Bernie Sanders was the clear winner in the first debate among candidates for the Democratic Party's presidential nomination. And it wasn’t because he is more “likable” than the front-runner, Hillary Clinton. He won because he is more honest.

Hillary Clinton's “likeability” has received a lot of attention over the years. Does she come across as warm and caring? Does she have a sense of humor? Is her laugh convincing? In the 2008 primaries, President Barack Obama famously offered his rival a backhanded compliment, calling her “likable enough.”

For some voters, or at least some Beltway pundits, likability is a compelling factor in deciding who to vote for. But for many of us, it is not. Some voters actually watch debates to discern the candidates’ beliefs on the issues of the day — and last night’s debate revealed far more about the candidates’ beliefs and priorities than it did about their temperaments.

The debate was promoted on CNN as a kind of cage fight for political nerds: “Democratic candidates in one another's face for the first time” read the text at the bottom of the screen. It lived up to the hype: Anderson Cooper, the moderator, was dogged in asking challenging questions and extracting clear and unambiguous answers from reluctant candidates. The tone of those answers was less aggressive; unlike in the Republican debates, the candidates voiced coherent and often reasonable opinions that revealed substantive differences in their views on policy. Only one candidate, Jim Webb, bragged about killing a man, and none spoke hatefully about women or Mexicans (though the fact that this makes the Democrats looks good speaks to the soft bigotry of low expectations!).

Bernie Sanders was the only candidate who wasn't visibly resentful of Cooper’s confrontational tone. When pressed on gun control, the only issue on which Sanders is assailable from the left, he was honest and open about his record on guns — a record for which many on the left will fault him — and open about his reasons for voting no on the 1993 Brady bill, which sought to impose background checks on firearm sales. He represents a rural state, he explained, and voted the way his constituents wanted him to. He has also become a bigger proponent of gun control in recent years, supporting a bill to ban semi-automatic weapons and another to require background checks for people who buy firearms at gun shows (this won him a D- rating from the NRA — respectable, by liberal standards.)

By contrast, Sanders’ rivals resorted to lame excuses to justify or absolve them of their past mistakes. When asked about his 1999 vote to repeal a key provision of the Glass Steagall Act — thus removing a Depression-era bar between commercial banking and investment banking — Lincoln Chafee said “You're being rough on me,” without acknowledging how deregulation contributed to the 2008 financial crisis. When Cooper pressed her on the loss of American life in Benghazi, Hillary Clinton snarled, “I'll get to that.” I’m sure she is as sick of answering questions about Benghazi as most Americans are of hearing about it. What’s more, it’s an episode for which she doesn’t bear nearly as much responsibility as Republicans self-righteously claim. But it was an ill-timed outburst that called attention to her inability even to pretend she feels as if she should have to explain herself — to Anderson Cooper, the voting public, or anyone else.