Democratic debate

5 takeaways from the Democratic debate

The two rivals proved one thing: The thin bond of comity that united them against Trump and Cruz is as gone as the Dodgers in ’57.

By Glenn Thrush

More than five decades ago, a tousled-hair 18-year-old named Bernie Sanders climbed out of the box of his parochial Brooklyn boyhood to make his way in the wider world. On Thursday night, an older, grayer and angrier Sanders tried to break the constraints of 2016 electoral math – in hopes that momentum and debate-stage moxie would overcome Hillary Clinton’s nearly insurmountable lead in delegates.

The first in-the-running Brooklyn-born candidate — and first Brooklyn Jew — to seriously contend for a major party nomination went on the attack during a shouty, pouty, nasty and ninth Democratic debate at the Navy Yard hard in the East River. And while he had his party’s frontrunner on the defensive during a two-hour slap fight, he didn’t quite have her on the ropes.

The two Democrats (okay one Democrat and one democratic socialist who is holding his nose and putting on the uniform out of electoral convenience) proved one thing: The thin bond of comity that united them against Donald Trump and Ted Cruz is as gone as the Dodgers in ’57. Sanders – 200-plus pledged delegates in the hole, with virtually zero chance of catching Hillary Clinton in the delegate or superdelegate hunt – threw haymakers at the frontrunner from the very first moments of the debate. And he seethed with what seemed to be utterly authentic contempt for a candidate he insinuated repeatedly was a pandering, insufficiently audacious establishment hack with awful judgment.

For her part, Clinton wore oversized pearls and a perpetual enough-already expression as she parried his attacks and continually drove home the point that he was a do-nothing Congressman feeding his youthful supporters empty, bumper-sticker slogans. Every Clinton answer and facial expression seemed to reinforce her assertion that the time for fighting was coming to an end and that Sanders was fostering division in the face of the enemy. Here are five takeaways.

1. Bernie’s still in the white. Sanders is attracting massive online cash, huge enthusiasm and big rallies (including a Thursday pre-debate event that drew tens of thousands to the Village). The problem, in general, is that most of these folks are as white as Manhattan’s population below 125th Street – and for all his efforts to break out of his racial and demographic cage, Sanders probably did himself more harm than good with the city’s still decidedly pro-Clinton African-American base.

This is a bigger point than New York: Insofar as he has any path to the nomination (and he really doesn’t) Sanders needs to prove that he can compete with Clinton for black and Hispanic voters nationwide; this he hasn’t done.

At issue was a crack he made earlier this week – and repeated with incomprehensible relish Thursday – that Clinton had only amassed her commanding lead in “Deep South states.” Firstly, the argument is false on its face – and the former New York senator (who still leads by double digits here) ticked off the names of the many northern and western primaries she’s already won: Illinois, Missouri, North Carolina, Massachusetts, Ohio, Texas.

The bigger problem, however, is that Clinton swept the Southern tier of states (starting with an incredible 48-point win in South Carolina) on the strength of black support and Sanders seemed dismissive of a group highly attuned to any inkling of disrespect from white politicians. All the Spike Lee campaign ads in the world couldn’t compensate for this, arguably the stupidest thing Sanders has said during an otherwise smart 2016: “Secretary Clinton cleaned our clock in the Deep South, no question about it. We got murdered there. That is the most conservative part of this great country. That's the fact,” Sanders said. “But you know what, we're out of the Deep South now.”

Clinton surrogate Rep. Greg Meeks (who represents the Deep South of New York City – The Rockaways) was livid – and not in a ginned-up spin room way. “Is Bernie saying black votes don’t count?” Meeks told me. “This is a guy who can’t seem to get anybody but white voters to go for him – and he’s demeaning the primaries where black voters participated in big numbers. What’s he really saying here?”

2. Hillary: Too presidential by half. Once upon a time, in an election far, far away (the 2000 Senate campaign against boyish Republican Rick Lazio), Clinton was able to jujitsu her opponent’s excessive aggressiveness in her favor. Her famous flinch on the Buffalo debate stage as Lazio crossed into her personal space helped seal the deal in her adopted state that year – but 2016 is a much more Brooklyn election, and voters are more tolerant of a less decorous approach by a testy, male Clinton opponent these days.

It wasn’t that Clinton didn’t give as good as she got with Sanders: It’s that she seemed to pull her punches just a little bit during a debate when he swung away without constraint. Ultimately voters might turn on Angry Bern – but the frontrunner’s determination to remain somewhat presidential meant her comebacks were delivered at 7 when Sanders were blasted at 11.

Her main point about Sanders is an effective one, and her surrogates made it with gusto after the debate – Sanders has been giving sky-pie solutions as a gadfly for decades while she has been grappling with real solutions as a pragmatic, powerful worker bee.

Her signature line of the night was good, and reasonable, and forgettable. "Describing the problem is a lot easier than trying to solve it," she said over and over.

3. Bernie loses his cool – but scores on the minimum wage. As I have written in the space repeatedly over the previous eight debates, the shaggy, seemingly disheveled independent senator from Vermont is actually the steeliest and best prepared debater in all of 2016-dom, this side of Ted Cruz. On Thursday, Sanders was faced with a make-or-break moment in an election he relatively recently came to believe he could win. Gone – in the name of landing the big punch – was the trademark discipline that allowed him to modulate effectively from Beratin’ Bernie to Sweet Uncle Sanders in previous showdowns. His stage whispers were amped to 11, and he spent much of the night shouting himself crimson and wagging his right finger like an A-student trying to show the teacher that the laggard on his right was cheating on a test.

Still, he had his moments – largely due to Clinton’s inexplicable failure to concoct pithy answers in areas of obvious vulnerability. The biggest: her refusal, on highly nuanced grounds, to fully support a $15-an-hour national minimum wage. On one level, her refusal to opt for a one-size-fits all policy is the grown-up thing to do – she backs $15 in cities and states with high costs-of-living but would accept a lower, $12-an-hour wage in areas that have more modest standards of living, to keep marginal employers solvent.

Doesn’t matter. Sanders pounded away and Clinton cracked. Halfway through a grilling on the topic by CNN’s panel, she shifted her position and said she’d “sign” a $15-an-hour bill if Congress put one on her desk. Sanders pounced like a pigeon on an unattended bagel. “To suddenly announce now you’re for 15, I don’t think is quite accurate,” Sanders said. “I think the secretary has confused a lot of people.”

4. They really don’t like each other. There is a great, iconic image (conjured simultaneously by yours truly and my former POLITICO partner Maggie Haberman in the filing center Thursday night) of Ed Koch and Mario Cuomo sitting together prior to one of the final debates of a bitter, brutal and epic 1977 New York City mayoral race. It is a tableau of blown-up bonhomie: Koch (the eventual winner and buoyant four-term mayor) and Cuomo (the cerebral and rhetorically brilliant governor-to-be) are so sick of each other’s presence, so bored and drained by the schmuck sitting next to them – they can’t even be bothered to make eye contact.

It hasn’t gotten that bad between Bernie and Hillary, but it’s getting there. And that could have genuine implications for the necessary coming-together once the primaries are over. And there, in the Navy Yard, was Mario’s son and the state’s combative current governor, Andrew, to reassure reporters unconvincingly of the coming comity. “Nobody,” he said, “has gone over the line.”

5. Sanders is sort of a Democrat. Sure, he’s said he’d support Clinton if she’s the eventual nominee – sure, he’s started to talk about giving a boost to down-ballot Democrats he digs (Russ Feingold, Zephyr Teachout, etc.) – but Bernie Sanders isn’t quite ready to go the Full Roosevelt.

Last month, Clinton – speaking on my “Off Message” podcast – told me that she doubted whether the longtime independent who registered as a Democrat last year for the first time was really, truly a member of her party. When pressed on that issue Thursday night, Sanders Brooklyn dodged -- breezing past the point but never giving a full-throated I’m-a-Democrat declaration.

"Why would I be running for the Democratic nomination for the president of the United States if I'm not a Democrat?"

He’s answered that question in the past. By saying he only registered as Dem to placate the media.