The Commentariat -- October 14, 2015
Internal links removed.
Michael Barbaro & Amy Chozick of the New York Times: "Hillary Rodham Clinton, seeking to halt the momentum of her insurgent challenger, Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont, aggressively questioned his values, positions and voting history in the first Democratic presidential debate on Tuesday night, turning a showdown that had been expected to scrutinize her character into a forceful critique of his record." ...
Dan Balz & Anne Gearan of the Washington Post: "Hillary Rodham Clinton and Bernie Sanders clashed ... Tuesday night over national security, the economy, big banks and gun-control policy in a spirited but largely civil debate that underscored competing approaches to helping the middle class and leading the country." ...
... The Washington Post has a transcript of the debate here. ...
... The Guardian's summary (at 5:15 am) is helpful. ...
... New York "Times reporters will provide instant analysis and fact-checking during the debate. Coverage begins at 8:30 p.m. Follow along on your phone or computer at nytimes.com, facebook.com/nytpolitics and @NYTPolitics. Follow along during the day." (Also linked yesterday.) ...
Glenn Kessler & Michelle Lee of the Washington Post fact-check the candidates. Mostly quibbles about statistics, but a few substantive phony claims. ...
(... CW: I am somewhat exercised about Clinton's blithe claim that Ed Snowden could have just gone the whistleblower route. Besides the legal issue Kessler covered here, I don't see what good it would have done for Snowden to alert Congress or an inspector general. A number of members of Congress already knew a good part of what Snowden leaked, but they never shared with the public the information Snowden revealed, information I think the public had a right to know & the government had an obligation to fix. Nor did they accomplish reforms to rein in the NSA. No, I'm no fan of Snowden's; I think he went overboard & was grossly incautious. But a large portion of what news media have published was surely in the public interest.)
... Dana Milbank writes what is probably the Villagers' collective assessment of the debate performances: "Hillary Clinton was a head shorter than her rivals when they lined up on stage.... But after that moment, she towered over them. Former Maryland governor Martin O'Malley was preachy and self-righteous. Former Virginia senator Jim Webb kept complaining that he wasn't getting enough time to talk. Former Rhode Island governor Lincoln Chafee was more quirky spectator than participant. And Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont shouted as if he were unaware that he had a microphone." What say you? ...
... Jonathan Chait: "Clinton demonstrated that she was, by far, the best presidential candidate on stage.... She is not great at politics, as even many of her supporters concede. (Earlier today, Glenn Thrush and Annie Karni reported, 'Nearly every one of 50 advisers, donors, Democratic operatives and friends we interviewed for this story thought Clinton was a mediocre candidate who would make a good president....') But she is not as awful at it as she has appeared for most of 2015. After the debate, she again resembles what she appeared to be at the campaign's outset: the all-but-certain Democratic nominee." ...
... Rebecca Traister of New York: "[Sanders] gave [Clinton] the night's biggest Valentine, with his declaration that 'The American people are sick and tired of hearing about your damn emails,' but she responded in kind, with genuine gratitude and a warm smile. The truth is, Sanders has offered Clinton -- and Democrats -- a million gifts so far this season. Among the most valid fears was that Hillary's candidacy would go unchallenged, would proceed as a coronation." ...
... John Cassidy of the New Yorker: "Clinton didn't have the passion of Sanders or the poetry of O'Malley's sign-off, but she had something else: the self-confidence and killer instinct of a politician who has been down this route before." ...
... D. D. Guttenplan of the Nation: "... over the course of the night [Sanders'] answers ... revealed the fundamental difference between his approach and Clinton's. Although she described herself as 'a progressive,' Clinton typifies all that is good -- and bad -- about Democratic liberalism. She wants to tinker, and tweak, and make the system fairer. Sanders wants to tear it down, and to do that he really will need a movement, not just a mobilization." ...
... Eric Holthaus points out that Hillary Clinton is not going to be the "Environment President." ...
... Gabriel Sherman of New York: "Unfortunately for [Vice President] Biden, Hillary Clinton's adult performance just made it a lot harder for him to take a seat at the table.... And, if she aces next week's Benghazi hearing on Capitol Hill -- and many Democrats I spoke to expect she will -- then she would have effectively eliminated any remaining arguments for a Biden run. Unless, of course, the ongoing FBI investigation into the security of her email server ends in a bombshell that instantly blows open the door. But for now, Biden looks left out in the cold." ...
... Edward-Issac Dovere of Politico: "Now, Biden's orbit has put out word that he's going to take another week to make a decision -- right up against Clinton's appearance in front of the Benghazi Committee that once seemed like it could become an embarrassing inquisition, but that she's now already framing a tedious partisan fishing expedition." ...
... CW: It's probably worth noting that Clinton, et al., had no trouble dispatching Biden in 2008. He dropped out of the race January 3, after getting less than one percent of the Iowa caucus vote. I really can't see any big advantage Biden has over Clinton, other than "his name isn't Clinton." ...
... Seth Stevenson of Slate critiques Donald Trump's critique of the debate: "It's like Trump thinks the election is American Idol, and he's somehow both Kelly Clarkson and Simon Cowell at the same time." Humorous. And true: Trump does see the election as "American Idol." ...
Carrie Dann of NBC News: Donald Trump "will host NBC's 'Saturday Night Live' on November 7, the show announced Tuesday." ...
... CW: I can't be sure, but I'd say Shep Smith does not think this is a good idea:
Andy Borowitz: "The Democrats who participated in the first Democratic Presidential debate of the 2016 campaign garnered a scathing review from the retired neurosurgeon Ben Carson, who said that none of them offered a concrete plan to protect the Earth from an invasion of bloodthirsty alien dragons." ...
... CW: Actually, Andy, what Doc Sleepy might have said is that "none of them offered a concrete plan to forestall the End of Days." And, no, this is not satire. ...
... GOP Voters Opt for the Crazy. Nick Gass of Politico: "Ben Carson is drawing ever closer to Donald Trump among likely Republican primary voters, according to the results of the latest Fox News poll released Tuesday evening. The retired Johns Hopkins neurosurgeon took 23 percent to Trump's 24 percent, followed by 10 percent for Texas Sen. Ted Cruz, 9 percent for Florida Sen. Marco Rubio, 8 percent for former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush, 5 percent each for Carly Fiorina and former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee and 3 percent for Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul. Other candidates earned 1 percent or less, with 7 percent undecided."
** Ryan Lizza of the New Yorker on how the partisan Benghaaazi! committee walked away from an opportunity to highlight President Obama & Secretary Clinton's failure to plan for post-Qaddafi Libya in the same way President Bush had no plan for post-Saddam Iraq. ...
... CW: Here's what we know after decades of misadventures in the Middle East: (1) After deposing a dictator or quasi-dictator, Western micro-management of the "transition" doesn't work. (2) After deposing a dictator or quasi-dictator, leaving the locals to their own devices doesn't work.
David Crary of the AP: "Responding to a furor over undercover videos, Planned Parenthood said Tuesday that it would no longer accept payments to cover the costs of the programs that make fetal tissue available for research.... Planned Parenthood said the videos were deceptively edited and denied seeking any payments beyond legally permitted reimbursement of costs. The new policy -- forgoing even permissible reimbursement -- was outlined in a letter sent Tuesday by Planned Parenthood's president, Cecile Richards, to Dr. Francis S. Collins, the director of the National Institutes of Health." ...
... CW: This is pretty sad. I'm extremely sorry Planned Parenthood succumbed to Republican intimidation. The governmental body that authorized reimbursement is the very one that bludgeoned Planned Parenthood to forego it. Their costs of maintaining & transferring the tissue will mean less money to provide other reproductive services. ...
... Update: See Victoria D.'s comment below.
Mujib Mashal of the New York Times: In Afghanistan, ISIS is peeling off Taliban, often by paying bonuses to out-of-work young men. "In a series of quick strikes, the Islamic State fighters began driving out local Taliban units, and officials say the splinter group now has a clear foothold across several districts in eastern Nangarhar Province, in rugged terrain on the border with Pakistan that had long been mostly out of government control. The fighters may mostly be former Taliban, but they appear to have wholeheartedly taken up the calculated cruelty that the Islamic State has become known for, consolidating their hold with a brutality that has been shocking even by the standards of the Afghan insurgency." CW: Ceaseless war. From horrible to worse.
Annals of "Journalism," Ctd.
It isn't only Donald Trump who treats the presidential race like a season of "American Idol." Paul Krugman: "The commentariat seems to have turned on a dime. After trashing Hillary Clinton nonstop, they're all talking her up. And you can see why, given the revelations that (a) the whole Benghazi thing, including the email obsession, was a partisan witch hunt and (b) Clinton herself is smart, articulate, and has a good sense of humor. But the odd thing about these revelations is that they weren't at all revelatory... Anyway, it's quite sad that after all these years political coverage still treats the momentous issue of who will lead the world's most powerful nation like a high school popularity contest."
Dan Merica & Sunlen Serfaty of CNN demonstrate how to profile a candidate's spouse. Rule 1: Don't say anything about her. Rebecca Traister: "The profile is a decent length -- more than 900 words. Here's how many of those words are devoted to describing anything about Jane Sanders that is not related to how she met, reflects, works with, believes in, helps, or otherwise bolsters her husband: 25. I'm actually being generous here because I counted their mention that she was 'born in Brooklyn' even though that seems to have only been included because her birthplace was 'a few blocks from the man who would be her future husband.'" ...
... Here's a CNN segment where we learn Jane is Bernie's "secret weapon." ...
... CW: Best argument I can think of for Hillary for President. The press has already taken a bit of interest in her spouse. Maybe because he isn't a wife. Please don't think that discrimination against women is limited to curtailing reproductive rights, job discrimination, lesser pay, etc. The authors of this "profile" are young people. One might hope -- since they grew up in an era when becoming a wife no longer meant legally ceasing to be a woman with individual rights -- they would recognize that the candidate's wife is an actual person. But no.
Beyond the Beltway
Erik Eckholm of the New York Times: "A jury late Tuesday awarded more than $5 million in damages to two police officers who were severely wounded with a pistol that a local gun shop sold to a straw buyer in 2009."
News Ledes
New York Times: "A Scottish nurse who seemed to recover from Ebola 10 months ago has been rehospitalized and is now critically ill, the Royal Free Hospital in London reported Wednesday. Scientists have long known that the Ebola virus can persist for months in certain tissues of the body that are relatively protected from the immune system, including the eyes and the testes."
Washington Post: "Thousands of Israeli soldiers and border police fanned out across major cities and security forces began to erect checkpoints to close off Arab neighborhoods in Jerusalem on Wednesday to stem a wave of Palestinian attacks against Israelis. Military officials say the use of hundreds of Israeli soldiers along highways and in residential areas is the first such deployment in more than a decade, since the second Palestinian uprising, or intifada, in the early 2000s."