Clinton wins Round One

Hillary Clinton must hope that what happened Tuesday in Vegas doesn’t stay in Vegas. In the first debate among Democratic presidential hopefuls, Clinton was the clear winner, offering clear and concise answers to a variety of questions, even those that harped on Benghazi and her email server while she was secretary of state in President Obama’s first term.

The Democrats – Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders; Clinton; former Virginia Sen. Jim Webb; former Maryland Gov. Martin O’Malley; and Lincoln Chafee, former mayor, governor and U.S. senator from Rhode Island – showed themselves to be well-informed and qualified people. Their debate was for the most part civil and more substantive than the Republican debates featuring the over-the-top naysaying of Marco Rubio and the theatrics of Donald Trump.

These were clear-eyed people with well-thought-out intentions to help the American middle class, to stabilize the country’s position in foreign policy and to regulate, responsibly, the guns of the city streets and the figurative gunslingers of Wall Street.

Sanders, the “democratic socialist” thought initially to be a gadfly but now a substantial challenger to front-runner Clinton, didn’t back away from his call for rebalancing the U.S. economy that now lists toward the relative few who control 90 percent of the country’s wealth.

And he did bring a moment of cheer to all Democrats when he derided the Republicans’ exhausting discussions over Clinton’s email server. The topic has been worn to a nub and diverts attention from important issues. And Clinton handled the questions about the upcoming Benghazi hearings.

Overall, if Vice President Joe Biden was looking for a weakness in Clinton to give him cause to jump into the race, he didn’t find it. Clinton was sound on foreign and domestic policy, and bold on gun laws, nailing the importance of standing up to the gun lobby in the wake of horrendous shootings all over the country.

Her credentials on foreign policy are proven, and her domestic stances are well-known. It should be said that the other candidates, all of them reasonable, thoughtful people, tried to invigorate the debate and make it about more than Clinton and her challenger-in-chief, Sanders. But they didn’t get that job done. Hillary Clinton was the front-runner going in to the debate, and she ended it in the same position.

This story was originally published October 14, 2015 at 6:24 PM with the headline "Clinton wins Round One."