Milbank: Clinton towers over her Democratic rivals at debate

She parried with ease, refusing to allow moderator Anderson Cooper of CNN and her rivals to get under her skin. She scored points on most of the key Democratic issues — paid sick and family leave, equal pay, gun control, Planned Parenthood, executive pay — and she deflected criticism of her changing views on trade and energy, and her response to the Benghazi attack. She turned Cooper’s question about her email into the highlight of the night.

While repeating that her private email server was a “mistake,” she said the House committee that exposed the issue was “a partisan vehicle, as admitted by the House Republican majority leader, Mr. McCarthy, to drive down my poll numbers.” She added: “I am still standing.”

Sanders, invited to criticize Clinton, instead leaped to her defense. “I think the secretary is right, and that is that the American people are sick and tired of hearing about your damn emails,” he said.

The Democratic partisans cheered. Clinton shook Sanders’ hand and thanked him.

She was, in short, a man among boys. And that’s why the debate was so important to Clinton. She may have had a rough time as the Democrats’ presidential front-runner, but her advantages in experience and composure were clear when she shared a stage with her rivals for the first time.

Hillary looks presidential

A month ago, Clinton was in “free fall” and “plunging” in the polls, giving those who watched her campaign collapse in 2008 a sense of deja vu. Sanders was gaining, the “draft Biden” movement was in full force, and Republicans were giddy with anticipation of her upcoming grilling by the House Benghazi committee.

But a mass shooting in Oregon put the gun-friendly Sanders on the defensive. The Obama administration’s completion of a Pacific trade deal, deeply unpopular on the left, puts Biden on the wrong side of the Democratic electorate on an issue that should be prominent in the headlines over the coming months. And the House Benghazi panel has been discredited by Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy’s incautious admission that the committee was created to damage Clinton politically. Now polls show Clinton recovering and expanding her lead.

Cooper captured the problem with the Sanders candidacy when he said: “The Republican attack ad against you in a general election — it writes itself. You supported the Sandinistas in Nicaragua. You honeymooned in the Soviet Union. And just this weekend, you said you’re not a capitalist.”

Sanders did not help himself by talking about the economic example of Denmark and proclaiming that he’s “gonna win because first, we’re gonna explain what Democratic socialism is.”

He defended socialism; she defended the middle class. Sanders, and the other men on the stage, didn’t look presidential; she did.