Last week’s Democratic debate hosted in Las Vegas was an entertaining mixture of political theater, quips between the candidates, and most importantly, proof that a debate without the personal combat exchanges seen in the Republican debates is a much smarter debate. The civility of the discourse allowed the moderators to lean into the candidates about their true stances on tense issues such as climate change, fiscal inequality, and Russia’s recent intervention in Syria. The main take-aways? Sanders is surprisingly conservative when it comes to gun control. Clinton is more pro-Wall Street than you might think. And the number one long-shot candidate, former Virginia senator Jim Webb, had one of the more insightful comments of the night when he stated that China and cyber-security promises to be one of the greatest national security threats to America in the future.
Bernie Sanders has been coming under scrutiny for his stance on gun control. He represents Vermont as an independent senator, a state that has some of the most relaxed gun control laws in the country. Sanders’ voting record on gun control legislation shifts. For example, in 1993, when in the House of Representatives, he voted against the Brady Bill, which mandated federal background checks in gun purchases. Additionally, he recently voted for a law that protects gun manufacturers from bearing liability over deaths from gun violence. When posed a question regarding his stance on gun control, Sanders seemed to skirt the issue, instead saying that mass shootings should not be addressed by gun control but by improved mental health care, a stance that all of the Republican candidates have been taking.
Former Secretary of Defense Hillary Clinton displayed a comeback performance in the debate last night given her recent popularity drops in the polls. However, compared to Sanders’ outcry for a radical redistribution of wealth, Clinton’s stance on corruption in Wall Street and the need to rein in the power of big banks seemed to fall short. While Clinton called for tighter regulation, including increased enforcement of Dodd-Frank Act, she does not back the breaking up of large banks and did not promise to raise the minimum wage up to Sanders’ proposal of $15 an hour. Given that Clinton has taken notably large speaking fees from major Wall Street firms, including $600,000 from Goldman Sachs, voters should be wary to unquestioningly accept the “champion of the middle class” platform she has been running on.
Perhaps the most surprising insight of the evening was when CNN’s Anderson Cooper asked each of the candidates about what they perceived the biggest threat to American national security to be. Virginia senator Jim Webb, who made many comments throughout the evening about how little face-time he was receiving, was the only candidate to mention the threat posed in relations with China and cyber-security. In fact, Webb was the only presidential candidate who mentioned cyber-espionage at all. Given that hackers recently stole copies of 21.5 million U.S. government personnel records, the lack of attention paid to the subject is remarkable. While it was easy to forget about the bewildered Vietnam Vet who spent most of the debate fighting for attention, his comment about the growing threat China, and cyber-security, poses to the homeland cannot be ignored.
