This was the first debate that was done as an 1 on 1 debate. Martin O'Malley did drop from the race during the Iowa caucus due to the low result there. This means the debate was one like nothing we have seen yet from this campaign year. Both Bernie and Hillary knew they wanted to make a statement with this debate. The result was quite a heated and intense debate for the first hour of it. The second hour did result into some more fluff topics and in my opinion issues that were not important and wasted the time of the audience. Examples, Hillary's "email scandal" and the idea Bernie "mislead the public" with an ad about an endorsement. Hillary's email issue has the possibility of being a real issue, but to this point it is a non issue because we are not aware that anything unlawful took place. On the Bernie issue, it seems the whole question was to attack him about an ad that had a file name of "endorsement" when sent to the TV company, about statements from a newspaper. NEVER in the ad did they mention that the newspaper gave an "official endorsement." Again nothing worth mentioning.
The real take away from this debate for me was that Hillary came out swinging. She obviously feels that she needs to be much stronger and attack, or in some instances just take a strong verbiage to defend herself. There was some standard misleading information from her regarding Bernie's healthcare idea. She has been making statements for weeks that she states Bernie will "eliminate the Affordable Car Act to do his healthcare idea." She makes this statement time and again with clear goals of convincing the American people that when he gets to office he would repeal "ObamaCare" and then try to get something passed. This is a LIE. Bernie will keep ObamaCare until he could get a better healthcare system passed. She is misleading the people to be scared of him. She went on the defensive about not being a progressive by naming other Democrats who would not be progressive by Bernie's standards. She wanted Bernie to back track, or attack some of the most well known democrats from history. Luckily he did respond by saying the whole idea of her not be progressive was by her own comments from last year when she made the statement "I am a moderate." Bernie just made a comment that you cannot be a moderate and a progressive at the same time. With these there is no doubt to the less informed voter she seemed strong. She had a lot of fire we have not seen from her to this point. It was a very good performance in the sense she knows the way she went will resonate well with the uninformed person.
Bernie did get fired up for the first hour by both the topics being things he is passionate about, and to fend off Hillary. He was strong on his most profound issues, such as Campaign Finance Reform and how to deal with Wall-street. He did falter in foreign affairs once again. I will admit that he has been lackluster in these topics. He does seem to be less confident and that does come across in his answers. Hillary did once again came hard and strong showing her experience. There is no doubt a difference in that department. She has years working in the middle east that Bernie does not have, and cannot make up. This will be an area that will go in Hillary's favor if Bernie does not start to decide to attack that the current way things are done are not working. He did counter Hillary's attack about healthcare to help set the record straight, but it did not seem to be as aggressive as I would have liked. I also believe he did not make a good move by not just laying out that Yes, people who have taken money from institutions will feel more obligated to do things that will viewed positively from that donor. Look at it from a view of history. Would corporations who have 1 goal, to make profits, still be giving Millions of dollars to campaigns if they didn't know it worked???
I will make this disclaimer, I am not Anti-Hillary. I believe that if she wins the nomination and became President then the next 4 years would be very respectable. I will say though, I WANT A REVOLUTION!!! I don't want status quo. I WANT CHANGE!!!
In the end the debate was filled with real discussion and exchanging of ideas. Overall I was very impressed by the debate. If there was one thing I KNOW I learned, it was that either Hillary or Bernie will walk over any Republican in a debate. The standard GOP response of, "but I am awesome" will not work in a real debate. There was no clear winner in my opinion from this debate. There was one moment of a Boo to Hillary when she made a statement that Bernie has been slandering her, the people saw right through that. So that might sway to her losing, but if I try to leave my bias aside, this debate looks like it was just like Iowa, a Tie.
Bernie did get fired up for the first hour by both the topics being things he is passionate about, and to fend off Hillary. He was strong on his most profound issues, such as Campaign Finance Reform and how to deal with Wall-street. He did falter in foreign affairs once again. I will admit that he has been lackluster in these topics. He does seem to be less confident and that does come across in his answers. Hillary did once again came hard and strong showing her experience. There is no doubt a difference in that department. She has years working in the middle east that Bernie does not have, and cannot make up. This will be an area that will go in Hillary's favor if Bernie does not start to decide to attack that the current way things are done are not working. He did counter Hillary's attack about healthcare to help set the record straight, but it did not seem to be as aggressive as I would have liked. I also believe he did not make a good move by not just laying out that Yes, people who have taken money from institutions will feel more obligated to do things that will viewed positively from that donor. Look at it from a view of history. Would corporations who have 1 goal, to make profits, still be giving Millions of dollars to campaigns if they didn't know it worked???
I will make this disclaimer, I am not Anti-Hillary. I believe that if she wins the nomination and became President then the next 4 years would be very respectable. I will say though, I WANT A REVOLUTION!!! I don't want status quo. I WANT CHANGE!!!
In the end the debate was filled with real discussion and exchanging of ideas. Overall I was very impressed by the debate. If there was one thing I KNOW I learned, it was that either Hillary or Bernie will walk over any Republican in a debate. The standard GOP response of, "but I am awesome" will not work in a real debate. There was no clear winner in my opinion from this debate. There was one moment of a Boo to Hillary when she made a statement that Bernie has been slandering her, the people saw right through that. So that might sway to her losing, but if I try to leave my bias aside, this debate looks like it was just like Iowa, a Tie.