A serious candidacy brought out the absurd questions.

(snip)

Sanders chuckled along with the audience. Warren seemed almost surprised, at first, that she hadn’t been asked to litigate the essential truth of the claim, as CNN had granted her the assumption that her version was correct. She quickly transitioned, though, to an effective monologue about how the men on the stage had collectively lost 10 elections, and she was the only candidate on stage who had beaten an incumbent Republican in the past 30 years.

(snip)

The moderators, however, had a clear focus, and it was Sanders. Their treatment of him reflected his dual status in the race: As a plausible front-runner in a narrowing field, he was due to receive sustained scrutiny; as the candidate furthest past the left edge of establishment politics, he faced questions that framed his positions as facially unrealistic, or dangerously in league with the Ayatollah Khamenei. The Sanders campaign has complained—not unreasonably—for much of the past year that the media has erased or ignored the candidate, even as he’s run a strong and steady race. Tuesday’s debate showed that they don’t have to worry about the press refusing to pay attention to him anymore.

(snip)

Sanders was later asked about how his health care plan would eliminate insurance industry jobs in Iowa. All of it built up to the Ur-question, asked near the end of the debate: “More than two-thirds of voters say they are not enthusiastic about voting for a socialist. Doesn’t that put your chances of beating Donald Trump at risk?”

Bernie Sanders is a big boy. If he’s the nominee—or even if he just wins Iowa, in the ensuing Democratic freakout—he should, and presumably does, expect to field not just extreme scrutiny, but extreme scrutiny that assumes the absurdity of his positions or electability, every minute of his life. In that respect, Tuesday’s debate was good preparation for the second half of the cycle. The only surprise is that it took debate moderators this long to recognize he was worth the time.


https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2020/01/iowa-presidential-debate-bernie-sanders.html