism.
The other three candidates mostly failed to exploit the opportunity they had been given. Martin O’Malley was fine but unmemorable. Jim Webb and Lincoln Chafee seemed out of place onstage. Is Webb the first presidential contender since Andrew Jackson to boast of personally killing a man?
Sanders seemed like the ranty-but-entertaining sociology professor from freshman year. O’Malley acted like a future HUD Secretary. Webb seemed like a sour old Marine obsessed with personal slights and the Red Chinese threat. Chafee acted like a character in Monty Python’s "Upper-Class Twit of the Year" contest. Clinton behaved like the next president of the United States.
Matthew Dickinson:
At this point, less than 24 hours since the debate’s conclusion, there seem to be two sets of judgments circulating within the punditocracy. According to one group, who I label the “traditionalists”, there was a clear winner last night, and it was Hillary Clinton. Based on the traditional measurements – impressions of debating skills, point scoring, lack of gaffes, and the candidate’s stage presence, among other factors – Clinton removed any doubts about her front-runner status. As one pundit put it, “Republican and Democratic strategists found common ground on one point on Tuesday night: Clinton was the runaway winner.” It was, according to another, “the best day of Mrs. Clinton’s campaign.” From this perspective, Clinton was poised, knowledgeable, made very few mistakes and generally commanded the stage.
From a second perspective, however, Sanders supporters have reason to claim their candidate won. A variety of social media metrics – increase in twitter supporters, google searches, hash tag mentions – Sanders clearly sparked the most interest last night. His angry outburst telling the media that “the American people are sick of hearing about [Hillary’s] damn emails” instantly prompted a trending #Damnemails hashtag and was likely the most tweeted comment of the debate (never mind that Hillary benefitted from Bernie’s tirade).
How do we choose between these two perspectives?
USA Today:
Former GOP hopeful Scott Walker: I’m not going to whine, but…