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LAS VEGAS — For six months, Hillary Clinton barely said Bernie Sanders's name.
Tuesday night’s debate presented a different image: The candidates, side by side, shaking hands, united in their distaste for the subject that has plagued Clinton all year, impatient to hash out substantive differences in their policies and platforms. Sanders was given an opportunity to attack the Democratic frontrunner on the personal email account she used as secretary of state — and he declined.
“Let me say something that may not be great politics,” Sanders said, after Anderson Cooper, moderator at the CNN debate, asked Clinton about her email account.
“But I think the secretary is right, and that is that the American people are sick and tired of hearing about your damn emails,” Sanders said to applause and cheers.
Clinton nodded, laughed ("Me too! Me too!"), and, thanking Sanders, extended a hand — completing their mutually beneficial moment, which elevated him and validated her. Sanders might have said his refusal to attack Clinton on the email issue is bad politics, but on Tuesday, neither his campaign nor hers seemed to agree.
Immediately, Clinton spokespeople retweeted and tweeted statements and praise about just how right Sanders was, and what a great moment it had been.
A retweet from Clinton's communications director:
The Sanders campaign also had no regrets.
“He clearly had the best line of the night with the email line,” said Jeff Weaver, the senator's campaign manager, following the debate. “There’s no doubt about it.”
People are not interested in “political gossip,” nor is this “a soap-opera” or “a baseball game,” Weaver said. “This is a life and death struggle for millions of Americans.”
The campaign even fundraised off the moment, beginning with the clip of Sanders dismissing the subject, and ending with his salvo about what he believes Americans are really interested in. (Early Wednesday morning, the Sanders campaign said they had already raised $1.3 million after the debate.)
For Clinton, the affirmation — and lack of any kind of critique — from Sanders was an obvious relief for a candidate who’s faced weekly and sometimes daily questions about the security and public statements surrounding her email account.
And Clinton offered something in return on Tuesday, approaching Sanders as an equal on the debate stage, worthy of forceful contrasts and policy critiques. Early in the night, Clinton hit Sanders for his more moderate record on gun control, citing his five votes against the Brady bill.
Early in Tuesday’s debate, Clinton attacked Sanders for not having a strong enough record on gun control, and was repeatedly willing to contrast herself with Sanders on the economy, elevating Sanders as the challenger he has been. Sanders still leads Clinton in many early-state polls, particularly in New Hampshire, the state that holds the first Democratic primary.
“I think she recognizes that he’s a rival,” Weaver said.
Joel Benenson, Clinton’s pollster, thought it was “very nice and good moment for Bernie Sanders to do that” — but not most important moment of the debate, he said.
Clinton’s exchanges with the other candidates were far more limited.
At one point, when Lincoln Chafee, the former governor of Rhode Island, attacked Clinton extensively, she flatly declined an offer from Cooper to respond. In some moments, Clinton debated more directly with Martin O’Malley, a candidate who has struggled to gain ground on Sanders. “You know, I have to say, I was very pleased when Gov. O'Malley endorsed me for president in 2008,” Clinton said pointedly.
After the debate, O’Malley aides described the primary as a “three-man race.”
The former governor agreed with the assessment. “We had a very good night tonight, and I think for the first time a lot of people are going to be going onto my website and learning more about my candidacy,” said O’Malley. “Tonight for the first time, people across the U.S. who tuned in saw, wow, there’s more than just two candidates, and I think people are going to be glad to know they have an alternative.”
But, as was apparent on Tuesday’s stage, Clinton and her aides are more aware of Sanders, and ready to engage more with his positions and set up a dichotomy between them. Benenson, the Clinton pollster, said the campaign took special note of Sanders’s interview on Meet the Press last weekend, when he said he is “not a capitalist.” The remark wasn’t something that either candidate shied from onstage.
“She wanted to know exactly what he said, what did he mean, is there something he meant other than what it sounded like?” Benenson said after the debate. “I think tonight we know it sounded like exactly what he said. And it was.”
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