For a few, The Democratic Debate Was A Social Experience

It was a odd moment in American politics.

“I never took a position on Keystone until I took a position on Keystone”, she said, echoing former vice presidential candidate John Kerry’s much-pilloried “(I) actually did vote for the $87 billion before I voted against it” Iraq war flub.

Clinton and the audience cheered, and she and Sanders smiled and shook hands.

Instead, Democrats are shifting to Bernie Sanders, who contrasts with Clinton ideologically.

For a debate that was billed as a possible “game changer” for Democratic presidential candidates, there were no major shakeups to the field, Iowa Democrats said Tuesday. Sanders stuck to the plan that’s had him surging in the polls but his embracing of the “socialist” label is scary to many.

After Clinton announced her opposition to a sweeping Pacific Rim trade deal, a pact she had previously called the “gold standard”, Sanders said he was glad she’d come around to “a conclusion I reached on day one”.

Clinton, the former secretary of state, reiterated her support for an American-led no-fly zone over parts of Syria to stabilize the region, an option opposed by the current White House and supported by a number of Republican leaders. “I think you’re being a little rough; I just arrived at the United States Senate”.

But Sanders has succeeded in pushing the debate to the left.

“And it’s our job to rein in the excesses of capitalism so that it doesn’t run amok and doesn’t cause the kind of inequities we’re seeing in our economic system”.

This is not to say the scandals aren’t affecting Clinton’s overall poll numbers. Although she described herself as “a progressive”, Clinton typifies all that is good-and bad-about Democratic liberalism.

Mrs Clinton’s Republican opponents have hammered again and again on her perceived responsibility for the 2012 attack on the USA consulate in Benghazi in which four Americans died, so one of the looming questions during the debate was how she would respond.

There was not a moment of personal contention on that stage tonight. The candidates fielded the question of both the movement and police brutality (which was absent from the last GOP debate) with great respect. “We’ve been around a cumulative quite a few period of time”.

Sanders, noting he represents a rural state where many people own guns, said he supported the expansion of background checks for people wanting to buy guns and to scrap gaps in the law that make it easier to sell and buy guns at gun shows.

Looking at the RealClearPolitics Democratic presidential nomination polling average, Clinton’s first drop began in early June, around the time Sanders started to draw thousands to his rallies. “It wasn’t that complicated to me”.

David Axelrod, an unaligned Democratic strategist who helped mastermind Obama’s 2008 campaign, said on Wednesday Clinton emerged stronger with a “very self-assured, powerful performance” that should give Biden pause, while Sanders had a strong performance but still fell short of projecting the persona of a nominee.

The threat of big business has been the central motivating issue for Mr Sanders’ presidential campaign.

Clinton, the former secretary of state, faces her biggest challenge from Bernie Sanders, the rumpled independent senator from Vermont who has energized liberals with his call for a “political revolution”.