Clinton won the debate, but Republicans have to feel good

In 1964, I rode an elevator in San Francisco’s Fairmont Hotel with then-California Gov. Pat Brown Sr. (D). It was in front of me that he made his famous statement about the Republican — read Barry Goldwater — convention taking place in the city’s Cow Palace.

{mosads}He basically said that he smelled “the stench of fascism” in the convention hall. If he had been in Las Vegas, he would have been right to say that he smelled “the stench of socialism” in and around the lovefest between the two leading Democrats running for president, Hillary Clinton and Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.).

Clinton won the debate, without question; Sanders simply waved surrender and the other three men on the stage might just as well have been in Atlantic City, N.J.

CNN moderator Anderson Cooper might just as well had been in Atlantic City, as well.

The debate was boring and not substantive on the issues that interest real Americans. Free public college for all? Who is going to pay for it, Sen. Sanders? Paid family leave? Who is going to pay for it, Secretary Clinton? Break up the big banks, Sen. Sanders? Really? Progressive, Secretary Clinton, you call yourself a progressive? How much campaign money have you received from Goldman Sachs executives? How much from Hollywood? How much from Silicon Valley?

The most laughable Clinton comments were about Dreamers, those young people who were brought here illegally as children.

A real moderator would have pinned her down with questions like this:

Secretary Clinton, how do you explain away the several thousands, maybe 5,000 to 10,000 men, women and children, who have died in the deserts and mountains of California and Arizona because your husband, President Clinton, created and implemented Operation Gatekeeper that forced people away from the easy illegal entry routes to killer deserts and mountains?

That was your husband’s immigration policy. Do you still support it? What is your immigration policy and can you get it through Congress? Isn’t that the only constitutional way to make immigration policy and law?

Exactly what do you mean when you state that you will go farther than President Obama — who has never sent Congress a proposal to reform immigration — in using executive orders to bypass Congress in legalizing millions of people illegally here?

I watched and listened to Clinton carefully and arrived at two conclusions.

1. Whichever Republican Clinton runs against next year will win easily; and

2. Despite her waving off the email controversy surrounding her and her total lack of candor and honesty on the subject, the American people do care about her judgment that could potentially allow hackers access to classified information.

Ask the agents of the FBI who seized Clinton’s private email server and four from the State Department as well as all hardware from two different private firms that handled her accounts.

Clinton might have felt good about last night and the total capitulation by Sanders that everyone saw and heard, but aside from her, only hardcore Democrats felt good. Republicans and independents felt good, too, but not for the same reasons. They felt good because they are encouraged by what she said — and didn’t say. She didn’t comment on Benghazi despite being asked twice by Anderson Cooper.

Republicans and independents won’t let her get away with not talking about Benghazi or her email imbroglio.

Real political junkie dreamers can only look forward with glee to a potential debate between Hillary Clinton and, say, Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) after her Las Vegas performance. Rubio has to be Clinton’s worst nightmare.

Contreras formerly wrote for Creators Syndicate and the New American News Service of The New York Times Syndicate.