Massachusetts' Republican Senator Scott Brown and his Democratic challenger Elizabeth Warren faced off Wednesday for the third of four debates in the state's hotly-contested Senate race.
In a marked departure from the first two debates, Wednesday night's showdown was a relatively subdued affair — Brown didn't mention Warren's Native American heritage controversy once.
The most interesting part of the debate during the final question, when moderator Jim Madigan asked the candidates to say whether they would favor cutting the deficit over closing down military bases in western Massachusetts, where the debate took place.
On the surface, this look like just a local issue. But the exchange between Brown and Warren actually beautifully laid out the contours of the national debate over military budget cuts, using a concrete example that illustrates exactly why and how voters will be affected by the cuts.
Watch the video below: