Saturday’s Democratic Presidential debate, in Manchester, New Hampshire, reaffirmed the Party’s two paths forward: experience and moderate reformism, or passion and an assault on privilege. Photograph by Jim Cole / AP

The Democratic National Committee made a big mistake staging the third Presidential-primary debate, which was held at Saint Anselm College in Manchester, New Hampshire, on a Saturday night, when millions of potential viewers wouldn’t be watching. The debate was lively, informative, and civil. Apart from a brief diversion into whether former President Bill Clinton, should he become the first First Gentleman of the United States, would be entrusted with selecting flowers and menus for official occasions—his wife said that he wouldn’t—it was also substantive. And excluding, for a moment, Martin O’Malley, it reaffirmed the choice facing Democratic voters: experience, moderate reformism, and vigorous engagement abroad (Hillary Clinton) versus passion, an assault on privilege, and an abiding skepticism about overseas military engagements (Bernie Sanders).

All three of the participants had reason to be pleased with their performances. Clinton, who went in with a big lead in the polls, projected calm, confidence, and a command of the issues. About the only slip-up she made was being a bit late back from a bathroom break, which left her lectern briefly unoccupied. Throughout the debate, she seemed almost as intent on appealing to voters in the general election as she was on cementing her position atop the Democratic polls. To this end, she issued a firm pledge not to raise taxes on households earning less than a quarter of a million dollars a year, said some kind words about American enterprise, and insisted that she has a workable plan to defeat ISIS and protect the United States against the threat of terrorism.

Sanders was also in fine fettle. He railed against an economic and political system that had been “rigged” for the benefit of the ultra-wealthy. He gave a rousing defense of his progressive domestic agenda, which includes breaking up the big banks, abolishing tuition fees at public universities, and investing a trillion dollars in infrastructure. Somewhat unusually for Sanders, he also invoked some personal details, describing his humble upbringing, in Brooklyn, and calling on Americans to join his effort to bring about a “political revolution.” He, too, promised to crush ISIS, but he differentiated himself from Clinton by saying that this goal must take precedence over removing Syrian President Bashar al-Assad from power.

O’Malley sought to promote himself as the technocratic voice of a new generation, much like Bill Clinton did when he faced George H. W. Bush, in the 1992 general election. The former Maryland governor made some good points, especially about the need to preserve liberal values in the fight against terrorism. Occasionally, however, he overdid the youthful bit: after all, at the age of fifty-two, he is hardly a stripling. At one point, he was showered with boos from supporters of the two senior citizens in the race.

The subject of ISIS and terrorism dominated the first half of the debate. All three candidates were understandably keen to criticize the Republican front-runner, Donald Trump, and they each made a good show of it. O’Malley didn’t wait long. In his opening statement, he rolled out the F-bomb, saying that America would defeat the challenge of ISIS but only “if we hold true to the values and the freedoms that unite us, which means we must never surrender them to terrorists, must never surrender our Americans values to racists, must never surrender to the fascist pleas of billionaires with big mouths.”

Clinton was a bit more diplomatic, but only a bit. Asked if the millions of Americans who agree with Trump about his proposed ban on non-American Muslims entering the United States were wrong, she said, “Mr. Trump has a great capacity to use bluster and bigotry to inflame people and to make them think there are easy answers to very complex questions,” she said. A bit later on, Clinton claimed that statements by Republicans, and especially Trump, fan the "flames of radicalization.” And she also said, “He is becoming ISIS’s best recruiter. They are going to people showing videos of Donald Trump insulting Islam and Muslims in order to recruit more radical jihadists.”

Sanders said that Trump’s popularity reflected the fact that Americans are fearful of another terrorist attack, but he also placed it in the context of stagnant wages, rising inequality, and widespread disaffection with the political process. “Somebody like a Trump comes along and says, ‘I know the answers. The answer is that all of the Mexicans, they’re criminals and rapists. We’ve got to hate the Mexicans. Those are your enemies. We hate all the Muslims, because all of the Muslims are terrorists. We’ve got to hate the Muslims.’ Meanwhile, the rich get richer,” Sanders said.

On Syria, all of the candidates agreed on the need to strike ISIS from the air and to raise a Sunni army to attack jihadi fighters on the ground. As usual, Clinton sounded the most gung ho. She expressed support for the Obama Administration’s policy of sending special-operations forces and ground trainers to Iraq and Syria. She also repeated her call for the establishment of no-fly zones inside Syria, which she said wouldn’t necessarily involve shooting down Russian and Syrian government planes because the zones would be “de-conflicted”—whatever that means.

Sanders was far more skeptical about extending American involvement beyond bombing. He quoted Jordan’s King Abdullah II, who has said that Muslim troops should do the fighting, and (echoing Trump on this issue, strangely enough) he asserted that the United States could not fight ISIS and Assad at the same time. After expressing concern that “Secretary Clinton is too much into regime change and a little bit too aggressive without knowing what the unintended consequences might be,” Sanders went on: “Yes, we could get rid of Saddam Hussein, but that destabilized the entire region. Yes, we could get rid of Qaddafi, a terrible dictator, but that created a vacuum for ISIS. Yes, we could get rid of Assad tomorrow, but that would create another political vacuum that would benefit ISIS.”

When the discussion turned to domestic issues, it produced more contrasts between Clinton and Sanders. In confirming her pledge not to raise taxes on any households making less than two hundred and fifty thousand dollars a year, Clinton said, “I don’t think we should be imposing new big programs that are going to raise middle-class families’ taxes.” Sanders, however, was quick to point out an important implication of this commitment, which would exempt all but the richest two or three per cent of American families from the possibility of paying more to the Treasury: it rules out the introduction of any new programs modelled along the lines of Social Security and Medicare, which are financed by universal taxes.

“She is disagreeing with F.D.R. on Social Security, L.B.J. on Medicare, and with the vast majority of progressive Democrats in the House and the Senate, who today are fighting to end the disgrace of the United States being the only major country on Earth that doesn’t provide paid family and medical leave,” Sanders said. He claimed that his own proposal for paid leave would cost the typical household just $1.61 a week. “Now, you can say that’s a tax on the middle class. It will provide three months paid family and medical leave for the working families of this country. I think, Secretary Clinton, $1.61 a week is a pretty good investment,” he said.