Democratic Roulette in Vegas

English: Las Vegas Strip (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

The Democrats held the first of six scheduled debates Tuesday night, which was held at a casino hotel on the Las Vegas Strip.  Fifteen million viewers watched the proceedings on CNN, which is a record for the Dems, but was ten million short of the first debate the Republicans had two months ago.  Hillary Clinton, the former Secretary of State who is the presumptive front-runner, held the winning hand.  But some people are wondering if she's benefiting from a stacked deck.

Clinton looked poised and confident compared to the other four debaters (Bernie Sanders, Lincoln Chaffee, Martin O'Malley and Jim Webb), deflecting moderator Anderson Cooper's questions about Benghazi, her use of e-mails, and whether she's too much of an insider to truly 'get' voters' concerns.  Clinton did say, however, that the 2002 vote she took as a U.S. Senator to authorize the use of force that resulted in the Iraq War was a mistake.

Sanders, an independent Senator from Vermont, stuck mostly to his Corporations Are Evil and Tax The Rich messages which have won him a surprising amount of supporters, but not enough to seriously challenge Clinton in the polls outside New Hampshire.  The one thing that tripped up Sanders was his support of gun ownership laws (backed by the NRA, no less) that run counter to all the news about mass shootings.  Sanders is still the rabble-rousing senator who can rant all he wants about the unfairness of the American economy on average citizens, and who also doesn't mind being labeled a 'democratic socialist' so long as he gets his message out.  We like him for that, but he's just not presidential material.

Chaffee, O'Malley and Webb?  Well, they gambled on anyone remembering their names after the debate.  And they lost.

Unlike the first two Republican debates, the Democrats were in no mood for taking potshots at each other (unless it's about Donald Trump), demeaning women and minorities, or ignoring issues such as climate change and race relations.  Just a serious, substantial discussion that left nearly everyone wanting more, even though the debate ran for more than two hours.

As we said before, the Democrats are planning on holding five more debates before the primaries.  You might say it's because they have fewer candidates running than the GOP does.  Others think it's by design, as a way to get Hillary Clinton to the nomination with the least amount of effort, limiting the number of candidates and scheduling debates for nights when the main competition on TV is an NFL game.  Unless Vice President Joe Biden wants to get involved, having five more joint appearances between Clinton and Sanders sounds about right.

Now that the Democrats are leaving Las Vegas and preparing for an apparent coronation of Hillary Clinton as its standard bearer, they'll be faced with the biggest gamble of all:  Trying to sell voters on not only the first woman president in American history, but also a third term of the Clinton family in the White House.