I have just finished live tweeting tonight’s Democrat debate which took place at Saint Anselm College in Manchester, New Hampshire. 

There wasn’t much of a fight between Hillary and Bernie over the DNC database row. Bernie directed his anger at the DNC rather than Hillary. In fact, Bernie apologized to Hillary which Hillary accepted and didn’t seem eager to dwell upon. Given her damn e-mails, why would she? Martin O’Malley tried to make hay of it without success. 

O’Malley tried to be aggressive early on in the debate (at one point calling Donald Trump a fascist), but it invariably backfired. He went after both Bernie and Hillary over gun control and they fired back. In Hillary’s case, she fired at both O’Malley and Bernie. O’Malley went after Hillary on justifying Wall St. donations by invoking 9/11 while Hillary swatted down that argument by again pointing out that his appointment for Maryland’s consumer protection bureau was from Wall Street. 

The most significant disagreements between Bernie and Hillary concerned military intervention in Syria with Hillary favoring a framework which sees Assad leave office while Bernie arguing that removing Assad would only make ISIS stronger. They also disagreed on taxation with Hillary ruling out tax increases to the middle class while Sanders would not rule them out. When David Muir asked Hillary if corporate America would love her, she replied, “Everybody should love me.” By contrast, Bernie said that corporate America would not love him and that Wall Street would love him even less. O’Malley was largely a non-factor in these discussions.

While Bernie is doing well in New Hampshire, nothing in tonight’s debate takes away Hillary’s frontrunner status. Indeed, Hillary ended the debate by saying, “May the force be with you.” I knew there would be a Star Wars reference in tonight’s debate, I just thought it would come from Bernie. Nope. As far as Democrats are concerned, the force is with Hillary.

The force will likely remain with Hillary when the next Democrat presidential debate takes place on January 17, 2016. This debate will air on NBC.