Friday Open Thread [10.16.15]

The ticket.

Democratic presidential contender Hillary Clinton won the backing of Housing and Urban Development Secretary Julian Castro on Thursday and said she would seriously consider making the rising Hispanic leader her running mate if she wins her party’s nomination. […]

“I am going to look really hard at him for anything, because that’s how good he is,” Clinton said at a U.S. Hispanic Chamber of Commerce meeting in San Antonio, Texas, when asked if Castro might be her vice presidential pick.

A HuffPost/YouGov poll finds 55% of registered Democratic voters who watched the first Democratic debate said Hillary Clinton won. Sen. Bernie Sanders, who saw a surge in online interest and fundraising after the debate, was a distant second, with only 22% saying he was the best of the night. Meanwhile, a new NBC News/Survey Monkey poll has Clinton leading Sanders 45 to 31. Both candidates gained ground from the debate, as Hillary went up 3 points and Sanders went up 2. Biden, however, lost 5, dropping from 15 to 10.

I like when math is that neat. So 5% of Biden’s support went 60% to Clinton and 40% to Sanders.

First Read says the Democrats are the healthier party: “The Democratic Party, right now, is much more unified than the Republican Party is. Sure, there were disagreements and jabs last night. But when you take a step back, it’s striking how often the five Democratic candidates agreed. And with just a few exceptions, the candidates weren’t running away from President Obama — certainly not to the extent we saw the GOP field run away from George W. Bush in 2007-2008. The general election is 13 months from now, and that contest promises to be a close one. But there is little doubt that the Democratic Party is healthier than the Republican Party.”

Amy Walter on why Sanders did not attack Clinton: “Bernie Sanders wants to run on issues, not on electability, and that is great news for Hillary Clinton. On the campaign trail, Sanders has never explicitly criticized Clinton, even when provided ample opportunities to do so. Tonight, he went even further when he declared that Clinton’s greatest weakness — her email server and the questions it raises about her honesty and trustworthiness — was irrelevant.”

“But, by not making the case for why this issue could come back to haunt her, and the Democratic chances for holding the White House in 2016, Sanders confirmed that his candidacy is more about promoting his views on economic and social inequality in America, than it is to seriously challenge Clinton for the nomination. His performance tonight was sure to make his supporters happy, but he did nothing to expand that base of support.”

Joan Walsh says Progressives won the Democratic Debate, hands down:

Courtesy of a Democratic Party that’s shifted left thanks to its base, for the first time in American history a national television audience was exposed to a serious discussion about capitalism vs. socialism, expanding Social Security, providing debt-free college, protecting reproductive rights, and jailing bankers. Early reporting tells us it was the most watched Democratic debate in history. What happened in Las Vegas Tuesday night surely won’t stay in Las Vegas.

Hillary Clinton, Sen. Bernie Sanders and former Maryland governor Martin O’Malley all had good nights, with debate performances strong enough to let each candidate’s supporters legitimately spin the night as a “win,” as they did. Progressives had a good night, too. The differences between Clinton and Sanders were made clearer, but not bitter. [Hillary] defended her shift left on many issues as coming to terms with reality. When CNN’s Anderson Cooper confronted her with a statement she made recently about being a “moderate,” Clinton retorted: “I’m a progressive, but a progressive who likes to gets things done.” That sums up Clinton’s pitch.

And there you go. It is a divide that I have spoken about for years. The Purists vs. the Pragmatists. Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama are no doubt pragmatists. For that, they are denounced as evil corporatist whores by some in the purist camp, which leads to the tonnage of disrespect and loathing the pragmatists feel for the purists because the pragmatists feel the purists would savor Republicans in office instead of incremental progress just to stand on principle. Both sides pretty much agree on policy and the issues. It is the when and how that sets these two camps apart. Bernie Sanders is very much in the purist camp, and has been for years. He is so pure he cannot even be a Democrat. Hillary is very much in the pragmatist camp. And there is your primary.

Jim Newell says the debate was a great ad for the Democratic Party:

Democratic Party officials and representatives in Las Vegas expressed plenty of optimism ahead of Tuesday night’s debate, to the point that they seemed naïve. These Democrats viewed the debate as a branding opportunity, a means of distancing the party from the foaming beast that emerges whenever Republican candidates gather to debate. The Democrats would spar and elucidate policy differences, but they would do so respectfully and without the interpersonal animus that’s dominated the first two cluttered Republican stages. They would entertain, but through lively discussion—not through Trumpian suplexes or nativist bromides.

It sounded fantastical and overly optimistic ahead of the debate. But it’s basically what they got.

E.J. Dionne describes the unique and historic contribution of Senator Sanders to the Democratic presidential campaign and to America’s political dialogue in general:

…For the first time in the modern political era, Americans got to watch leaders of a mainstream political party debate the relative merits of capitalism and democratic socialism. And for once, socialism was cast not as the ideology that produced a brutal dictatorship in the old Soviet Union, but as a benign and, yes, democratic outlook that has created rather attractive societies in places such as Denmark and Sweden.

Whatever happens to Sen. Bernie Sanders’s (I-Vt.) candidacy, he will deserve credit for having widened our political horizons…We now have a more realistic sense of the choices before us: Sanders’s unapologetic democratic socialism, Clinton’s progressive capitalism and the Republicans’ disdain for government altogether. Guess who occupies the real political center?

James Fallows relays an email that a reader of his (who also happens to run a tech company) sent him regarding his (the reader’s) assessment of the debate:

Why is Chafee running? Or, more accurately, for what is he running?

My understanding is:

Hillary’s running for President.

Sanders is running to make an argument, to pull the Democrats away from becoming the Grand Old (but Sane!) Party. I think he’s also very eager to make the point that the Democrats should use their tech and communications advantage pervasively, not simply for fundraising and GOTV, and that’s a message he can deliver by running for president without winning anything.

Biden is “running” as Hillary’s VP pro tem through November 2016; if something happened to Hillary or if she had decided that she just couldn’t face two years of this, Biden would be there.

O’Malley is running for a cabinet position, or a job.

Webb is running to be one of the founders of a new center-right party that could grow out of the ashes of the Republican party. He’s running to be John C. Fremont. See also Jon Huntsman.

But Chafee? He was adorable last night, aside from his vote to repeal Glass-Steagall, a question he fumbled so terribly you’ve got to wonder if that was intentional. But what does he want that being a candidate could help him get?

Eugene Robinson on the strength of the Democratic field:

The main event was Clinton vs. Sanders, and what should worry Republicans is that the two leading Democrats spent so much of the evening on the issues Americans say they care about. To cite one representative survey, a recent CBS poll asked registered voters what they most wanted to hear the candidates discuss. “Economy and jobs” came in first at 24 percent, while “immigration” was a distant second at 11 percent and “foreign policy” third at 10 percent.

But what do Republicans talk about in their debates? Who is going to be toughest on illegal immigration, who is most opposed to President Obama’s foreign policy, who is most determined to defund Planned Parenthood. On the economy, they fight to establish who is most opposed to raising the minimum wage.

The GOP establishment candidates have no economic message to offer beyond the party’s standard prescription of tax cuts for the wealthy and deregulation for businesses. That may be why the front-runners are Trump and Carson, who have never held public office and whose economic prescriptions are more populist.

President Obama has reduced the deficit by over a trillion dollars. Trillion. With a T.

Strong growth in individual tax collection drove the U.S. budget deficit to a fresh Obama-era low in fiscal 2015, the Treasury Department said Thursday.

For the fiscal year that ended Sept. 30 the shortfall was $439 billion, a decrease of 9%, or $44 billion, from last year. The deficit is the smallest of Barack Obama’s presidency and the lowest since 2007 in both dollar terms and as a percentage of gross domestic product.