Debate angles! Get your debate angles here.
- Josh Voorhees: His opponents’ jabs notwithstanding, Trump carried the debate simply by virtue of holding steady. “He didn’t win every individual skirmish, but with more likely victories awaiting him on Super Tuesday, he won enough to leave Texas in the same position that he arrived: as the clear front-runner.”
- Jim Newell: Marco Rubio finally went after Trump last night, “relentlessly, without melting, and—this is critical—by having fun doing it.” If anything can revive Rubio’s campaign, that sense of fun is it.
- Jamelle Bouie: Don’t worry too much about Donald Trump winning the Presidency. “Yes, anything is possible. Trump could ride a reactionary wave to the White House. But not everything is probable, and the obstacles to a Trump victory are yuge.”
- Michelle Goldberg: How is Donald Trump getting away with expressing even qualified support for Planned Parenthood? It’s about class. “We know that Trump has revealed the chasm between elite Republicans and many grassroots voters,” Goldberg writes. “Maybe he’s also showing us the social distance between those for whom Planned Parenthood is an abstract symbol of evil, and those for whom Planned Parenthood is a doctor’s office that will always see them.”
- Isaac Chotiner: CNN did a disaster of a job at hosting this debate. “Trump may enjoy ranting about the media, but there is no question that CNN, like the other cable news networks, has done nothing but abet his rise.”
- And we know, we know; it’s pedantic and unattractive to mock other people’s spelling and grammar. But Ben Mathis-Lilley will make an exception for Donald Turmp.
The Oscars are coming up on Sunday, and we’ve posted our last “Best Case for Best Picture” video: editor-in-chief Julia Turner making the case for The Martian. It’s a true tour de force. Also: read J. Bryan Lowder on the Best Original Score nominees, or catch up on the rest of Slate’s Oscars coverage.
For fun: Browse the hundreds of historical documents we’ve written about on Slate’s the Vault blog, now available in timeline form.
Get at it (the weekend, I mean),
Rebecca
