It was, as Martin O’Malley said, a very different debate from the Republicans’: no racist remarks, not immigrant-bashing, no attacks on women, no clowning or pandering to religious bigotry, and a much more serious policy discussion.
In their closing remarks, Bernie Sanders and Hillary Clinton summed up voters’ choice.
Bernie told the CNN audience what very few candidates, he noted, would admit:
“Nobody up here, certainly no Republican, can address the major crises affecting our country, unless millions of people begin to stand up to the billionaire class that has so much power over our economy and our political life.”
Asked how he would get anything done in Washington, he replied that it will take a massive grassroots movement to retake power from corporations and politicians who are content with historic income inequality, deregulated banks, a disempowered labor movement, increasing child poverty and receding opportunity for the great majority of people.
Hillary Clinton took the opposite tack. Asked if she was a centrist or a progressive, she replied: “I’m a progressive. But I’m a progressive who likes to get things done.”