DES MOINES, Iowa (AP) – Call it a tale of two debates.
The deadly attacks in Paris cast a somber mood at the start of the second Democratic presidential debate, but the field spent the rest of the night tossing sharp elbows over Wall Street reform, gun control and the minimum wage.
Hillary Rodham Clinton, Bernie Sanders and Martin O’Malley stood for a moment of silence at the start of the debate, their heads bowed and their hands folded. From there, they engaged in a direct but measured discussion during the next 30 minutes over the consequences of the U.S. invasion of Iraq in 2003 and the rise of the Islamic State group.
But the pace of the debate quickly picked up over domestic policy with Sanders and O’Malley challenging Clinton’s willingness to police Wall Street. Clinton put Sanders on the defensive over his vote to shield gun manufacturers from legal liability in fatal shootings. O’Malley accused Clinton of being on “three sides” of gun control, saying she once portrayed herself as Annie Oakley.
Some takeaways from the Des Moines debate: