A big question. The Cut’s Sarah Jones ponders Sen. Elizabeth Warren’s retort at last night’s presidential debate: “I don’t understand why anybody goes to all the trouble of running for president of the United States just to talk about what we really can’t do and shouldn’t fight for” …
■ … a statement USA Today ranks as the night’s No. 1 top moment.
■ Candidate John Delaney, at whom that barb was aimed: “That’s the response when someone really can’t defend their plans.”
■ Esquire: Delaney is “running for chief killjoy.”
■ Delaney’s Wikipedia page was vandalized to say he died last night.
■ The Atlantic: The debate made clear Democrats “have to get Republicans out of their head.”
‘Is it me or is Marianne Williamson making a lot of sense?’ That’s a question Vox’s Emily Stewart is asking about the presidential candidate and self-help author.
■ The Los Angeles Times: Williamson proved “more than just a meme-worthy figure when she directly called out systemic racism.”
■ Montana Gov. Steve Bullock and Warren split over the question of whether candidates should pledge never to be first to use nuclear weapons …
■ … but Bullock mispronounced “nuclear.”
■ Why didn’t candidate Tim Ryan place his hand over his heart as the national anthem played? (Cartoon: Keith J. Taylor.)
■ … but Buttigieg highlighted his youthfulness at least seven times last night.
The night’s winners and losers? Here are takes from Vox, CNN and PoliticusUSA.
■ Who talked the most?
■ PolitiFact scrutinizes the night’s questionable statements.
■ Read the debate transcript.
■ Variety TV critic Caroline Framke: “CNN’s first debate felt more substantive than NBC’s” …
■ … but Daily Kos says the event was marred by “moderators bent on forcing [candidates] to address right-wing talking points.”
■ Four things to watch in tonight’s Round 2.
‘Deep divisions on health care.’ The Washington Post says “the debate’s first 25 minutes was spent in what amounted to a boxing match” pitting Warren and Sanders—who are pushing to replace private insurance plans with generous government coverage—against most of the others onstage.
■ Sanders’ mic-drop reply when Ryan asked if he could guarantee his “Medicare-for-All” plan would improve union members’ health care—“I wrote the damn bill”—is already a sticker and a T-shirt (from Square advertiser Raygun).
■ Columnist Neil Steinberg is regaling readers with an account of his summer so far: Getting ready for, enduring, then recovering from spinal surgery.
‘He’d better give them something good.’ The Sun-Times’ Mark Brown says Chicago ex-Teamsters boss John Coli’s “conviction and cooperation [with prosecutors] should be understood to be every bit as significant as any alderman known to be under investigation, other than Ed Burke.”
■ A Sun-Times editorial: Coli’s guilty plea raises the curtain on “a seamy underside of the film industry in Chicago.”
■ The city’s Building Department has rejected the latest appeal of Windy City Rehab’s costars—keeping them from doing their thing in Chicago.
No they can’t—yet. A federal review concludes plans for the Obama Presidential Center would have an “adverse impact” on Jackson Park, spelling further delays for the project.
■ FiveThirtyEight: Barack Obama’s record on immigration “could emerge as an important dividing line” in the Democratic presidential primary.
■ Most of the senior staff of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee—presided over by Illinois Rep. Cheri Bustos—is out after what Politico calls an “uproar over diversity.”
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