Anderson Cooper came out firing as the lead moderator of CNN's Democratic presidential debate on Tuesday night, pushing candidates to be clear with their positions on big issues and to answer the questions at hand.
Cooper had clearly done his homework, taking the candidates to task on their records, previous statements about the other candidates -- even leading off with confrontational questions about the electability of each candidate or their alleged history of pandering, as in the case of Hillary Clinton. CNN had boasted that Cooper was preparing "pointed" questions, and he lived up to the hype.
Cooper's moderation drew comparisons to that of his peers at Fox News, who posed tough questions to the candidates in the first Republican debate.
Kelly, Wallace, Baier at first GOP debate = Cooper at first Dem debate https://t.co/kB8NMqBETK— Brian Stelter (@brianstelter) October 14, 2015
Anderson is trying to out-Megyn-Kelly Megyn Kelly here.— Dan Savage (@fakedansavage) October 14, 2015
Anderson Cooper bout to run for office.— Saeed Jones (@theferocity) October 14, 2015
It did appear that Cooper was limiting the speaking time for some of the candidates on the stage, particularly the ones not named Sanders or Clinton. Nearly two hours into the debate, Clinton and Sanders each had around 23 minutes, followed by Martin O'Malley and Jim Webb with around 13 and Lincoln Chaffee with 7.
Jim Webb is now losing the debate to Anderson Cooper. #DemDebate— Hari Kondabolu (@harikondabolu) October 14, 2015
CNN's moderation wasn't entirely praised. Many people took issue with the roles of Don Lemon and Juan Carlos Lopez, who is an anchor on CNN en Espanol. Each played a limited role, asking only questions that centered on issues relevant to their own race or ethnicity.
Those were their only appearances in roughly the first 90 minutes of the debate. Lemon later introduced a crowdsourced question about climate change and asked a question about marijuana legalization.
OMG. The Latino CNN questioner asks about immigration. Don Lemon who is African American asks the question, "Do Black Lives matter? C'mon!!— Marsha Herman-Betzen (@MHBXD) October 14, 2015
How about letting a minority journalist moderate a debate - rather than gimmicky cuts to black guy & Latino guy for race and immigration ?s?— Wesley Lowery (@WesleyLowery) October 14, 2015
If Don Lemon can only ask about black people and Juan Carlos Lopez can only ask about Hispanics, Wolf Blitzer only gets to ask about wolves.— Dave Itzkoff (@ditzkoff) October 14, 2015