Winners and losers from the first Democratic presidential debate
Chris Cillizza
Hillary Clinton: This was the best two hours of her candidacy to date. Clinton was confident, relaxed and good-natured. She was aggressive from the start and savaged Sanders on his past votes on guns. (He seemed taken aback by her direct hit.) She also got some help from Sanders -- most notably on the controversy surrounding her e-mail server. Sanders said he didn't care about the issue, voters didn't care about the issue and no one wanted to talk about it. Clinton couldn't have said it better herself. And when Lincoln Chafee tried to go back at Clinton on e-mails, she scored the moment of the debate when she curtly responded "no" when asked if she wanted to respond to his comments.
She also smartly turned at least three questions into broad-scale attacks on Republicans, effectively playing the uniter role for the party -- and winning a ton of applause in the process. Not everything Clinton did was pitch perfect. Her "I represented Wall Street" line will likely be used in an ad against her, and her inability to cite anything other than her gender to differentiate her presidency from that of Obama was not so good. Still, Clinton was head and shoulders above everyone else on the stage as a debater. And it wasn't close.
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