Debate Winners & Losers: Bernie's answer on race "massive gaffe"
Per Chris Cillizza, Washington Post:
Winners
* Hillary Clinton: The former secretary of state came ready to fight on Sunday night. She kept her hit on Sanders's opposition to the automobile-industry bailout well hidden in the run-up to the debate to get maximum impact when she dropped it on his head. Ditto her attack on him being the lone Democratic-voting senator to vote against the Export-Import Bank. She is still not great when it comes to answering questions she doesn't want to answer. Her I'll-release-my-Wall-Street-speeches-when-everyone-else-does answer to a question about her high-paid speaking gigs was not very good. And she remains overly cautious as a candidate; when pressed on whether people at the Environmental Protection Agency should lose their jobs because of what happened in Flint, Clinton was unwilling to say they should -- a swing and a miss at a hanging curveball. Still, overall, this was a very solid showing by Clinton. On guns, on failing schools and on Flint, she was confident and effective.
Losers
* Bernie Sanders: The senator from Vermont had effectively walked a fine line in the previous six debates when it came to attacking Clinton without coming across as bullying or condescending. He tripped and fell while trying to execute that delicate dance on Sunday night. Sanders's "excuse me, I'm talking" rebuttal to Clinton hinted at the fact that he was losing his temper with her. His "Can I finish, please?" retort ensured that his tone and his approach to someone trying to become the first female presidential nominee in either party would be THE story of the night.
Put aside the fact that Sanders misstepped on tone, he also did nothing to change the underlying dynamics of the race. If you think Wall Street is the problem for much of what ails the country, you were for Sanders before this debate and certainly for him after it, too. But, as we know from the first 40 percent or so of states that have voted, there aren't enough of those people to make him the nominee. Sanders didn't knock Clinton off her game in any meaningful way, making the debate a loss for him. (Sidebar: His answer about white people not knowing what it is like to live in a ghetto or be poor would have been a massive gaffe if he was not as far behind in the delegate chase as he is.)
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-fix/wp/2016/03/06/winners-and-losers-from-the-7th-democratic-presidential-debate/
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