Новости за 20.12.2015

The third Democratic debate, held in New Hampshire on Saturday night, was often a two-person debate plus a third wheel: Martin O’Malley who has been polling at a distant third behind his opponents and lags by some 40 points in New Hampshire. The former Maryland governor came the the stage ready to answer questions that never came his way and to pick a few fights to boost his struggling campaign. 

Not all that long ago, voters and pundits alike pondered why civil rights protesters with Black Lives Matter and other organizations were choosing to only interrupt campaign events starring Democratic presidential candidates, and not Republicans. They were asked, why challenge Bernie Sanders, Martin O’Malley, and Hillary Clinton when they’re on your side? But now that Donald Trump, the Republican frontrunner, has seen multiple interruptions of his rallies, we have two answers to those queries.

For Team Hillary, each Democratic primary debate is one step closer to the general election. And the third Democratic debate, in New Hampshire on Saturday night, felt like another test run for Clinton’s economic message in the general, as she rolled out more business-friendly rhetoric while still trying to hold Wall Street at an arm’s length. She tried, moreover, to push a more positive spin on her vision for the country’s future, drawing a sharp contrast with Bernie Sanders’s populist fury. 

If Bernie Sanders or Martin O’Malley could control the circumstances and terms of Saturday’s debate, the third of the Democratic primary, it would have been a very different evening. It’s easy to imagine an ideal Sanders debate: a focus on how inequality is destroying the middle class and why Sanders, unlike Clinton, is willing to stand-up to corporate plutocrats and Wall Street. Martin O’Malley’s perfect debate would be one where his expertise in progressive wonkery could shine, and he would emerge as a sleek, plausible alternative. Читать дальше...

It’s intellectually shallow to pretend Donald Trump is vastly more reactionary than other candidates in the Republican primary. Trump lurks at the right-most edge of the field on the general question of how aggressively we should close American society, but only by an increment. Where most GOP candidates want to prohibit Muslim refugee settlement in the U.S., Trump wants to prohibit Muslim immigration more broadly. Where other candidates want to step up deportation of unauthorized immigrants quite a lot, Trump wants to step it up even more. Читать дальше...

The three Democratic presidential candidates met in Manchester, New Hampshire, on December 19 for their third primary debate. Like at the most recent Republican debate, the focus was on national security in the wake of the Paris attacks and San Bernardino shootings. Here are the highlights of the debate, taken from our Minutes blog, where we followed the action as it unfolded.