Biden Versus Warren Was Overhyped
Since the qualification deadline for this week’s debate passed two weeks ago, everyone (myself included) had been looking forward to seeing Joe Biden and Elizabeth Warren directly confront each other onstage. Biden, who has been the polling leader since before he announced his candidacy, is the embodiment of the centrist Democratic establishment. Warren represents the newfound progressive and leftist faction that emerged following Bernie Sanders’ 2016 campaign.
Biden’s been a mainstay in Democratic politics for decades and has a record to defend on nearly every issue. Warren is a relative newcomer to elected politics and has a plan and a way to communicate it for nearly every issue. It was shaping up to be a monumental night in the primary process, with the two of them, along with Senator Sanders, Kamala Harris, and Pete Buttigieg, the five polling frontrunners, all sharing the same stage for the first time this election.
The reality was…somewhat disappointing. While the debate opened with a seemingly never-ending segment on healthcare (practically a requirement, it seems) in which moderators posed the same questions about Medicare for All that they had for the past two debates, most of the sparring between Biden and Warren ended after that. Both Senators Warren and Sanders criticized Biden’s healthcare plan, which would leave millions of Americans still uninsured or underinsured without substantially lowering the cost of health insurance. Biden attempted to smear the progressives’ Medicare for All plan with the same rants about choice and taxes, both of which were debunked wonderfully by both Senators. I think it’s the best defense of Medicare for All that I’ve seen on a debate stage this year.
After the opening segment, the main antagonist to Biden seemed to be Julían Castro, who criticized Biden’s hypocrisy and selectivity regarding when he associates himself with the Obama administration, and a moment in which Biden contradicted his own plan for healthcare within a span of two minutes. While I thought these were executed well, FiveThirtyEight/Ipsos polling suggests that it might not have been well-received by most voters.
Several candidates praised Beto O’Rourke’s response to mass shootings in his hometown of El Paso and in nearby Odessa, Texas. Foreign policy and trade made their first real appearances on the debate stage, to mixed results, and substantial discussion about climate change, the judiciary, and reproductive rights was noticeably absent.
With that, let’s get to my own personal, subjective rankings of the candidates, in the order in which I’d vote for them, adjusted based on debate performance (but let’s be honest, not adjusted much).
Click here to read my analyses of the June NBC debate and the July CNN debate.
Note that the chart excludes candidates who have dropped out or have not qualified for the autumn round of debates. Accordingly, changes in rankings are relative to where each candidate previously stood among those remaining.
Still the best of the group: Warren and Sanders
I’ve always liked these two, and this week’s debate did nothing to upset my reverence for them. They provided what I think was the best defense of Medicare for All in a debate so far this year, and it came against the most high-profile candidate opposed to expanding American healthcare into a single-payer system. Warren was able to give her trademark great debate performance, weaving personal stories into her policies and how they would improve the lives of everyday Americans. Sanders was again a strong advocate for his progressive policies and was able to defend a quite disingenuous point from the moderators about Maduro Venezuelan socialism in comparison to his own professed democratic socialism. Overall, a good debate for both of them.
Just behind them: Castro, Booker, and Harris
Castro is still my third choice and would be a great pick for vice president if someone like Warren were to win the nomination. He once again brought the heat against Biden, just as he’s done before, although it might not have sat as well among voters. As I mentioned previously, polling wasn’t quite as receptive to his performance this time as it was before. Conversely, Booker had a mediocre night without much to remember — the most memorable thing I can think of already was when he was asked about being vegan (disgracefully the only question even tangentially related to the climate crisis). Kamala Harris was much in the same vein as Booker this week, without really a standout moment. She seemed to be trying to make jokes that were admittedly, funnier than Amy Klobuchar’s attempts, but still not quite landing with the audience, the moderators, or any of the other candidates. While I think Castro would make a wonderful Vice President, and I’d gladly vote for any of them for the presidency, I sure wouldn’t be as satisfied checking their name next November as I would with my top two.
Still a ways to go: O’Rourke, Yang, and Buttigieg
Beto O’Rourke was cool when he was the alternative to Ted Cruz. Now he has plenty of other good Democratic candidates to run against, and he falls to the middle of the pack. He did have a good moment tonight on gun safety, calling for a mandatory buyback of assault weapons, and was universally praised for his leadership on the issue. But to me, that’s about it. Him pivoting to guns could make this race a lot more interesting, though. Andrew Yang continues to miss the point. His campaign started centered around a universal basic income, and he said that he had to get into the debates to promote it. Tonight, he announced his (admittedly fairly cool) Freedom Dividend “trial” to ten families across America for the next year. But then, he didn’t mention it again for the rest of the night. If he wants to be the candidate on UBI, he needs to spin every question into an answer about it. Contrary to the apparent popular opinion, I thought Pete Buttigieg didn’t have a great night. Nothing seemed to happen for him, and he was called out by Julían Castro for asking for “civility” — Castro rightly pointed out that this was a debate for an election. You’re supposed to find the differences between candidates. Otherwise, why hold the election at all?
Nope, no thanks: Klobuchar and Biden
Joe Biden and Amy Klobuchar spent their night doing exactly what we expected them to do: attacking progressives and progressive policies while offering up nothing but barely milquetoast alternatives in response. Klobuchar’s “I can win because I’m from the middle of the country” plea is nonsense, to put it mildly, and Biden has trouble forming a sentence and can’t seem to decide whether he wants to cut himself off when time is up or continue rambling on in protest because “everyone else does it.” Neither of these candidates has a true vision for the future of this country and neither of them deserves your vote this primary season.
This month’s debate was supposed to provide clarity. A smaller field would let us focus on the top candidates, we assumed. But since there were still ten candidates on the stage together (way too many for a single debate in my opinion), we didn’t get to learn much more about any candidate’s specific stance on any major issue. The ten-candidate debate format all summer has given us looks mile-wide looks into the field of contenders but has only had the time to focus an inch deep on any specific issue or policy. Thankfully, Tom Steyer is here to save us all and split up the field once again in October. Maybe we’ll get to know more than just whether Medicare for All changes private insurance or raises taxes. We can only hope.
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