MotherJone: Here's What Bernie Sanders Is Like as a Debater
After four decades in politics, Sanders is as veteran a debater as they come—but is he any good at it? Sanders and Clinton bring different kinds of experience to the stage. Clinton has a formidable reputation. She sparred repeatedly with Barack Obama during the 2008 Democratic primary and took on an aggressive Republican challenger in her 2000 New York Senate race. Sanders has been at it for much longer, but most of his debating experience has come in noncompetitive elections, often against fringe figures. He never broke single digits during four Liberty Union campaigns for statewide office in the 1970s. And after his first successful House race—unseating GOP Rep. Peter Smith in 1990—he hasn't been seriously challenged since.
Sanders has never put a premium on aesthetics, but he does have a style. It's the same one he displays in speeches. He speaks with both arms pressed down on front of the podium like flying buttresses, which reduces his height by a few inches and gives him a bit of a detached hunch. He keeps much the same posture when he's listening. He gesticulates constantly with his right hand, palms down, like he is dribbling a basketball, or petting a series of progressively larger dogs. When he's sitting, Sanders taps his feet impatiently; sometimes he sways.
The rhetoric is the same as in his speeches, too. "He uses outrages about the system that exists and he uses superlatives," says Greg Guma, a Burlington writer, whose book, The People's Republic, chronicled Sanders' rise. "We used to call him 'Total' among friends and intimates because 'totally' was one of his big words. And 'outrageous' and 'immoral.' He debates the way he answers questions to some extent."
If Sanders has an evident weakness as a debater, it's his temper. He doesn't like to be interrupted (who does?) and it has gotten him in trouble in the past. Last summer, the Republican opposition-research firm America Rising posted a video to its YouTube page of Sanders at a town hall in Vermont, erupting at an argumentative constituent. "Excuse me, shut up!" Sanders retorted. "You don't have the microphone."
His temper flared again last spring when he was interrupted by a group of Black Lives Matter protesters at the Netroots Nation Conference in Phoenix. As demonstrators chanted "Say her name"—referring to Sandra Bland, an African American woman who died in a Texas jail cell—Sanders tried to go on with his speech. "Shall I continue or leave? It's okay with me," he said. "If you don't want me to be here, that's okay. I don't want to out-scream people."
... he has never faced an opponent as formidable as the former secretary of state, who shared the stage 26 times with then-Sen. Obama during the 2008 primary and scored her share of body blows.... Sanders' recent responses to Clinton's belated opposition to the Keystone XL pipeline and the Trans-Pacific Partnership trade deal offers a glimpse of this approach. He'll thank his opponent for taking a stand—and then point out that he arrived there ages ago. The approach hasn't failed him yet. Then again, he's never done anything quite like this before.
http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2015/10/bernie-sanders-democractic-debate-wynn
= new reply since forum marked as read
thank you so much!
of Bernie's temper...
I watched the video to see this "visibly pissed" reaction and missed it on first viewing. It was so brief and looked more like he was trying to keep himself on track with the voiceover coming from the side.
Jones, you. 
I would think there might be more of issue of the moderator than with the participants mannerisms. It's funny and it also seems strange to me. When the republicans go on the debate it's all about how they don't ask any hardball questions. Then when Democratic debates goes on it becomes all about the style.
Who exactly is orchestrating all of this stuff anyway?
