Already on it.

No surprise that Hillary is against breaking up the big banks, I just didn't expect that she would be honest about it.

I'm just glad to see actual sensible, rational (if passionate) debate that doesn't get fettered down by shitting on other politicians. There's not hate or anger, like with the Republicans.

The Republicans jump on top of each other and attack each other. They get angry and throw insults at each other. Trump even starts attacking the moderators (the ones who are ostensibly supporting his general view no less).

Here, there's none of that. Aside from Chafee giving a relatively decent reluctance to Hillary's email, the candidates basically said "Why is this an issue here? This isn't what the issue's to the country are!"

Poor Chafee's gettin rekt by some of these questions.

Hillary got rekt.

That is all.

Yeah, I was wondering how a Republican managed to sneak into the debate, at least, from what little he said that wasn't about 'Nam or his lack of airtime.

Hillary and Bernie both did well, though Bernie showed his weakness on guns and foreign policy and Hillary on wall street. ('cut it out,' for real gurl?) Though they're playing up Bernie's email comment as a defense of Hillary, I see it as more of a condemnation of the Republicans and the media circus around all of that.

Bernie did well shutting down questions of his legitimacy vis a vis socialism, but the optics of it in a general election with the republican smear machine still concern me.

O'Malley said some good things but nothing to really distinguish himself, and his history as mayor that he's relying on seems to hurt him as much as it helps. His closing statement was nice tho.

Chafee was a lost puppy. I mean come on, it was my first vote in the senate, my dad just died, I didn't have a good breakfast and my stomach hurt, so I just voted with the majority, cut me some slack here. At least I've never had a controversy... because no one knows who I am.

Glad we finally got a decent debate to watch in this election after the last couple of shit shows tho.

All in all, Hillary was the clear winner in my opinion: it's not surprising. After all, she has the best debating skills by far, having honed her skills during the 2008 election cycle, on the Senate, and in the State Department. She knows how to be sharp and on point, though several of her points were misleading (though true). She basically had a lot of red meat for the base, and she knew it, and she threw it out.

Bernie was the only real alternative, and his lack of debating experience showed (as I believed it would). It's not that his message is inferior to Hillary, but that this is the instance where his gruff approach will work against him, and where he saw a distinct shortcoming of his agenda by failing to provide a good response on foreign policy. I think he was jumped on guns, but I think that he knew what he was talking about, but that he was simply outmaneuvered in rhetoric by Hillary. He did score a lot of points for not dropping his stance on being a candidate who won't jump onto personal attacks and easy wounds (a theme I thought was quite prevalent last night for the Democrats), though in the long run, I wonder how well that will serve him. Hillary isn't going to be as generous or kind once the real primaries start, and if he becomes the Democratic nominee (against the odds), the Republicans will not hesitate to attack him, his character, or anything he wants. Granted, I don't think they're going to be as effective as Hillary. As I've said, I believe that whoever wins the Democratic nomination is the person who will get the White House. Bernie will have to shore up his position on gun control for certain, and he'll definitely have to address foreign policy a lot better. However, he has the most vocal, and most powerful voice when it comes to financial and economic reform, and he stuck to it there, winning many points. That said, he needs to better address his stance as a Socialist. Not that he should distance himself from it (not at all), but he needs to realize that that is what is going to be the ultimate target on his back during the election cycle, and the Clinton machine and the Republicans will be shouting everything in their power to point out. If Carson got the nomination for example, I can see Carson calling him a Nazi (which would actually be brilliant for Bernie, if he retorted that he was descended from European Jews and was nothing like Hitler, and that the comparison was horrifically insulting. It would be the best chance for Carson to insert his foot into his mouth). But point is, Bernie being a socialist is going to work against him. He's going to need a good response and defense for that: as it is, any Republican can just say 'socialism' and people will foam at the mouth. They don't know what it means. Bernie does. Many democrats (and several Republicans) do as well. But most people don't really understand that. And Bernie hasn't been doing a great job communicating that. And the Republicans are going to attack that with as much force as possible.

O'Malley is a good candidate, I believe, but there's nothing to him that distinguishes him from anybody else. Which is his biggest shortcoming. I support him (I'd even say that if he had any more than 10%, I'd support him over Bernie), but he just doesn't have the political clout or capital that Hillary has, or the zeal, popularity, and sincerity of Bernie. I felt like he was running for Vice President more than anything else.

Jim Webb was arguably the closet Republican on the stage (albeit leaps and bounds more sensible and rational than any of the goons running for the GOP nomination: he is representative of what the Republican party should be about in our day and age. And I'm not, never have been, and likely never will be a Republican.) He did well on areas of foreign policy (though he would have done better if he didn't use what little time he got to grump about what little time he was getting.) I agree with him on the short-term over energy policy. He's absolutely right about nuclear power, and that is a valid solution to moving away from coal. His biggest failing I think was talking about his war experience in the way that civilians, especially liberals, will find off-putting. He struggled to find a place with the other candidates, and I think that that was a shortcoming where the focus was on domestic policies and economics, not on foreign policy, his forte.

Lincoln Chafee... where to begin? He was just plain awful. He shot himself in the foot, and stuck said foot into his mouth over Hillary. The man has some points, but he has no ability to communicate at all in a decent manner. I feel like the only thing he has won so far is the contest that let him be on stage with the other candidates.

Personally Jim "I KILLED A MAN" Webb was easily the most entertaining if sad and out-of-place element of the debate.

I know virtually every media outlet is cunniling Hillary despite the polls which admittedly have little value and the general reaction I've perceived which also admittedly has little value, and my own opinion is biased since I prefer Bernie, though I don't hate Hillary and would take her in a second over any of the clowns in the other party. But really, if we're talking pure rhetoric, if Hillary won, I don't think it was by nearly the margin that it is being portrayed. She does show more "experience" debating but it's not like Bernie was a wall flower or really bumbling at any moment. Most importantly for him, despite being a scary socialist bogeyman, he didn't appear as a head-in-the-clouds kook like Kucinich talking about being abducted by aliens and shit, or with some kind of severe personality defects like Weiner. He presented himself as a legitimate opponent to Clinton.

On the guns issue, most of the candidates and Hillary in particular took the opportunity to tear him down, and rhetorically that was his loss in that debate and to a primary audience. But policy wise, to that same audience, I really don't believe any of the candidates will get anything done on guns in the way they speak. Not without a huge change in politics that goes well beyond democrats holding onto the white house. And to a larger audience, Bernie's stance might actually be more appealing, sadly.

On the other issues in general, I'm wary of Hillary backing up anything progressive she says now with her policies, if she's anything like her moderate Arkansas democrat husband. She's practically openly playing footsies with wall street already, so on that issue it's kind of a joke. But at least rhetorically, for now she has been forced to go on the record with some pretty good, liberal policy positions which may be Sanders' influence.

She legitimately does show more experience on the foreign policy issue for obvious reasons, though I'm more inclined toward Sanders' presumably more doveish position.

I don't know about you guys, but foreign policy is the least important thing to me in this debate. US foreign policy has had some huge clusterfucks, and much of it is due to US foreign policy decisions, but also being tied down to that region in the world. Let Russia become the new Satan to the Islamofascists of the region.

I gotta say that I felt sorry for Lincoln Chafee. He really didn't do well at all. Didn't he poll at 0% or something like that a few months ago? It was funny when he tried to take a page out of the Republican playbook and criticize Hillary about her e-mail/, and when Anderson Cooper asked Hillary if she wanted to respond to that, she curtly said, "No."

I'm thinking that everyone on the debate stage really felt the Bern.