Even Ben Carson has a hard time believing he could be president.

“Probably in terms of the applying for the job of president, a weakness would be not really seeing myself in that position until hundreds of thousands of people began to tell me that I needed to do it,” he said at the top of the Republican presidential primary debate on CNBC Wednesday night.

That explains why Carson managed to fade into the background despite the fact that he’s running first in Iowa and second in most national polling. It explains why the moderators and Carson’s Republican rivals all but ignored him. And it explains why Carson was ill-prepared to talk about the federal budget and other policy matters in a serious way.

Carson was in the middle of the stage Wednesday night. But he was nowhere near the center of the debate.

It should have been his breakout moment — a time for moderators to focus on his rise in the polls and for him to make a more comprehensive case for himself to Republican primary voters. Neither happened. Instead, he spoke for barely more than seven minutes. His big name check from a rival came when Donald Trump mentioned him in closing remarks.

It’s easy for fellow Republican candidates and political analysts to dismiss Carson because his amiable nature and impressive personal narrative simply don’t compensate for his failure to make a plausible argument that he would be better than any of the other candidates — much less all of them — as president. Despite his poll numbers, they’re treating Carson as a non-factor. And that’s about right.

Carson had a big chance Wednesday night to show that he’s Oval Office material. But instead of stepping up, he demonstrated why it’s so hard for the political world to see him as a viable candidate for the presidency.

His budget plans are a "fantasy"

It will be hard for Carson to convince Republicans that he’s the best choice to cut spending and taxes until he proves he’s got a handle on the federal budget.

CNBC’s Becky Quick noted that his call for a 10 percent flat tax would reduce federal revenue by well more than $1 trillion. When Carson countered that he’d probably end up with a 15 percent flat rate, Quick pointed out that would leave a $1.1 trillion revenue gap and either require slashing government programs deeply or running a deficit.

“That’s not true,” Carson protested. Economic growth would make up the difference, he insisted.

Yeah, right, said former House Budget Committee Chair John Kasich (R-OH), who balanced the federal budget with President Bill Clinton in the 1990s. Kasich, who is now Ohio’s governor, jumped in to accuse Carson of creating a “fantasy” with his numbers. Kasich may not be the most popular candidate among Republicans — and he took a risk by going after the well-liked Carson — but his knowledge of the federal budget is unassailable.

Carson, on the other hand, seemed to argue at one point that there’s not much difference between $2.7 trillion he says his tax plan would produce in revenue and the $3.5 trillion he says the government spends now (it’s closer to $4 trillion this year). Even in Washington the $800 billion difference between $3.5 trillion and $2.7 trillion is a lot of money.

Most viewers don’t have federal budget numbers at their fingertips, but a serious presidential candidate should.

Carson would solve drug pricing issue by de-regulating

There are a few good answers to the question of how the government should respond, if at all, to a drug company charging $750 per pill for an AIDS drug that recently cost as little as $13.50 per pill and could be produced for as little as $1 per pill. Democrats have their own solutions, including Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders’s effort to tie the controversy to an ongoing congressional probe into drug pricing.

For Republicans, there’s a pretty simple response: The government shouldn’t interfere in the private market, which will correct for price gouging. There’s a pretty good exhibit A for that line of argument in the emergence of a competitor that says it undercut the maker of Daraprim. But Carson argued Wednesday night that government regulation is the cause of price spikes like the one for Daraprim.

“Have these companies gone too far?” CNBC’s Jim Cramer asked. “Should the government be involved in controlling some of these price increases?”

Here’s how Carson responded:

Well, there is no question that some people go overboard when it comes to trying to make profits, and they don’t take into consideration the American people. What we have to start thinking about, as leaders, particularly in government, is what can we do for the average American? …

So what we’re going to have to start doing instead of, you know, picking on this group or this group, is we’re going to have to have a major reduction in the regulatory influence that is going on.

The government is not supposed to be in every part of our lives, and that is what is causing the problem.

Chris Christie jumped in a few moments later to offer a prescription that required no new regulation from the government but also took into account the possibility that a sudden spike in drug prices could be related to bad behavior in the private sector.

“We have laws already. We don’t need newer laws,” he said. “So what we do, though, is, if there is somebody who is price gouging, we have laws for prosecutors to take that on. Let’s let a Justice Department — and I will make an attorney general who will enforce the law and make justice more than just a word. It will be a way of life.”

Carson backtracked on at least one of his own positions

There was a point at which Carson wanted to cut federal subsidies for oil companies and redirect the money to ethanol. That position is very popular in Iowa, the ethanol powerhouse that holds the first presidential nominating contest in February. And it’s probably one of the many reasons he’s now in first place in Iowa and has through-the-roof approval ratings among the state’s Republican voters.

But subsidizing ethanol is a big no-no among economic conservatives who want to end government handouts for big business. So when he was asked about the redirection from bolstering oil companies to boosting Iowa growers, Carson backtracked.

“I was wrong about taking the oil subsidy,” he said. “I have studied that issue in great detail. And what I have concluded, that the best policy is to get rid of all government subsidies and get the government out of our lives and let people rise and fall based on how good they are.”

It’s a position that could help Carson with national economic conservatives and in states outside of Iowa. But it’s a risky proposition within the Hawkeye State, where Carson had a low double-digit lead in the last two major polls conducted.

Carson isn't a factor because he's not viable right now

It was evident in Wednesday night’s debate that neither the moderators nor the other Republican candidates had much interest in tangling with a candidate who is both personally popular and unlikely to win the nomination.

Indeed, it’s hard to see how a candidate with no political experience and a loose handle on public policy could win a major party’s presidential nomination. For Carson to become a threat, he’ll have to up his game — and fast.

Otherwise, he’ll have to rejoin the rest of the political world in thinking his biggest weakness is that it’s hard to envision him running the country.

Joe Biden has the nation’s political class teetering on the edge of its seat, waiting to find out whether he’ll challenge Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders for the Democratic presidential nomination. While his final decision isn’t yet clear, the rationale for a campaign is.

The vice president is the natural heir to, and most ardent defender of, President Barack Obama’s legacy. In a time of polarization and Republican control of Congress, he’s the Democrat with the best record of working with Republicans on Capitol Hill. And he may be the only Democrat who could be a viable alternative — and viable threat — to Clinton, whose poll numbers against potential Republican nominees have been falling.

Couple those factors with the rise of Bernie Sanders, which has exposed some of Clinton’s vulnerabilities, and the odds of Biden giving Clinton a serious run for her money are better than nil. Both of his sons, Beau and Hunter Biden, encouraged him to run before Beau died in May, the Wall Street Journal reported in June. In August, New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd reported that Beau Biden had told his father the country needed Biden values, not Clinton values.

Biden has been publicly flirting with a run since then, including discussing the possibility in an emotional interview with Stephen Colbert on CBS’s The Late Show. His longtime adviser, former Sen. Ted Kaufman, has been camped out at the White House like a full-time staffer, according to a senior administration official. On Monday, Biden trotted out lines of attack against Clinton and Sanders.

Playing on Clinton calling Republicans her enemies during an October debate, Biden said, “I don’t consider Republicans enemies. They’re friends.” He needled Sanders by saying he doesn’t want to demonize the rich and powerful. “They’re not a problem,” he said. “But everyone has to do their part, man.”

Biden hasn’t said whether he’ll run, and sources close to him profess not to know whether or when he will make an announcement. But there is an appetite among some Democrats to see him make a third bid for the presidency.

“I have to believe that he will look at this race, see what the electorate is clamoring for, and see that he has as good a path,” one of Biden’s 2008 presidential campaign aides told Vox this summer.

And Biden is clearly hearing about the interest as he weighs whether to run.

“We have had conversations about the possibility of him running,” said Joseph Darby, a high-ranking official in the African Methodist Episcopal church who is close to some of South Carolina’s most powerful politicians, including Rep. Jim Clyburn.

Rev. Joseph Darby (L) talks with national president & CEO Cornell Brooks (C) at a news conference about the shooting at the historic Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church outside the local branch offices June 19, 2015, in Charleston, South Carolina. (Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)

Darby said a Biden candidacy “would play well” with South Carolina Democrats.

Clinton still has massive advantages: a campaign stocked with many of the top operatives in the business, a fundraising head start of more than $75 million, an endless donor list, and polling that shows a strong plurality of Democrats still prefer her to the rest of the party’s field of contenders — including Biden.

(RealClearPolitics)

But the Sanders surge shows that Democratic activists want an alternative to Clinton. How else to explain the $15 million he raised in his first fundraising quarter, the massive crowds at his rallies, and his climb in the polls in Iowa and New Hampshire? Sanders has captured the hearts of some liberal white elites. That’s enough to draw a little blood from the Clinton campaign but not enough to win the presidential primary of a party built on a diverse coalition. It would take someone with broader appeal to actually beat her. Someone, perhaps, like Biden.

“It’s less about her, and it’s more about what a lot of Democratic primary voters want, which is somebody who is authentic, unabashedly progressive, and a fighter,” the former Biden campaign aide said. “Joe Biden ought to scare the Clinton folks.”

The case for Biden

In any normal election cycle, Biden would be the hands-down favorite to win the Democratic nomination to succeed Obama. No vice president who has sought his party’s nomination after a two-term presidency has ever lost it. In the handful of cases in which a vice president didn’t seek a presidential nomination after serving a two-term boss, it was usually because of a major rift in the party — such as when John C. Calhoun, the vice president to Andrew Jackson, returned to the Senate to push for nullification and ultimately South Carolina’s secession from the Union.

But there is no such divide in today’s Democratic Party. Biden has become a beloved figure among Democrats for his loyal defense of Obama’s agenda and his propensity to say what the constraints of the presidency prevent Obama from saying.

As vice president, Biden has been Obama’s right-hand man for almost seven years. He’s run point for Obama on major foreign and domestic policy matters — the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, the 2009 stimulus law, the auto bailout, gun control, and budget deals with Senate Republicans who would rather dive from the Capitol dome than shake hands with Obama in public. He even put the exclamation point on enactment of the Affordable Care Act with a salty observation that endeared him to fellow Democrats.

Biden’s rare breaks with the president now look, in retrospect, like key contributions to Obama’s story. Biden announced, in the throes of the 2012 reelection campaign, that he supported same-sex marriage, a position to which Obama had not yet “evolved” and that Clinton wouldn’t publicly embrace until 2013. But just last month, Obama celebrated the Supreme Court’s decision to legalize same-sex marriage across the country.

Biden’s also a safer bet than Clinton to focus on preserving Obama’s legacy — a matter of great concern to Obama now — because he shared in building it in both terms and served only one president.

“His tenure as vice president is certainly a huge positive for Obama supporters everywhere,” said Angela Rye, a Democratic strategist and former executive director of the Congressional Black Caucus.

Yet Biden would start a candidacy as a clear underdog to Clinton. In the latest national NBC/Wall Street Journal poll, Clinton led Sanders 49 percent to 29 percent, with Biden checking in at 15 percent. His national name recognition and work as vice president should open up some fundraising doors, but buckraking has never been a political strength for him.

Polls are a snapshot in time, and Biden would surely be able to attract enough money and attention to make his case to the Democratic Party. In late September, an NBC/Wall Street Journal poll found him running closer to Clinton and Sanders than he is nationally. Biden got 22 percent, compared with 33 percent for Clinton and 28 percent for Sanders. He could reshape fundamental assumptions about the race, said one adviser to a 2016 Democratic campaign.

“If he gets in, it shows that her inevitability aura has faded, and it frees up donors and key political groups to not fall in line behind Hillary,” this adviser said. “There is a herd mentality with political groups, elected officials, and a large swath of donors — they have been told so many times that Hillary will be the nominee and that they will be frozen out if she’s elected that they don’t want to cross her. If the sitting vice president gets in, that changes.”

Still, he’d have to pull an inside straight to beat Clinton.

The dealmaker

One of the biggest knocks against Obama — one that often comes from within his own party — is that he would have gotten more accomplished if only he’d had better relationships with Republicans, and Democrats, on Capitol Hill.

It’s an attractive idea. Voters are fed up with dysfunction in Congress, and they keep electing presidents — George W. Bush and Obama, to name two — who promise they’ll come to Washington and end the gridlock. Maybe Clinton could do better than Obama in reaching across the aisle, or in forcing Republicans to vote with her. But it’s likelier that Republicans would have the same partisan reaction to her as president that they did when she was first lady. Fear of the grinding partisanship of a President Hillary Clinton is part of what got Obama elected in the first place.

But Biden has an actual record of working with congressional Republicans from the White House. He may be the last remaining Democrat who really knows the art of the bipartisan deal. He came to the Senate in 1973, an era before hyperpartisanship devoured Congress. When Obama needed to cut a deal with Republican leaders on the Hill, he sent Biden. That wasn’t always a great move for Democratic priorities — one Biden agreement permanently locked in most of the expiring Bush tax cuts — but it worked to avert a fiscal cliff. (Senate Democratic leader Harry Reid was so infuriated with Biden’s dealmaking that he at one point insisted the vice president be cut out of budget talks).

Eric Cantor, the former Republican House majority leader, told Time magazine last year that Biden was a much better negotiating partner than Obama.

“Unquestionably, the vice president knows how to negotiate. He understands people,” Cantor said. “I’m certainly not one who agrees with Joe Biden on all things — we probably disagree more than we agree — but from a human and relationship standpoint, the guy’s awesome.”

The key to Biden’s deals is those deep relationships. He was asked to deliver a eulogy at Republican Sen. Strom Thurmond’s funeral, even after he and Thurmond clashed over decades’ worth of issues on the Judiciary Committee.

And South Carolina Sen. Lindsey Graham — a Republican presidential candidate who speaks frequently with Biden — recently choked up talking about him.

While there are Republican senators who say they like to work with Clinton, it’s hard to see any of them becoming deeply emotional about their history with her — particularly now that she’s identified their party as the enemy.

Contrasts in substance and style

Those familiar with the thinking of Biden’s circle say he would try to run a campaign framed around himself, not Clinton. Obama proved in 2008 that Democrats are receptive to messages that highlight differences without going negative. “Change we can believe in” was a slogan that, subtly enough, pointed to Clinton’s emphasis on her experience and Democrats’ doubts about her honesty.

On style, the contours of a positively framed Biden contrast with Clinton are easy to see. He’s endeared himself to Democratic voters — not to mention late-night comedians — with an unvarnished style that makes him seem all too human. It could prove a powerful trait against Clinton, who is stiff on the campaign trail and in television interviews. Biden’s backslapping candor — a double-edged sword that often gets him in trouble — is more reminiscent of Bill Clinton’s charismatic style.

“Joe has a wonderful ability to connect with people,” Darby said. “They both have a feel for the needs of America in general and minority communities in particular. I think Joe’s demeanor makes you feel that he has a deeper understanding of that.”

More important, perhaps, is the substantive difference between Clinton and Biden on foreign policy, where the former Delaware senator often took a dovish line in internal debates in the White House and Clinton was usually on the side of using military force. Clinton wanted to add troops in Afghanistan when Biden didn’t, recommended executing the raid on Osama bin Laden as Biden recommended against it, and pushed for the US intervention in Libya in 2011, which Biden opposed.

While there’s no political gain in having been on the wrong side of the bin Laden debate, many Democrats — particularly the kind of activists who show up at Iowa caucuses — are wary of Clinton’s more hawkish leanings. Biden’s preference for drawing down from Afghanistan and his opposition to the Libya intervention — which, to this point, has been a disaster — are pluses with Democratic primary voters.

And the very feature of a Biden candidacy that Republicans would jump on in a general election — his loyal support for Obama’s agenda — would be a tremendous boon for the vice president in a primary.

For Biden, South Carolina would be the proving ground

Clinton has done a good job of positioning herself with the various Democratic constituencies, and that’s reflected in the fact that a majority of Democrats support her in the primary. Sanders’s camp believes that Clinton is vulnerable with working-class white Democrats, who are a group that Biden — born near the coal mines of Lackawanna County, Pennsylvania — has a natural ease with. And Sanders’s surge in Iowa and New Hampshire demonstrates that Clinton already has a fight on her hands in those states.

But her connection with Hispanic voters remains strong. They backed her against Obama overwhelmingly, and if there’s one Democratic-leaning group that has been most consistently dissatisfied with Obama, it’s been Latinos. For the most part, Biden would have to look elsewhere to build his coalition.

That’s why South Carolina, where he’s advocated for federal involvement in dredging the Port of Charleston and where he has visited repeatedly in the wake of the murder of nine black worshipers at “Mother Emanuel,” provides such a fascinating crucible for Biden. He almost certainly would have to win over a significant portion of the nation’s black voters to compete with Clinton, and South Carolina is the first state on the primary calendar with a significant black population. In fact, the majority of voters in Democratic primaries in South Carolina are black, and Clinton received only 26.5 percent of the vote there — against Obama and a reeling John Edwards — in 2008.

A Biden coalition would necessarily follow the path that Obama took, though it seems highly unlikely to replicate Obama’s success with black voters. The key would be to combine enough support from elite whites, working-class whites, and African Americans to win delegates in states he would lose to Clinton and run up the delegate score in smaller-population states. Sound familiar?

None of that is to say that Biden would beat Clinton in the primary. But in conversations I’ve had with Clinton allies, there’s a recognition that he might run and that he could force her to compete harder for votes she might otherwise have locked up easily. Biden’s team is tight-lipped right now. Smart politicians don’t telegraph their intentions any earlier than they feel that they have to. But the case for Biden is waiting for him to make it.

Last month, House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy linked the panel’s inquiry to Clinton’s diminished poll numbers during an interview on Fox. That moment of inadvertent clarity bolstered arguments by Clinton and her allies that the committee is a political weapon, rather than a serious investigative body. It was so damaging to Republicans that it hurt McCarthy’s bid to become speaker of the House, a race he withdrew from last week.

Now, in explaining what happened with McCarthy, a second House Republican has made a more provocative concession that plays into Clinton’s hands just a week before she is due to testify before the Benghazi committee. Rep. Richard Hanna (R-NY), echoing some Democratic talking points, told radio host Bill Keeler on Wednesday that the probe has been aimed at Clinton all along.

“Kevin McCarthy basically blew himself up with that comment over the Benghazi committee, which, sometimes the biggest sin you can commit in DC is to tell the truth,” Hanna said. “This may not be politically correct, but I think that there was a big part of this investigation that was designed to go after people, an individual, Hillary Clinton. And I think there’s also a lot of it that’s important that we needed to get to the bottom of this. But this has been the longest investigation, longer than Watergate.”

Hanna comes from a potentially competitive district in upstate New York. If his commentary was intentional, it could indicate that Republicans think the Benghazi committee is becoming a political liability. And while Hanna’s comments may not be as deleterious to the GOP’s anti-Clinton effort as McCarthy’s because Hanna has no national profile, they are more damning. McCarthy didn’t go anywhere near as far as Hanna’s conclusion that the probe was “designed to go after people, an individual, Hillary Clinton.”

Hanna, whose comments can be heard here starting at the 9:35 mark, added, “You’d like to expect more from a committee that’s spent millions of dollars and tons of time.”

It didn’t take long for the Clinton campaign to seize on his remarks and castigate the Benghazi committee’s chair, Trey Gowdy.

“House Republicans aren’t even shy anymore about admitting that the Benghazi committee is a partisan farce,” Clinton spokesperson Brian Fallon said in a statement pointing reporters to Hanna’s remarks. “Hillary Clinton will still attend next week’s hearing, but at this point, Trey Gowdy’s inquiry has zero credibility left.”

The Benghazi committee was always designed to go after Clinton, but Republicans only started owning up to it recently

Back in June, when the Benghazi committee deposed Clinton confidant and correspondent Sid Blumenthal, I wrote that the panel finally had stripped away any pretense that it was actually interested in investigating the terrorist attacks and preventing future assaults on American diplomatic facilities. Blumenthal, who sent Clinton emails about the situation in Libya, had never even been to the country.

It was a particularly telling moment, but the truth is that the committee, which has focused a lot of its time on obtaining documents and testimony that later appear in print, was always a way for House Republicans to show their constituents that they were going to try to turn the tragedy into political gain at Clinton’s expense.

The committee was officially commissioned by the House in May 2014, after several House and Senate committees already had investigated the attacks that killed Ambassador Chris Stevens and three other Americans. Clinton memorably testified before the House and Senate Foreign Affairs Committees in 2013. None of the committees found any wrongdoing by Clinton or other government officials — or blamed them for the acts of terrorists.

But House Republicans were intent on going after Clinton, and, with the bonus votes of a handful of Democrats facing tough reelection bids, they set up the committee with a mandate to investigate the US security posture in Libya before the attacks, the government’s immediate response to them, and the administration’s efforts to bring the perpetrators to justice. The committee has little to show for its work, other than helping fuel the Clinton email scandal by pushing the administration to produce Clinton’s messages, which it turned out were on a private server at her home in Chappaqua, New York.

When Clinton testifies on October 22, the panel will have deposed or interviewed eight current or former Clinton campaign aides, according to committee Democrats, and spent much of its time in hearings asking about topics such as the Clinton Foundation and the political operations of Clinton’s allies.

Why Hanna's remarks are actually a damning turn for Republicans

When McCarthy made his blunder, he was boasting to Fox about how tough the House Republican leadership had been in partisan fights. He was in the midst of trying to convince his colleagues, and their constituents, that he was both conservative and muscular enough to lead them as speaker. Still, he stopped short of saying that the committee was created to hurt Clinton.

Hillary Clinton was unbeatable, right? But we put together a Benghazi special committee. A select committee. What are her numbers today? Her numbers are dropping. Why? Because she’s untrustable. But no one would have known that any of that had happened had we not fought to make that happen.

It was close enough to an admission of intent for Democrats to criticize Republicans for using the committee as a political bludgeon. But it didn’t go nearly as far in that direction as Hanna did Wednesday.

The Republican from New York, the same state Clinton represented in the Senate, sounded almost frustrated at what he described in pretty clean terms as a hit job on Clinton. This could be an indication that Republicans in tough districts are starting to wonder whether the partisanship of the Benghazi committee could come back to haunt not just the party but themselves.

It’s tough territory for Clinton because Stevens wouldn’t have been in Benghazi but for Clinton’s diplomacy, her belief that Libya could transition into something resembling a stable democracy, and her choice of Stevens, a practitioner of “expeditionary diplomacy,” to run the US Embassy. It will be an even sharper point of foreign policy contrast for her if Vice President Joe Biden, who opposed the US bombardment of Libya, enters the presidential race. And with Clinton due to testify before the House Benghazi committee October 22, it was a reminder that she’ll still have to defend herself on Capitol Hill.

The point isn’t, as some Republicans argue, that Clinton is to blame for Stevens’s death — the terrorists who attacked two American facilities are. But President Barack Obama’s decision to use US force to topple strongman Muammar Qaddafi rested in large part on Clinton’s advocacy and her work to create the international coalition that ultimately took him out. And Webb, along with many Republicans, believes it was a mistake that set the stage for the Benghazi attacks.

For Clinton, questions about the US role in Libya broadly, and about Benghazi specifically, represent a political thicket. Many Democrats, including a strong contingent of liberals in Congress, were uncomfortable with both the mission and Obama’s decision to launch airstrikes without congressional approval. It’s the same set that believes Clinton might be too inclined to deploy US military force as president. On the other hand, Republicans at the time criticized Obama for dallying in taking action in Libya, then transitioned to blaming him and Clinton for going around Congress, presiding over Libya’s descent into chaos, and failing to prevent the terrorist attacks in Benghazi.

All of that set the stage for Cooper to ask Webb about his view that the US should never have engaged militarily in Libya and that the Benghazi assault was an “inevitable” outcome of the US effort to help stand up a new government there. It was the moment that most fits into the Republican line of attack on Clinton’s foreign policy if she’s the nominee, and Webb gingerly played into it.

“This is not about Benghazi per se,” Webb said. “To me it is the inevitability of something like Benghazi occurring in the way that we intervened in Libya. We had no treaties at risk. We had no Americans at risk. There was no threat of attack or imminent attack.”

He went on to critique Obama’s decision to strike without the express consent of Congress.

“There is plenty of time for a president to come to the Congress and request authority to use military force in that situation,” Webb said. “I called for it on the Senate floor again and again. I called for it in Senate hearings. It is not a wise thing to do.”

One of Clinton’s toughest challenges is convincing the Democratic base to nominate the primary candidate who is the most comfortable with the use of military force.

Clinton's role in Obama's Libya strategy

At the time, in March 2011, Qaddafi’s forces were moving east from Tripoli toward the rebel stronghold of Benghazi. Clinton joined with several other Obama advisers, including then-UN Rep. Susan Rice, current UN Rep. Samantha Power, and deputy national security adviser Ben Rhodes, in arguing that the US had a humanitarian responsibility to prevent Qaddafi from slaughtering thousands of his own people.

Clinton flew to Paris to negotiate with her European counterparts and assess the capabilities of Mahmoud Jibril, the leader of a group called the Transitional National Council that argued it had a plan for governing Libya if Qaddafi were deposed. She then went to Cairo to secure assurances that Arab nations would participate in an international military action against Qaddafi. When she reported back to the Situation Room, Clinton told Obama and his National Security Council that Jibril had a solid plan and that she thought the international coalition was coming together.

There was significant disagreement within the National Security Council. Biden and Defense Secretary Robert Gates were dead set against the mission, arguing that the US interests in Libya weren’t clear, that the military was stretched, and that it might not be wise to start a third war in a Muslim country. Ultimately, Obama was swayed by Clinton and the humanitarian-interventionist wing of his foreign policy team and ordered the US to participate in airstrikes against Libya. A couple of weeks later, Stevens, who was not yet ambassador, was dispatched to Benghazi to be the State Department’s liaison to the Transitional National Council. He snuck in on a Greek cargo ship.

Stevens was picked for that role, and later made ambassador, specifically because of his experience in the region and his belief in a brand of diplomacy — called “expeditionary diplomacy” — that emphasizes on-the-ground work in conflict zones. Webb argued Tuesday night that Stevens’s death was a foreseeable outcome of the US effort to oust Qaddafi.

Clinton defended the Libya mission and sending Stevens

Cooper pushed Clinton to defend herself on both the strikes in Libya and Benghazi. She responded by laying out her view of what’s happened in Libya since the US intervention, as well as her belief in deploying American diplomats to unstable regions of the world.

“I think it’s important, since I understand Senator Webb’s very strong feelings about this, to explain where we were then and to point out that I think President Obama made the right decision at the time,” she said. “And the Libyan people had a free election the first time since 1951. You know what, they voted for moderates, they voted with the hope of democracy. Because of the Arab Spring, because of a lot of other things. There was turmoil to be followed. Unless you believe the United States should not send diplomats to anyplace that is dangerous, which I do not, then when we send them forth, there is always the potential for danger and risk.”

This isn’t a new line of argument from Clinton, but it was probably the first time that many Americans heard her make it. She essentially said that the intervention was the right thing to do and that the US can’t allow the tragic deaths of four Americans as an excuse to avoid sending diplomats to dangerous parts of the world. As secretary, she successfully lobbied to place funding for US diplomatic posts in Afghanistan, Pakistan, and Iraq, where embassies and consulates were under threat, into a war-spending account that protected it from major congressional cuts.

What is actually happening in Libya

The hope of Clinton and other Obama administration officials who supported the 2011 airstrikes in Libya was that the leadership group among the rebels would be able to take control of the country and stabilize it in Qaddafi’s absence. That proved a tall order, and the country descended into chaos in the aftermath of his removal.

The terrorist assault against the US diplomatic and intelligence facilities in Benghazi, one of many attacks on diplomatic officials from around the world there, was symptomatic of the lawlessness that dominated Libya after Qaddafi was ousted and killed.

The truth is that warring factions have divided and destroyed Libya since 2011, leaving tenuous hope that the country can be held together. Already, multiple governments have risen and fallen. The UN has drafted a peace plan, but a rival faction to the current government rejected it earlier this week.

From a humanitarian perspective, the US mission was successful in preventing Qaddafi from making good on his vow to slaughter thousands of his own people. But on a governance level, the American-backed Libyan leaders weren’t able to quickly stabilize the country and take control.

The most important Benghazi moment wasn't about Libya

It’s easy to forget, but Clinton’s email scandal arose in part out of House Republicans appointing a select committee to investigate the Benghazi attacks. That’s actually given her an opening to fight back on both the email and Benghazi matters because House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy recently tied the committee’s work to Clinton’s sagging poll numbers, an admission of the political nature of the panel’s probe.

“Let’s just take a minute here and point out that this committee is basically an arm of the Republican national committee. It is a partisan vehicle as admitted by the House Republican Majority Leader, Mr. McCarthy, to drive down my poll numbers. Big surprise,” Clinton said during the debate. “That’s what they have attempted to do. I am still standing.”

Given an opportunity to hammer Clinton on the email scandal, Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders instead opted to join hands with her.

“I think the secretary is right. And that is that the American people are sick and tired of hearing about your damn emails,” he said.

What it all means for Clinton going forward

While most Republican critics of Clinton have been hyper-focused on Clinton’s email and the Benghazi attacks as evidence that she performed poorly as secretary of state, some, like Rep. Jason Chaffetz (R-UT), have criticized her for being overly optimistic about the possibility that a functional democracy could take root in Libya.

The degree to which Republicans can use the broader Libya argument against her will depend in large part on whether their eventual nominee is a candidate who supported or opposed using force in Libya. Either way, Clinton showed that she will defend not only the decision to go in but also her emphasis on expeditionary diplomacy.

Going into the debate, Benghazi and the US’s part in the ouster of Qaddafi were potentially risky topics for her. Walking away, they provided insight into how she’ll handle the Republican attacks that show no signs of subsiding.

The most important aspect of Clinton’s performance in Tuesday night’s Democratic presidential debate, though, wasn’t whether she won — she did — but how she connected with progressive Democrats who worry whether she shares their values and whether she can withstand Republican attacks on her policies and character.

She was confident about the substance of her campaign and comfortable in making the case that her policies are the right ones to move the country forward — even if they don’t always sound like a wish list for the left.

“I’m a progressive who likes to get things done,” she explained when CNN moderator Anderson Cooper asked her to label her politics.

After a summer of hearing about her email scandal and her ties to Wall Street, the slightly combative retort was a refresher for Democrats on what they like about Clinton: She’s smart, prepared, liberal on most issues, and interested in actual progress. Perhaps it took a little competition, but the passion Clinton sometimes lacks on the campaign trail was in full force Tuesday night. She was having fun.

“She was poised, she was passionate, and she was in command,” David Axelrod, who ran Barack Obama’s 2008 campaign and has been critical of Clinton, said on CNN afterward.

Most importantly, though, Clinton did it all while reaching out to the three segments of the party that form her base: women, African Americans, and Latinos. And in a party that values diversity, those appeals help bring in white men, too.

Black Lives Matter, from the start

The biggest edge Clinton has on her rivals is her ability to go deep on substance, below the surface of her campaign platform, to get at the underlying problems Democrats want to solve. She did that Tuesday when talking about what she’d do for the African-American community, earning an ovation from the debate crowd.

Clinton started with a quick rundown of her goals on criminal justice reform — ending mass incarceration, equipping police with body cameras, and implementing recommendations of a panel created by President Barack Obama — but then she added that those policies are just a part of her plan.

“We’ve got to do more about the lives of these children. That’s why I started off by saying we need to be committed by making it possible for every child to live up to his or her God-given potential,” Clinton said. “That is really hard to do if you don’t have early childhood education, if you don’t have schools able to meet the needs of the people or good housing. There’s a long list. We need a new New Deal for communities of color.”

Clinton’s primary rival, Bernie Sanders, has done well with white voters, but he hasn’t shown the ability to rally African Americans or Latinos to his campaign. Clinton’s response on race was perhaps her best moment of the night.

Clinton isn't the most liberal on immigration, but she'll fight the GOP

Latino voters were among Clinton’s most loyal supporters in the 2008 campaign, even though she’s never been the most liberal Democrat on immigration issues.

She turned that potential vulnerability into a strong moment Tuesday night when Cooper pressed her and the other Democrats about their relatively minor differences on immigration policy — specifically her refusal to endorse a proposal by former Maryland Gov. Martin O’Malley to give full Obamacare subsidies to unauthorized immigrants.

“There is such a difference between everything you’re hearing here on this stage and what we hear from the Republicans, who have demonized hard-working immigrants, who have insulted them,” Clinton said.

She also reiterated her vow to go further than Obama in protecting unauthorized immigrants from deportation and said she would support states that give in-state tuition breaks to undocumented students.

That's right. She would be the first woman president.

For most of her 2008 campaign, Clinton avoided calling attention to her gender. It took aides to convince her to embrace that historic aspect of her candidacy at the end of her bid, when she declared that she and her voters had put “18 million cracks” in the glass ceiling of the presidency. Now, though, she’s looking at her gender as an asset, not a potential liability.

That was never more evident than Tuesday night, when Clinton used it to turn two questions around on Cooper.

Here’s the first exchange:

Cooper: “How would you not be a third term of President Obama?”

Clinton: “I think being the first woman president would be quite a change from the presidents we’ve had up until this point, including President Obama.”

And the second:

Cooper: “Gov. O’Malley says the presidency is not a crown to be passed back and forth between two royal families. This year has been the year of the outsider in politics; just ask Bernie Sanders. Why should Democrats embrace an insider like yourself?”

Clinton: “I can’t think of anything more of an outsider than electing the first woman president, but I’m not just running because I would be the first woman president.”

Clinton was interrupted by applause before she finished the thought by casting herself as a fighter who has “a lifetime of experience in getting results.”

But Clinton’s concentration on empowering women — which she convincingly argues should be important to all Americans — put her in position to nail a trifecta of issues that Democrats care about in a single response to a question about the cost of creating new benefits. She defended paid leave, government programs, and Planned Parenthood in one fell swoop, while also getting in a dig at the GOP.

“It’s always the Republicans or their sympathizers who say, ‘You can’t have paid leave, you can’t provide health care,'” she said. “They don’t mind having big government to interfere with a woman’s right to choose and to try to take down Planned Parenthood. They’re fine with big government when it comes to that. I’m sick of it.”

This is exactly what Clinton had to do

Clinton’s never going to be the perfect candidate for the left wing of the Democratic Party. She’s too much of a capitalist, too willing to use military force, and too willing to shift positions to make all liberals love her. But she can be inspiring on a lot of issues that do matter to progressives and good enough on most of the others.

What she needed to do Tuesday night was three-pronged: remind Democrats of what they like about her, reassure them that she’s on their side, and convince them that she’s the most likely to win the general election. There wasn’t anyone else on the stage Tuesday night who is nearly as plausible a president.

At one point, Clinton noted that after years of congressional investigation into the Benghazi attacks and her emails, “I am still standing.”

She was delivering, too.