The three Democratic candidates for president sat down for a “forum” on MSNBC on Friday in which each was quizzed separately by host Rachel Maddow.
Here’s what we learned about former secretary of state Hillary Clinton, Vermont senator Bernie Sanders, and former Maryland governor Martin O’Malley:
- Maddow focused on the candidates’ policy views, ranging from criminal justice reform to gun control to economic injustice to foreign policy.
- There was no cross-talk between the candidates, who did not appear together until the end of the night, for a photo op.
- There was some substantive airing of policy positions past and present, however. Memorable moments included a Clinton answer about the Defense of Marriage Act, the Bill Clinton administration’s support for which she insisted was part of a strategy to forestall a constitutional amendment defining marriage as between a man and a woman.
- Sanders, the Vermont senator, defended his vote to allow guns to be carried on Amtrak trains, saying doing so was the same as carrying a gun in checked luggage on an airplane.
- Sanders hit out at Clinton a little bit, most sharply over the Keystone XL pipeline, an issue that was for him, he said, “a no-brainer” unlike “some unnamed candidates”.
- O’Malley had a series of applause lines, touting his record on same-sex marriage and gun control and saying of the Black Lives Matter anti-police-violence movement: “I think almost all of their agenda can get done.”
- Clinton was the only candidate to speak in intimate detail about the problem of excessive use of force by police on black victims and minorities, decrying the case of a student hauled from class by a security officer, and saying: “I still can’t get over Eric Garner.”
- Challenged to explain how he could represent African American voters, Sanders said his fight for economic justice would help many voters. He called for a raising the minimum wage and the expansion of Medicare.
- Sanders attacked Clinton on campaign finance. “I don’t think it’s good enough to just talk the talk on campaign finance reform,” he said. “You’ve got to walk the walk.”
- The forum was lauded as a relatively substantive exploration of the candidates’ policy views, although, with few follow-up questions and no inter-candidate challenges, the night produced no notable moment in which any one candidate seemed under pressure to explain a policy view or vote.
- Clinton did get one question about “three paid speeches for Goldman Sachs alone in your first year out of office, for which you received $600,000”. She said she had told the Nasdaq stock exchange to shape up in 2007.
- Asked about her relatively hawkish foreign policy views – hawkish next to her two rivals, not compared with the Republican field – Clinton declined to say that she would be “more aggressive” on foreign policy than Obama.
