The Iowa Democratic Candidates Town Hall on CNN last night drew the most viewers on cable news from 9-11 p.m. ET. The Chris Cuomo-hosted Town Hall averaged 3.2 million total viewers, ahead Fox News’s 2.134 million and 850,000 on MSNBC. CNN also lead the time period in the A25-54 demo.
One of the more interesting moments of the Town Hall, was when Cuomo asked Bernie Sanders and Hillary Clinton to watch an ad from each other’s campaign. Our friends in the Adweek video department took the opportunity to edit together this split screen of Sanders watching the Clinton ad, and Clinton watching the Sanders ad. Judge for yourself, but it appears Clinton was enjoying herself more listening to Simon & Garfunkel’s America, than Sanders was listening to Clinton’s accomplishments.
Coming out of Clinton’s ad, Sanders didn’t have much to say.
But after watching Sanders’s ad, Clinton jumped right in and quoted none other than Chris Cuomo’s father, Gov. Mario Cuomo, who once famously said, “‘You campaign in poetry, you govern in prose.’ And we need a lot more poetry in this campaign, and in our country. So, I applaud that,” Clinton said.
Add in an ironic twist to this (or maybe Clinton was watching), a few hours earlier on last night’s episode of Jeopardy, that very Cuomo quote was part of a clue. Fred got it right: “What is prose?”
Below is the Sanders ad used during the Town Hall: