For the Record: 6 days out from Iowa, Democrats have a non-debate
The days are dwindling in our primary season advent calendar, which features pieces of chocolate shaped like caucuses and primaries. Can you feel the magic in the air? Six days until we can stop obsessing over the polls, and start obsessing over actual votes and how those votes affect the polls, and how those polls will affect future votes, and so on until we elect the next Leader of the Free World. Yes, we should probably take this more seriously. In today's For the Record, we look at the highlights of last night's non-debate and how the Republicans are jockeying ahead of Thursday's actual debate.
Ceci n'est pas un débat
Per the rules set forth by the Democratic National Committee, last night's nationally televised town hall event with the party's three hopefuls was not a debate — there can only be six official debates — but rather a deconstructed debate. The structure allowed each of the candidates to receive individualized questions from the audience and also forced the DNC to actually give equal time to Martin O'Malley for once.
At the forum, Bernie Sanders described the "socialist" part of "democratic socialist," once made famous as one of the S's in "USSR." He also defended the tax increase necessary to fund his single-payer health care plan as being more than offset by subsequent savings. O'Malley called the fight against climate change a job-creating opportunity but also had to defend his police crackdown tactics as Baltimore mayor. And Hillary Clinton, who once said she was proud to have Republicans as enemies (then later walked back those comments) promised (threatened?) to give them bear hugs to build bipartisan consensus.
Setting the GOP stage
While the forum was the last chance for Iowa voters to see all three candidates together before the caucuses, there's still one more GOP debate on Thursday night (well, two debates, if you count the undercard). The top candidates are spending the first half of the week jockeying for position:
- Ted Cruz is hitting back against claims that he's anti-ethanol, which amounts to high treason in Iowa.
- Marco Rubio enlisted Iowa Sen. Joni Ernst, who showed up to his rally but still wouldn't outright endorse Rubio. She likes him, she just doesn't LIKE like him.
- Mike Huckabee brought out his bass guitar to play alongside country star Josh Turner in Des Moines.
- Ben Carson is still counting on his Iowa ground game, which includes a husband-and-wife team along with their four ferrets.
The remaining undecided Iowa caucus-goers are waiting on an official endorsement from a bass-playing ferret.
Climbing to the top of the food chain
Trying to decide what food suits your personality sounds like the worst Dating Game question ever, but food industry folks are supporting their candidates with weird combos rarely seen outside Minor League ballparks. An Iowa restaurant has the Trumpburger, featuring ham, shredded cheese (for the way he's shredding his opponents) and onions (for us political pundits shedding tears over not being able to figure him out.) Ben and Jerry's introduced a limited line of Bernie's Yearning flavor, encouraging eaters to evenly distribute the 1% chocolatey goodness throughout the 99% of the pint filled with mint ice cream. So where's the Ted Cruz maple-flavored ice cream ... the one that doesn't go well with anything? Or the Jeb Bush kale salad, which was trendy for a while until everyone realized they actually can't stand kale? Or the Jim Webb sandwich that just straight up killed a guy one time?
More from the campaign trail
- Lawyer for family of Walter Scott switches support from Clinton to Sanders (Paste BN OnPolitics)
- One brash, tell-it-like-it-is candidate upset at all the attention given to the other brash, tell-it-like-it-is candidate (Paste BN OnPolitics)
- Bernie Sanders turns over the mic to the audience, and it went over way better than the last time (The Des Moines Register, Paste BN)
Larry David's pretty good Bernie Sanders impression coming back to SNL
Larry David, who turned in a spot-on impression of Bernie Sanders earlier this season, is coming back to host an entire episode of Saturday Night Live on Feb. 6.