And now the spin from partisans of Hillary Clinton, Bernie Sanders and the Republicans will begin: in columns, on blogs, on cable and on Monday on talk radio shows. There will be more cherry-picking than during cherry season. But did the debate substantially change anything for Clinton, Sanders or a third candidate who is doomed to be a footnote, former Maryland Gov. Martin O’Malley? Political junkies and partisans will litigate every statement, but the coming days will likely answer that question, as intense spin aimed at creating perceptions of winners and losers unfolds. But most likely? The debate more likely than not will not create a huge movement in one direction or another.

Clinton and Sanders made immediate headlines tongiht. But the scheduling of these Democratic Party debates make you wonder if the Democratic National Committee’s goal was to get the kind of ratings that a “Pat Boone Sings Aerosmith” special would get.

The two immediately headlines from the debate:

1. Hillary Clinton called GOP front-runner Donald Trump ISIS’ “best recruiter” due to the way he’s spreading fear:

Hillary Clinton came out swinging at Donald Trump during the Democratic debate Saturday night, calling him ISIS’s “best recruiter.”

Former Secretary of State Clinton was asked whether Trump’s thousands of fans are all wrong in their support for him. “A lot of people are understandably reacting out of fear and anxiety,” she said. “Mr. Trump has a great capacity to use bluster and bigotry to inflame people and to make them think there are easy answers to very complex questions,” she said.

Clinton also said that the country needed “to make sure the really discriminatory messages that Trump is sending around the world don’t fall on receptive ears. He is becoming ISIS’s best recruiter. They are going out people showing videos of Donald Trump insulting Islam and Muslims in order to recruit more radical jihadists.”

2. Bernie Sanders apologized to Hillary Clinton about the controversial data breach:

Within the first 10 minutes of their third debate on Saturday, the three Democrats running for president put the nastiest controversy of their campaign so far behind them, agreeing that a campaign data breach wasn’t significant enough to bicker over on a national stage.
Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders apologized Saturday to Hillary Clinton for his staffers taking advantage of a data glitch to access some of her campaign’s voter files.
“Yes, I apologize,” Sanders said near the start of the ABC News debate at Saint Anselm College in Manchester, New Hampshire. “I want to apologize to my supporters. This is not the type of campaign that we run.”
In the nearly two days since news of the data breach broke, Clinton’s aides have asserted, privately and publicly, that Sanders’ team stole from them. On stage, the candidate was more magnanimous. “I very much appreciate that comment, Bernie, it really is important that we go forward on this,” she said.
The data breach created some unexpected tension in what appeared likely to be another routine Saturday night scuffle for the three-person Democratic field – Clinton trying to do no harm to her front-running campaign, Sanders attempting to gain traction to overtake her, former Maryland Governor Martin O’Malley pushing for few moments that might convince undecided voters to, at the very least, check out his website – which he promoted in his first answer.

Here’s now the new and old media are reacting to this latest debate. An annotated transcript can be found HERE.

The Washington Post:

Sen. Bernie Sanders and former secretary of state Hillary Clinton sparred over fiscal issues, national security and guns on Saturday night as the final televised Democratic presidential debate exposed some sharp differences between the party’s two leading candidates.

Sanders (Vt.) cast Clinton as too hawkish, arguing that she is advocating overly aggressive strategies in the Middle East. Clinton chided Sanders for not embracing stronger gun control laws earlier in his career. And she slammed his single-payer health-care plan, arguing its creation would impose steep costs.

Both candidates appeared eager to turn the page on the biggest development coming into the debate: A spat over Clinton campaign voter data that Sanders staffers improperly viewed after a glitch in a Democratic National Committee database. Sanders apologized and Clinton quickly accepted.

Former Maryland governor Martin O’Malley, a long-shot hopeful, went on offense against the two front-runners, casting himself as a new generation candidate with a more proven and liberal record than his opponents. But for the most part, the back-and-forth between Clinton and Sanders dominated the evening.

The three candidates all spoke at length about reforms to combat heroin addiction, including curbing the over-prescribing of opiates, changing law enforcement responses and setting aside more government funding to deal with the crisis.

The New York Times:

Hillary Clinton and Senator Bernie Sanders put aside the hard feelings over his campaign’s breach of her voter data in the third Democratic presidential debate on Saturday night, opting to stick to the civil discourse that has marked the race.

Mr. Sanders explained what he knew about the data breach and offered an apology to Mrs. Clinton and to his supporters for letting them down.

“This is not the type of campaign that we run,” Mr. Sanders said, promising to fire anyone else involved in stealing such information.

Mrs. Clinton said that she accepted the apology and that she also wanted to move forward.

With just six weeks until the Iowa caucuses, Mrs. Clinton’s two rivals are running out of time to blunt her momentum. Since last month’s debate, the former secretary of state has widened her lead in national polls and most state polls, although Mr. Sanders is keeping the race close in New Hampshire, which holds its first-in-the-nation primary eight days after the Iowa caucuses.

While the debate started on a cordial note, the candidates did not hold back on highlighting their differences. Martin O’Malley, the former Maryland governor, who is under pressure to make his mark, repeatedly injected himself into the discussion, scolding Mrs. Clinton and Mr. Sanders on their records on gun control and painting himself as the true progressive on the stage.

Los Angeles Times:

The former secretary of State, who has pledged she would not raise taxes on families earning less than $250,000, warned that Sanders’ promises of free college for everyone and single-payer healthcare were unrealistic.

“You are going to have to get more taxes out of the middle class” to fund the Sanders agenda, she said. “I don’t think we should be imposing new big programs that are going to be raising middle-class families’ taxes.”

Sanders declared flatly: “Secretary Clinton is wrong.”

Her warnings against the social programs he is pushing puts her at odds with luminaries in the Democratic Party, including Franklin D. Roosevelt and Lyndon Johnson, Sanders said. Clinton’s cost estimates do not factor in the savings middle-class families will experience when they no longer have to pay for private health insurance or college tuition, he said.

But the candidates saved most of their harshest language for a Republican, Donald Trump. None of the other Republicans were mentioned by name.

Clinton said the New York billionaire was “becoming ISIS’ best recruiter” because of his proposal to ban most Muslims from entering the U.S. and other remarks that many Muslims see as aimed at them.

Former Maryland Gov. Martin O’Malley decried what he called the “fascist pleas of billionaires with big mouths.”

O’Malley, who has languished in the polls, was newly aggressive Saturday, going after both Clinton and Sanders on gun control.

He called Sanders to task for his previous support of gun legislation backed by the National Rifle Assn. that shielded gun makers from civil suits, and for his opposition to the Brady Bill and other gun control laws.

He also attacked Clinton for, as he put it, changing her view on gun laws with every election year.

“Look, what we need on this issue is not more polls. We need more principle,” he said.

“Whoa, whoa,” Sanders replied. “Let’s calm down a little bit, Martin.”

“Tell the truth,” Clinton said. “I applaud his record in Maryland. I just wish he wouldn’t misrepresent mine,” she added.

Clinton also offered a backhanded compliment to Sanders on the gun issue, noting that he had shifted position and was now closer to her view.

The Huffington Post notes that O’Malley, whose candidacy has not exactly caught on, was booed when he dissed Sanders and Clinton due to their ages:

Former Maryland Gov. Martin O’Malley tried to jump into an exchange between Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) and former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton on the issue of what to do in Syria with the line: “May I offer a different generation’s perspective on this?”

The audience booed him, the first boos of the night.

Clinton is 68, Sanders is 74 and O’Malley — still not a millennial — is 52.

O’Malley then criticized the old Dulles-era mindset of choosing winners and losers in the world.

“During the Cold War, we got into a bad habit of always looking to see who was wearing the jersey of the communists and who was wearing the U.S. jersey,” O’Malley continued. “We got into a bad habit of creating big bureaucracies, old methodologies to undermine regimes that were not friendly to the United States.”

Clinton then asked to respond, saying O’Malley has made “all kinds of” — she paused — “comments.”

Politico had 14 key moments from the debate. Here’s the list. Go to the original to read the details:

1. Sanders apologizes for data breach
2. Clinton: Trump is ISIL’s ‘best recruiter’
3. Sanders raises Iraq War vote on foreign policy
4. Clinton: U.S. “where we need to be” on ISIS
5. O’Malley thunders away on guns to contrast with opponents
6. Clinton calls for gun control as part of terrorism response
7. Clinton splits with New Hampshire’s governor on halting refugees
8. O’Malley reminds everyone he’s younger than Clinton and Sanders
9. We find out how Sanders has fun
10. Clinton disappears
11. ‘Everybody should’
Clinton wriggled out of a question about her ties to big business with a laugh line. When Muir asked if corporate America should “love Clinton,” she replied: “Everybody should.”

12. Sanders gives King Abdullah a shout-out

13. The role of the first lady — or gentleman14. Many Bothans died to bring us this broadcast

Gaius Septimus diary on Daily Kos:

Hillary Clinton dominated throughout, again. Her class in answering Sanders’ apology wins the day in my book. No rancor, nothing more than, “Move on.”

Her answers on the economy, on the need for American leadership, her relentless attack on Trump as the chief recruiter for ISIS, all of that shows her preparedness to take on the GOP in the next stage. I would like to see that poise, knowledge and firmness directed at the GOP…

I would love to have her voice in the White House. Let’s have the primaries. And then let’s defeat the GOP and bring more positive change to our country. Hillary Clinton is ready.

NPR:

Democrats’ third debate focused on foreign policy and national security, all staking out positions different from and critical of their Republican counterparts.

A new controversy that had rocked the normally cordial Democratic race was expected to be a flashpoint, after a software glitch in data files provided to all candidates by the Democratic National Committee allowed the campaign of Bernie Sanders to see proprietary data from Hillary Clinton’s campaign. The DNC suspended Sanders’s access to the data, provoking charges of favoritism for Clinton, but later restored his access. The Clinton campaign had fired back, saying its critical information had been “stolen” in an “egregious breach” and suggested laws may have been broken.

It was the first question the moderators asked, and Sanders said it was the fault of the software company but that his staffers still acted improperly and apologized to Clinton. She accepted, and the war of words that their surrogates had been carrying on didn’t materialize on the debate stage Saturday evening. There were no charges from Sanders, either, that the DNC had been playing favorites to try to help Clinton, as his campaign and supporters had suggested.

Instead, the debate focused mainly on national security issues, with some big divides becoming apparent between the candidates. Sanders and former Maryland Gov. Martin O’Malley each hit Clinton for being too open to regime change in the Middle East. Sanders, who has struggled on foreign policy before, showed a better grasp this time, explaining how he’d engage Muslim fighters to combat ISIS abroad.

But Clinton showed a command of foreign policy — long her strong suit after her time at the State Department — even as moderator Martha Raddatz pressed her on many decisions and positions. Many times she turned her fire toward Republicans, and Donald Trump specifically, as she seemed to already be looking ahead to the general election.

‘
Slate has a list of best lines from the debate

Politico has a piece about the “fourth man” in the debate:

In the first half hour of the Democratic debate, the Republican candidate one would expect to be mentioned on such an occasion came up on multiple occasions.
Asked how she would address those who are currently supporting Donald Trump, Hillary Clinton claimed that Islamic State terrorists are using the Manhattan businessman to recruit new jihadists.
“Well I think a lot of people are understandably reacting out of fear and anxiety about what they’re seeing” after the attacks in Paris and San Bernardino, Clinton said, adding, “Mr. Trump has a great capacity to use bluster and bigotry to inflame people and to make them think there are easy answers to very complex questions.”
“So what I would say is we need to be united against the threats that we face,” the former secretary of state continued. “We need to have everybody in our country focused on watching what happens and reporting it if it is suspicious, reporting what you hear, making sure that Muslim Americans don’t feel left out or marginalized at the very moment when we need their help.”
She later blasted Trump for his comments on Muslims, calling it ill-advised to insult those in countries with whom the U.S. would need to work with to defeat the Islamic State.
Bernie Sanders also laid into Trump, calling this a “very dangerous moment in American history” because of the threat of terrorism and income inequality.

“And somebody like a Trump comes along and says, ‘I know the answers, the answer is that all of the Mexicans, they’re criminals and rapists. We gotta hate the Mexicans. Those are your enemies. We hate all of the Muslims because all of the Muslims are terrorists. We gotta hate the Muslims.’ Meanwhile the rich get richer,” Sanders said, adding that he would tell Trump’s supporters that their candidate thinks a low minimum wage is a good idea.

A CROSS SECTION OF TWEETS:
University of Virginia Political Scientist Larry Sabato is one of the country’s best and most accurate political analysts and prognosticators. Here are a few of his tweets:

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.

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