Round Two, El Caballero y La Dama

Last night was substantive, calm, rational, and revealing.  This evening we're probably back to the shouting and hand-waving and accusations and such.

The next Democratic debate is tonight at 9 pm Eastern. It will take place at the University of New Hampshire in Durham, and will air on MSNBC. An online live stream will be available at MSNBC.com. 

This debate wasn't on the sparse original list of six that the Democratic National Committee approved. But when NBC and the New Hampshire Union Leader decided to host an "unsanctioned" debate between the Iowa caucuses and New Hampshire primary, without the DNC's approval, Hillary Clinton — who seemed to regret her allies' role in limiting the debates, and hoped for an opportunity to shrink Bernie Sanders's large lead in New Hampshire — said she'd show up. The Sanders team then used the opening to get Clinton to agree to three more debates in exchange for his own attendance. 

The upshot is that this will be the first face-off between the two candidates since they fought to a virtual tie in the Iowa caucuses. And it will also be the first featuring only Clinton and Sanders, since Martin O'Malley suspended his campaign Monday night.

Again from last night, I saw it as among Bernie Sanders' finest public moments.  He simply communicates with a sincerity and a humility that Hillary Clinton cannot.  She didn't really have too many bad moments; it's just that she comes off as your standard 'say anything' politician when you have the opportunity to compare the two closely.

This debate comes just five days before the February 9 New Hampshire primary — a primary Bernie Sanders is expected to win, since Clinton has trailed him in state polls for most of the past six months. 

Weirdly enough, this seriously raises the stakes of tonight's debate for Sanders. Because if he loses New Hampshire to Clinton, it will be interpreted as a major blow to his campaign. The Granite State is a really good fit for Sanders both geographically (he represents neighboring Vermont) and demographically (it's overwhelmingly white, and white Democrats are more likely to back him). And the next states to vote — Nevada and South Carolina — seem to favor Clinton. 

That's why Clinton was so eager to add this debate — to give her the chance to turn her numbers in New Hampshire around, and perhaps even pull off an improbable come-from-behind victory there like she did in 2008. If Clinton triumphs in New Hampshire, she could deflate Sanders's campaign early, and roll to victory elsewhere.

She'll roll no matter what happens tonight or on February 9.  I've been saying it since the summer.

It's nice to have hope and to be inspired, but the deck is stacked too strongly against him.  Maybe I'm just cynical after watching politics so closely for the past decade-plus, and after getting my hopes up with people like Howard Dean in 2004, David Van Os in 2006, John Edwards in 2008, and more recently Wendy Davis in 2014 and Chris Bell in the last municipal cycle.

Unsurprisingly, then, the contest between them has been getting more tense. In recent days, Sanders has more aggressively questioned Clinton's progressive credentials, criticizing her for raising money on Wall Street and voting for the Iraq war. And Clinton has been been increasingly focused on gun control, one of the few issues she has a more liberal record than Sanders on — while sowing doubts about Sanders's electability. Expect all these topics to come up quite a bit tonight.

Since New Hampshire is a primary, at least we won't have any coin flips.

I used to be a big, big proponent of caucuses, but not any more.

Update: A party divided.

What's the most you ever lost on a coin toss?

The stakes weren't as high as if you had the misfortune of meeting Anton Chigurh, but the answer to his question with regard to the Iowa Democratic Caucus events is: "perhaps our democracy", and with respect to certain Clinton supporters... their dignity.

Last night, as the story of the coin tosses in some Iowa precincts began to take on Kennedy-assassination dimensions (among both believers and heretics, mind you) I thought I would join the fun in teasing the Clintonistas a little about it.  I had not been online much of the afternoon and some of the evening, so I didn't know that so many people had already lost their sense of humor about the matter.  I did post about the six-for-six yesterday, and did research a little further and received a good answer about the county delegates versus the national delegates conflation, which satisfied me.  Steve Kornacki at MSNBC made the same mistake in interpretation that I did, and apologized for it, but I didn't know that either until after the following Twitter exchange.

@MargaretClancy @PDiddie Except we now know there were 13 coin tosses, and Bernie won six of them. Sorry! https://t.co/kdFbkfaqCw

— Susie Madrak (@SusieMadrak) February 3, 2016

Let's disclose that Susie is a long-time Democratic activist and blogger, most recently at Crooks and Liars but now at Blue Nation Review, which is owned by David Brock, who is ... you get the picture.  (Suzie is also my Facebook friend, we've interacted recently and not just on the 2016 campaign, and C&L under her stewardship has linked to Brains several times over the years, producing traffic in the hundreds and even thousands of daily clicks on each occasion.)

Her professional association with Brock isn't the biggest problem here, sadly.  Click on the Blue Nation Review piece -- after the word "Sorry!" in the Tweet above -- and then click on the link she has there to this Des Moines Register story about the coin flips, and then compare it to her excerpt at BNR.

They don't square for me, but the excerpt she used does appear in this DMR story, which I found at the end of this Snopes link, which describes the coin flip caper as a 'mixture' of proven and unproven (and perhaps yet, or never to be, proven) claims.

Update, 1 p.m CST: Susie's fixed the link at the original without noting the correction.  Aren't there journalist rules about that?  (I have a screenshot of the original in case anybody wants it.)

So... in the spirit of snark, I'm offering the following to Madrak and everybody else who feels so upset about the whole thing:

"For a limited time, receive this 'Hillary Clinton Victory in Iowa' coin when you make a $1 campaign contribution!" *We're only asking for a dollar instead of $49.95 plus shipping and handling so that Hillary can demonstrate she has some small donor support, according to James Carville's recent e-mail