Going in to Thursday's debate between Democratic Party hopefuls Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders, I believed two things very strongly.

One, I like both of them. In November, I will vote for whichever one of them comes out of the primary as the nominee (it is unlikely the GOP will nominate anyone I'd willingly support given their current field). Fair warning, though: I have been not-so-subtly supporting Clinton on social media and, if you can believe it, in real life.

And two, debates are useless. In this age of Internets and Twitgrams and Facechats, there is no need to watch people on stage to learn what their policy positions are, resumes and personalities. In this contemporary moment, debates have simply become gaffe generators, attempts by media or opponents to force an error that can be endlessly replayed on screens large and small for days. If you don't believe me, ask Marco Roboto – I mean, Rubio.

Thursday's debate was no different. Indeed, just about the only fireworks were outside the UWM Student Union as protesters made sure media (and I suspect much of the East Side) heard their message demanding a $15 minimum wage, justice for #BlackLivesMatter and immigration reform.

But the candidates did have a generally good discussion on policy over several areas, and as a wonky kind of guy, that made me happy. And here's my take-away: What most separates Clinton and Sanders is not their policy positions, where they share most of the same goals, but their approach to policy in general, where they could not be more different.

Sanders has big, bold ideas and sees bringing the best in all of us into political reality. Clinton, on the other hand, has a wide-ranging knowledge of the details, nuance and reality of policy and the process.

We need both of those points of view in the Democratic Party, hands down. The question we here in Wisconsin will have to answer between now and April when we can finally get to vote for one of these two is which one we need more in the White House at this moment.

The debate's opening, focused on health care, was a good example of this dichotomy. Sanders has a very clear vision that not only should health care be universal – a Democratic given for decades – but that it should be single-payer, funded primarily by taxes on the wealthy (I understand his actual plan is much more complex, but that's the gist).

Clinton came right out with the reality, "We're not England. We're not France." In addition to the geography lesson, she made clear that we have inherited a system that will not easily transform to a single-payer Shangri-La. But, she said, there are things we can do to make coverage more universal and better.

It isn't that either one of them is wrong. It's that Sanders has the aspirational plan while Clinton has the practical one.

On every issue, from education and the economy to foreign policy, Sanders laid out a fantastic dream scenario while Clinton said, essentially, "I agree, but let's do this smaller thing that might be possible instead."

In general, the first half of the debate was dominated by domestic policy issues. Sanders showed that he knows rule number one of answering press questions: answer the question you wished you were asked. That is, every single answer, it seemed, came back to Sanders' case that the wealthiest of Americans are increasing their own wealth at the expense of the average person and the middle class.

He's not wrong about that. The increase in income inequality in this country is a symptom of a dangerous underlying cancer, and I fully agree with Sanders that it needs to be reversed and soon. Tax policy can do a lot of that.

But Clinton is also right that there's a broader agenda necessary and said in her closing, strongly, that she is "not a single-issue candidate." Her opening statement therefore was not only a model of her more practical approach but also her more inclusive tone for the night. She wants to "knock down all the barriers that are holding Americans back," more than just a laser-like focus on the one percent.

All night it was like this.

I will digress for a second and put on my high-school teacher hat: Though higher education came up early in the debate, this is yet another national debate between candidates who ought to be sympathetic to the needs of and enthusiastic about the possibilities in K-12 education in which K-12 was non-existent. It's like America's children don't really exist unless they're being shot by police or accepted to college.

However, the higher-education part of the debate was another clear moment of nuanced disagreement. Sanders, aspirationally, wants free college education to be a thing. When he points out, rightly, that "a college degree is equivalent today of what a high school degree was 50-60 years ago," he lays a solid foundation for his plan to make college and university attendance an extension of what we already do, for free, in K-12.

But Clinton was right there with reality, stating, "Sen. Sanders' plan really rests on making sure that governors like Scott Walker contribute $23 billion on the first day to make college free." In that way, Sanders' plan for college affordability is more like the way Medicaid expansion has worked since the 2012 Supreme Court decision on the Affordable Care Act: If you live in a state with a Democratic governor (or reasonable Republican governor, like – it hurts to say it – Ohio's John Kasich), you're in luck and the government can work to offer you a significant benefit.

Here in Wisconsin, Walker didn't take the Medicaid expansion, and he sure won't take Sanders' free college plan either. That's even assuming that Sanders could get a plan past what would certainly be a Republican House. I doubt Clinton could get much done, either, so in that sense it's a wash – it doesn't matter if a president is aspirational or practical if their agenda is dead on arrival at Speaker Paul Ryan's doorstep.

But there are places where a stymied president still has some latitude, notably foreign policy. It's no surprise, then, that perhaps the testiest exchanges came in the second half of the debate when "keeping America safe," in the moderators' parlance, was the topic.

Sanders made a big deal out of the fact that Clinton has used Henry Kissinger as an advisor. "I find it rather amazing," he said, "because I happen to believe that Henry Kissinger was one of the most destructive secretaries of state in the modern history of this country."

I'm not saying he's wrong; the world would be a very different place today if Kissinger had not been in office during key parts of the Vietnam War. But I don't know how much hay Sanders is going to make in this 2016 contest by re-litigating the 1960s.

And Clinton came back with a practical consideration. "I listen to a wide variety of voices that have expertise in various areas," she said, citing Kissinger's work to open China and his maintenance of relationships there. It was, I suppose, a kind of "even a stopped clock is right twice a day" point from Clinton. Sanders disclaimed the clock whole, though.

Clinton also got in a good jab at Sanders' foreign policy stances, noting that no one can complain about his foreign policy advisors since he doesn't seem to have any. That didn't stop Sanders from having clear and specific ideas for what to do in the world. However, even his strong preparation for that part of the debate didn't make up for the fact that they call her Secretary Clinton because foreign policy was her job for four years under Barack Obama.

Indeed, that was Clinton's defense when the other major foreign policy bomb was thrown by Sanders, which is that Clinton voted to authorize George W. Bush to go to war in Iraq. I feel like I wrote about this a lot in 2008, but I can't find a link right now so let me reiterate what I said then. I was mostly an Obama supporter, and he, like Sanders, made Clinton's vote a point of debate too. But when you read her floor speech on that vote, she is not advocating war at all.

In fact, she said, "Because bipartisan support for this resolution makes success in the United Nations more likely, and therefore, war less likely ... a vote for the resolution best serves the security of our nation."

If anything, her vote then was not indicative of her interventionist or hawkish foreign policy; it was indicative of her willingness to trust a snake like Bush not to rush to war. Which raises its own concerns, sure, but not the ones Sanders raised.

Clinton then pointed out in this debate that even after the contention between her and Obama over that vote in 2008, he chose her, with her experience and expertise, to be Secretary of State.

And it's in that moment, then, when the final key area in which you'd think the candidates would have to be in lock-step, the presidency of Barack Obama, manifested this same split between the aspirational and the operational.

Clinton has been trying her very best all campaign – and did so throughout this debate, not just in the foreign policy part – to make herself out to be the real protector of Obama's legacy. As part of his administration (and, I might add, as an actual member of the Democratic party for decades, not just someone who caucuses with them) she feels that she can rightly inherit the mantle and protect the historic achievements of the Obama years, many of which did, in fact, come against a Republican Congress.

Sanders has not been so blithe. He recognizes that Obama has not been the progressive lion that many thought he could be in 2008, even though Sanders made a point to say that he likes and has worked with Obama on many things. And I will point out that in many respects, gay rights being the most notable example, Obama is more to the left today than he was when he was elected.

Sanders, though, believe that it is not enough to play safe and merely protect and build incrementally on Obama's achievements. Rather, he says, we should hope for better. We should demand nothing less than better.

That came most clearly at the end of the debate. However, I think Sanders' strongest argument was perhaps in his opening statement, that "the American people are tired of establishment politics, tired of establishment economics. They want a political revolution in which millions of Americans stand up, come together. ... We need a government that represents all of us, not just a handful of wealthy campaign contributors."

The first part of that is clearly a dig a Clinton. Though Sanders has been in politics at least as long, he was often on the outside of the establishment looking in, and no one in their right mind would call Clinton – though she is making history as the first woman to get this close, twice, to winning the White House – anything other than the American political establishment. It's undoubtedly why she thinks nothing of consulting a monster like Kissinger on areas of his expertise: To her, he's not a monster so much as he is a somewhat disgraced member of her establishment caste.

It's the second half of that statement, though – an idea he repeated in his closing statement, too – that has the potential to be Sanders' strongest argument. That is, it's the idea that he can create "a process for a political revolution in which millions of Americans, working people who have given up on the political process" will join his cause, because "they don't think anybody hears their pains or their concerns."

This kind of revolution talk could be really, really powerful – if to date Sanders had been delivering on that promise. However, turnout in the two votes Democrats have held so far has been lower than in 2008 when the Obama-Clinton primary drew record crowds of voters. If anyone is creating that revolution today, giving voice to voters who have not engaged before, it's not Sanders. It is, rather, Donald Trump.

Finally, I have to give Clinton credit not just for being practical in her approach, but also in her encyclopedic knowledge of specific and particular issues and facts. She made this debate specific to Milwaukee, with a reference to Dontre Hamilton when the two of them engaged in "furious agreement" over policing reforms. She also name-dropped Walker, something Sanders didn't do, and Clinton specifically referenced, at the end of the debate, the single greatest divisive issue in Wisconsin over the last five years.

"Here in Wisconsin," she said, "I have to reiterate, we have to stand up for unions and working people."

This debate was held on the fifth anniversary of the introduction of Act 10, the Walker administration's legislation that devastated the state's public unions. I was hoping the PBS moderators would acknowledge that with an explicit question. They did not. I also thought for sure that Sanders, with his almost singular focus on the working class, would mention the fight for unions here and across the country. He did not.

That is probably the final way in this overall dichotomy played out in this debate. Sanders doesn't need to mention the specifics of where he was, nor did he need to. He's speaking to a larger purpose and a larger truth. Clinton is not one to miss the trees when looking at the forest. Overall, that's what I think gives her the win, even if Sanders is closer to the soul of the party and more representative of policies I want to see enacted.

I mentioned earlier that, in 2008, I was an Obama supporter. But when the Wisconsin primary rolled around, I voted Clinton because I loved then, as I do now, that the contest between the two was protracted, spirited and amazing. Seeing then that Obama was on the way to a win, I wanted Clinton to hang on long enough to keep the debate alive and keep the issues I felt were important in front of voters of all stripes for months on end.

So in the end, I'm still leaning Clinton. However, I love that our party can have a Sanders and that our Sanders can do so well and pull the debate in the directions he is. As Clinton did for Obama, Sanders is making her a better candidate and making sure that good, progressive solutions to America's problems remain on the front page for as long as possible.