Contributors Bhaskar Sunkara ( BKS ) Sarah Jaffe ( SJ ) Elizabeth Bruenig ( EB ) Nicole Aschoff ( NA ) Paul Heideman ( PH ) Jesse A. Myerson ( JM )

Last night Lincoln Chafee, Hillary Clinton, Martin O’Malley, Bernie Sanders, and Jim Webb faced off in Las Vegas for the first official Democratic Party presidential debate.

The candidacy, and growing popularity, of Bernie Sanders — a self-described democratic socialist — has piqued the interest of the US left, with many wondering how the Clinton-Sanders exchange would play out.

We laughed, we cried, but mostly we made fun of Jim Webb. Here are some post-debate thoughts from Jacobin contributors: