Here’s a roundup of websites, blogs of different viewpoints and a cross-section of Tweets. These are excerpts, so go to the link to read the originals in full. Also, read this analysis by TMV’s Richard Barry. Go HERE to read anannotated transcript of the debate.

CNN:

Hillary Clinton swept confidently into the campaign season’s first Democratic presidential debate on Tuesday, denying she flip-flopped on key issues for political gain and rebuking her top rival Bernie Sanders for not being tough enough on guns.

In a performance aimed at solidifying her lock on the Democratic nomination, Clinton sought to pivot from a tough summer in which the controversy over her private email server triggered a slump in popularity ratings. She proved to be a polished debater, showing little rust after enduring 25 debates during the 2008 campaign.

The former secretary of state dominated the opening exchanges, parrying questions on the depth of her political convictions and insisting she is a “progressive” despite the doubts of some on the left of the party.

“I have been very consistent,” Clinton said. “Over the course of my entire life, I have always fought for the same values and principles, but, like most human beings, including those of us who run for office, I do absorb new information. I do look at what’s happening in the world.”

She quickly took shots at progressive challenger Sanders, first for his political philosophy.

Sanders defended his self-identified status as a democratic socialist, which many commentators believe frames him as far too left-wing to be able to win a general election. He said he wanted no part of the “casino capitalism” economy and railed against a system where the top 10% in the country have more wealth than the bottom 90%.

He went on to argue that his vision for politics was akin to Scandinavian nations with strong health care systems and social safety nets.

Clinton replied, “I love Denmark!” but argued that they were running for president of the United States of America and such economic policies would not work here.

The former secretary of state also slammed Sanders for his positions on guns, including voting against legislation such as the Brady Bill. Clinton was asked whether Sanders had been tough enough on regulating firearms.

“No, not at all,” Clinton said. “This has gone on too long and it is time the entire country stand up against the NRA.”

But Sanders hit back, telling Clinton sharply that “all the shouting in the world is not going to do what I hope all of us want,” namely more restrictions on firearms.

Despite the heated back-and-forth, Sanders came to Clinton’s defense on the email saga from her stint as secretary of state.

“The American people are sick and tired of hearing about your damn emails,” Sanders said to applause that was followed by a handshake between Clinton and the senator.

The New York Times:

Hillary Rodham Clinton, seeking to stem the momentum of her insurgent challenger, Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont, aggressively questioned his values, positions and voting history in the first Democratic debate on Tuesday night, turning a showdown that was expected to emphasize her character into a forceful referendum on his record.

In a series of sometimes biting exchanges, Mrs. Clinton declared that Mr. Sanders was misguided in his handling of crucial votes on gun control and even in his grasp of how essential capitalism is to the American identity. Mocking Mr. Sanders’s admiration for the health care system of Denmark, she interrupted a moderator to offering a stinging assessment of his logic, suggesting he was unprepared to grapple with the realities of governing a capitalist superpower.

“I love Denmark,” Mrs. Clinton said, with a wry smile. “We are not Denmark,” she added. “We are the United States of America.”

The crowd erupted in applause.

A few moments later, Mrs. Clinton took aim at what may be Mr. Sanders’s greatest vulnerability with the Democratic left, asking why he had voted to shield gun makers and dealers from liability lawsuits. Mr. Sanders, who linked his record on gun control to his representation of a rural state, called the bill “large and complicated.”

“I was in the Senate at the same time,” Mrs. Clinton replied. “It wasn’t that complicated to me. It was pretty straightforward.”

Asked if Mr. Sanders was tough enough on guns during his nearly decade-long career in the Senate, Mrs. Clinton offered a sharp reply: “No, not at all.”

“I think that we have to look at the fact that we lose 90 people a day from gun violence,” she said. “This has gone on too long, and it’s time the entire country stood up against the N.R.A.”

It was a dominant performance in the first part of the debate that showcased Mrs. Clinton’s political arsenal: a long record of appearances in presidential-level debates, intense and diligent preparation, and a nimbleness and humor largely lacking in her male counterparts. She let no opportunity pass her by. When Mr. Sanders described the conflict in Syria as “a quagmire within a quagmire,” but said that he did not support sending American ground troops there, Mrs. Clinton interjected energetically: “Nobody does. Nobody does, Senator Sanders.”

For Mr. Sanders, it was an evening of unexpectedly forceful challenges, both from Mrs. Clinton and the moderator. He seemed somewhat exasperated and at a loss for how to match Mrs. Clinton’s agility. One of his most memorable moments appeared to be when he sought to shield Mrs. Clinton from criticism of her email practices.

The Huffington Post ran a big headline: “Hillary Leans In” and this was the lead story.

Democratic front-runner Hillary Clinton pulled the gender card during Tuesday’s primary debate when asked how her presidency would be different from President Barack Obama’s.

“Well, I think that’s pretty obvious,” Clinton said. “The first woman president would be quite a change from the presidents we’ve had, including President Obama.”

Among Democrats, Clinton is only female candidate. Republican contender Carly Fiorina has tried to neutralize any potential advantage Clinton may get from the gender issue, pointing out that she were the GOP nominee, Clinton would not be able to tout her candidacy as historic.

Clinton on Tuesday leaned heavily into what she called an “obvious” difference between her and the majority of presidential candidates, but was careful to note that there was more to her candidacy than gender.

The Washington Post:

Sen. Bernie Sanders said he would support a proposal to legalize recreational use of marijuana, saying he wanted to reduce the number of people sent to jail for drug use or minor possession.

“I suspect I would vote yes,” Sanders said, when asked how he might vote in an upcoming referendum in Nevada, where Tuesday night’s first Democratic debate was held. “And I would vote yes, because I am seeing in this country too many lives being destroyed over non-violent offenses…We have to think through this war on drugs.”

His main Democratic rival, former secretary of state Hillary Rodham Clinton, was asked a similar question. Clinton was not ready to take a position.

“No,” she said, saying she wanted to study the results of legalization measures in Colorado and Oregon. “I think that we have an opportunity .?.?. to find out a lot more than we know today,” Clinton said.

Clinton appeared confident, but her attempts to describe past accomplishments often turned out oddly. She praised the U.S. effort to topple Libyan dictator Moammar Gaddafi, but spent little time talking about the chaos that followed when Gaddafi was gone. To cast herself as tough on Wall Street, Clinton told a story of confronting bankers and telling them to “Cut it out”—a few months before a financial collapse that began with bad bets on Wall Street.

Sanders also appeared confident — even affable, by his own gruff standards — but fought with others about his record on gun control.

And the other three long shots looked like .?.?. long shots.

Satirist Andy Borowitz:

LAS VEGAS (The Borowitz Report)—The Democrats who participated in the first Democratic Presidential debate of the 2016 campaign garnered a scathing review from the retired neurosurgeon Ben Carson, who said that none of them offered a concrete plan to protect the Earth from an invasion of bloodthirsty alien dragons.

“A swarm of marauding dragons with the capacity to shoot flames a thousand feet or more could destroy life on this planet as we know it,” Carson told Fox News. “And yet not a single one of these Democrats has apparently given any thought to such a threat.”

While the Republican Presidential candidate acknowledged that the Democrats in Las Vegas tangled over such issues as guns, Syria, and income inequality, he said, “I did not hear the word ‘dragon’ once.”

The Daily Beast:

Bernie Sanders’ campaign may be the latest victim of guns in America.

In the first few minutes of Tuesday’s Democratic debate, Hillary Clinton ripped apart the socialist Vermont senator over his moderate record on gun control. After Sanders gave a mealy-mouthed defense of his position on the issue, moderator Anderson Cooper asked Clinton if Sanders was tough enough on gun violence. Her answer was blunt.

“No,” she said flatly. “Not at all.”

She then pushed ahead, arguing that Americans need to oppose the NRA and criticized Sanders for voting against the Brady Handgun Violence Prevention Act. And she tore into him for backing legislation that protected gun manufacturers over how their products are used.

Both of those stances have given Sanders a rare vulnerability on his left flank, as guns might be the single issue where Clinton’s record is more liberal than his.

“I was in the Senate at the same time” when Sanders voted for protecting gun manufacturers, Clinton said, sounding delighted to capitalize on that vulnerability. “It wasn’t that complicated to me. It was pretty straightforward to me that he was going to give immunity to the only industry in America — everybody else has to be accountable, but not the gun manufacturers, and we need to stand up and say enough of that, we’re not gonna let it happen.”

Clinton’s retort drew lengthy cheers from the crowd, putting Sanders in the unenviable position of trying to litigate the minutiae of federal gun policy before a crowd with minimal appetite for wonkiness and maximum appetite for Democratic red meat.

Sanders’ record on guns is complex. He told NPR this summer that urbanites should respect rural Americans’ cultural attachment to guns.

Politico:

Bernie Sanders casts himself as the anti-politician, expressing unmitigated outrage about income inequality and the role of money in the political system — “It’s corrupt!” — while casting other politicians as too intimidated by special interests to speak the truth.
On Tuesday, though, Hillary Clinton and his other Democratic rivals quickly found his soft spot — a mixed record on gun control, contoured to the views of his rural state of Vermont — and began banging away. Suddenly, it was Sanders who looked like a compromising politician, stressing his moderation.

“I got a B-minus from the NRA,” he said, apparently seeking to point out that he wasn’t totally in line with the anti-gun control forces. Instead, he pointed out, he supports bipartisan forms of gun controls combined with treatment on demand for people with mental disorders.
But the parsing seemed to take some of the steam out of Sanders’s performance, which on the campaign trail has drawn heavily on the notion that he’s uncompromising in his values. The exchange over gun control also came at a bad time, just as the debate was warming up, and he seemed unprepared to find himself under attack for, of all things, being too conservative.
And it allowed Clinton, who often seems equivocal in comparison to Sanders, to take the initiative.

Salon:

Bill Clinton came from a place called Hope. Bernie Sanders is from a place called Anger. Many, many American voters also live there.

When Sanders, who had the best night Tuesday night in Las Vegas, called for a political revolution, he wasn’t talking to the other candidates onstage or, for that matter, moderator Anderson Cooper, who bought a 10,000 square-foot, 18-bedroom home here in Connecticut last year. Revolution seemed mildly risible to everybody else onstage, in which case they’ve badly misread the level of discontent in this country.

He was talking to the rest of us. When you decide you’re less interested in winning and more interested in saying what you believe, all kinds of possibilities open up. It’s tough to know how well Sanders’s call for a carbon tax and for a Scandinavian-style welfare state will play with a general electorate, but, damn, it was refreshing to hear somebody tell the unfettered truth about climate change, income inequality and the “billionaire class that has so much power” over our political system.

“Congress doesn’t regulate Wall Street; Wall Street regulates Congress,” was the line of the night. Boldly announcing, as Sanders did, that the voters are “sick and tired of hearing about” Hillary Clinton’s “damn emails” was a smooth move that helped Sanders more than it helped Clinton.

Going into tonight, I thought Sanders’ candidacy had a limited lifespan, a boutique voter base and a purpose confined to pushing Hillary Clinton and the press on progressive issues.

Now, somehow, it all seems a little bigger than that. Like Donald Trump, Sanders is talking past the media establishment and permanent political class. Unlike Trump, he has something to say and a long record of voting and speaking on these issues.

It wasn’t a terrible night for Hillary Clinton, and in the early going, she won a round or two from Sanders, especially on guns, where the Vermont senator seemed surprisingly spineless vis a vis what he kept calling the “rural” character of gun users in his home state. Really? You can take on Wall Street but you can’t stand up to a few hundred jacklighters in the Green Mountain State?

But Clinton’s biggest weakness – laid out by Cooper in an early question about her chameleon-like changes to fit the coloration of her political environment – is Sanders’ biggest strength. As Mirabeau said of Robespierre, “He will go far. He believes everything he says.”

Jon Ralston in the Reno News Gazette:

I have watched a lot of debates, and rarely has one person stood out so dominantly as the former secretary of state did against Bernie Sanders (he won’t lose his base but did nothing to expand it), Martin O’Malley (solid close but did little else to break out of obscurity), Jim Webb (he complained about not speaking enough) and Lincoln Chafee (was he lost?).

Clinton had one notable, Kerryesque gaffe – “I never took a position on Keystone until I took a position on Keystone.” But Clinton was the only one on stage who looked presidential, who seemed calm and in command of the issues and who cemented her prohibitive favorite status.

And to the Audience of One that really mattered, she said to Joe Biden: Where’s your opening, Joe?

Biden, if he really wants to run and can overcome the tragic death of his son, can’t have seen much daylight watching Hillary and the dwarves. She surely reassure donors and supporters that this is her time – she did happen to mention a few times that being the first woman president is what Biden would call a BFD.

The Daily Beast later had this ADDITIONAL TAKE:

Like Daenerys Targaryen, the warrior queen of Game of Thrones, Hillary Clinton moved in on her opponents Tuesday night, reminding them one by one why she will ultimately rule. All this Khaleesi was missing, it seemed, was her three hungry dragons.

So here’s the question: was Clinton that good in the CNN debate, or were her opponents just that awful?

She certainly benefited from the comparison. Where Clinton was polished and prepared, the others all came off as comparatively amateurish. As they gave their answers, she stared through them as they avoided her gaze. She threw punches when she thought it was necessary. They, more or less, avoided every opportunity to punch back. She came across as strong. They all looked weak.

Clinton knew when to look in the camera, and when to look at her opponents. And it looked like she was loving every moment of devouring her rivals.

Her main rival, Bernie Sanders, sustained mortal wounds within the first few minutes.

After giving a C- answer about his relatively lax record on gun control, Clinton didn’t waste any time burning him to a crisp.

….. At times it felt like Sanders tended to fall asleep between questions and was caught stammering when the spotlight returned to him.

Not that Clinton is completely out of the woods—her testimony in front of the Benghazi committee next week will be watched closely by fans and critics alike. And several tranches of State Department emails have yet to be released. There’s no telling whether Clinton did enough Tuesday night to stop her slide in the polls or make voters trust her again.

But this performance was proof positive she is the top of the Democratic field—and if candidates from her party want to take her down, they are going to need a lot more than old, expired legislation and accusations about her cozy relationship with Wall Street to keep her from the Iron Throne.

BLOGS:
—Washington Monthly’s Ed Kilgore did “live blogging.” One of his late entries:

Haven’t really had time to think, but I’d say at this point both Sanders and Clinton are delivering pretty much what their supporters wanted. Bernie may have the advantage of a few more good lines, but HRC’s tone has stayed steadier. I shudder to think what Fred Davis would do with Sanders yelling for “revolution.”

Peter Dao and Tom Watson writing on the blog Hillarymen:

What happens when the anti-Hillary media filter is lifted and she isn’t hijacked by email server questions?

The public sees a brilliant, powerful, experienced leader. Someone who is on track to demolish the ultimate gender barrier in American politics.

As dedicated progressives, we are fans of Bernie Sanders and have been for years. He had one of the great moments of the debate when he said America was “tired of hearing about the damn emails!”

How right he is.

The first Democratic debate was a major inflection point, where America got to see why Hillary is the best candidate to succeed President Obama. And it was a wake up call to the media and commentariat, whose incessant focus on arcane server questions has been a national embarrassment.

Political observers have already declared Hillary the winner of the Democratic debate. We’re less interested in calling a winner than in reiterating this fact: Hillary is a singularly qualified presidential candidate, with a unique combination of skills, accomplishments and personal attributes.

The popular conservative blog Red State:

Liberal pundits always indulge the conceit, when opinion about Republican debates, that they know how Republicans will perceive candidate performances in a primary debate. I’m going to try to avoid that with a frank admission that I haven’t the slightest ability to place myself in the shoes of a Democrat primary voter and predict accurately what they will think about how the candidates.

That said, it seems impossible to score this particular debate any other way. Lincoln Chafee’s presence on stage was both pointless and creepy. Jim Webb was the only candidate on stage who made occasional substantive sense, but he spent half of his time complaining about not getting any questions. I’m still not sure what the point of Martin O’Malley’s candidacy is, other than to be seen on stage licking Hillary’s boots.

The only two candidates on stage who mattered were Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders. As between the two of them, Hillary came off (to me) as the clear winner on both style and substance. Hillary was (astonishingly) much more likeable and personable than everyone’s favorite crazy socialist uncle. She had few to no cringe inducing moments. She deftly threw red meat to the base when presented with the opportunity without saying anything that would hurt her in the general.

Sanders, on the other hand, failed to land a single substantive glove on Clinton and further came off as mostly an empty (and ill fitting) suit. For all that Sanders has been talked up as a guy who has been drawing huge crowds with lengthy speeches that are chock full of wonkish policy details, Sanders was remarkably pat and cliche in virtually all his answers, frequently looked downright confused, and made his biggest impressions when agreeing with what Hillary said.

–The dogs sock puppet had an interesting take in a diary on Daily Kos:

After the response to my five year old daughter’s original musings on the last Republican debate (http://www.dailykos.com/…), she was eager to share her thoughts on the first Democratic debate. She actually rushed us home from dinner at a local Indian restaurant to catch the opening statements… leaving her Tikka Masala relatively untouched.

After opening statements, her first comment was, “This debate show is too much of a grown up thing.”

I guess the implication was that the Republican debate was not a grown up affair.

I said, “Yes it is honey. Yes it is.”

I began to ask her about each individual candidate.

First up Sanders: That guy looks like a grandpa. Is he a grandpa?

O’Malley: He looks sad and his voice is trying to be too loud.

Clinton: I like her. I like her lipstick (sidebar, it actually looked like she wasn’t wearing very much). I like her earrings and I like her cheeks. Her voice is loud and clear.

Webb: His hair is too short and his voice is kind of quiet and whiny.

Sanders: What is that dot on his coat? (I guess she noticed that it was a dot instead of an American flag pin. I had to say I didn’t know. Does anyone else know so I can share with her tomorrow?)

Read the entire post to see what this debate analyst concluded.
—The conservative website Townhall:

And so it came to pass. Mrs. Clinton presented herself as the experienced, hyper-informed, trailblazing adult in the room throughout the evening, directing almost all of her verbal punches at Republicans. Only once did she directly attack one of her rivals: Bernie Sanders, (predictably) on gun control, perhaps the only issue on which she can credibly outflank him to the left. In spite of her hedging on in-state tuition for illegal immigrants and marijuana legalization, extremely weak answers on Libya and trade, and unresponsive dismissiveness on her burgeoning email scandal (her denunciation of Edward Snowden for his handling of sensitive information was quite rich), Clinton won the debate. She established herself as the only plausible nominee on the stage — benefitting greatly, I suspect, from Bernie Sanders’ performance in the long run. He’ll delight his base and raise a lot of small donor money, but many Democratic voters will ultimately recognize that he’s unelectable in a general election. She was prepared and polished; he was passionate, but a bit frazzled, appearing to lose is train of thought on several occasions. Remember, it took an extremely skilled communicator and a dynamic debater to upend Hillary Clinton in 2008, effectively and authentically taking her apart from the left without alienating the general electorate. Nobody on that stage tonight is capable of beating her in the same way this cycle.

–-Crooks and Liars:

Here’s another fine moment at the Democratic Debate where the candidates actually seem Presidential. The Democrats discussed substantive issues and used reason and logic to explain their views.

….This was such a nice change from both GOP debates which focused largely on: taking away a woman’s right to choose, regressing back to Old Testament law, polluting the planet, punishing LGBT Americans and repealing the Fourteenth Amendment. This Las Vegas debate was head and shoulders above the infantile banter that the Republicans passed off as a Presidential debate.

—Pajamas Media’s Stephen Green aka Vodka Pundit (his excellent conservative blog which later moved to the PJ Media site) did his famous live (or drunk) blogging. Here’s some of his conclusion:

The debate was everything we expected — and less.

Nobody was willing to take on Clinton’s biggest weaknesses, and so Hillary didn’t have to get down in the dirt with the plebes — where she would have lost.

Anderson Cooper had his thumb on the scale for Clinton like Candy Crowley with her entire self on the scale for Obama in 2012.

The pundits can claim “X had a good night because of Y,” but none of that matters because nobody drew blood on Clinton. She’ll take a hit in Iowa, get creamed in New Hampshire — then come back swinging in South Carolina. Nothing we saw tonight changes that electoral math. She’ll be the Democrats’ Comeback Kid of 2016, a mere quarter century after her husband earned that title — for real — in his race for the nomination.

TWITTER:

I can't be the only person really wondering about Lincoln Chaffee at this point, right?

— Christopher Hayes (@chrislhayes) October 14, 2015

JOE GANDELMAN, Editor-In-Chief

Joe Gandelman is a former fulltime journalist who freelanced in India, Spain, Bangladesh and Cypress writing for publications such as the Christian Science Monitor and Newsweek. He also did radio reports from Madrid for NPR’s All Things Considered. He has worked on two U.S. newspapers and quit the news biz in 1990 to go into entertainment. He also has written for The Week and several online publications, did a column for Cagle Cartoons Syndicate and has appeared on CNN.

themoderatevoice.com/