Warren & Sanders Won the Debate on Tuesday. And on Wednesday.
Tuesday night’s Democratic debate can really be summed up with one sentence. The night was a manufactured clash between the two progressive frontrunners and several more moderate, lower-polling candidates. This all came to a head when John Delaney, after getting an inexplicably high amount of speaking time, tried to confront Elizabeth Warren over her ambitious plans and goals for her time in office:
Warren easily captured the audience’s appreciation with the line, but this was just one of several moments in the progressive-versus-centrist fight that was Night One. Bernie Sanders got into a skirmish of his own with John Delaney, while also reminding Tim Ryan that as a Senator he does, in fact, draft legislation. All told, Warren and Sanders often looked like the better candidates both defending their proposals and, probably more importantly, actually having proposals.
Night Two wasn’t quite so cut and dry in terms of a narrative. Biden and Harris started off sparring on healthcare, and the night devolved into a near ten-way fight, with each candidate having a better self-identity than the night before. In the end, Booker, Gillibrand, Harris, and de Blasio all confronted Biden, while Biden and Tulsi Gabbard fought back against Harris.
So let’s get into the weeds about each candidate’s performance, maybe a bit more condensed compared to last time.
La crème de la crème: Warren, Sanders, and Castro
Senator Warren was on fire last night, delivering a fatal blow to John Delaney’s campaign, and according to someone’s Wikipedia edit, Delaney himself. She eloquently and skillfully defended her myriad of policy proposals as they came under attack from Delaney, Tim Ryan, and Steve Bullock (who weirdly criticized her nuclear non-use policy). Warren has become the most skilled policy communicator in American politics, and she proved it this week. I can’t wait until she gets to use it against Joe Biden.
Sanders did likewise, fending off bad-faith arguments from other candidates, notably Tim Ryan and again Delaney, and from the moderators themselves. He correctly charged CNN (and John Delaney) with kowtowing to corporations in the healthcare lobby and to other special interests. He remains behind Warren for me because of her personableness and just how absolutely brilliant she is at communicating policy.
Julián Castro cemented his spot in my top tier with another strong debate performance, emphasizing his progressive credentials on immigration and other issues, without making any serious mistakes or missteps. He took aim at Joe Biden, which is always appreciated, and didn’t have to engage with any of the undercards. He’s met the donor threshold and needs just one more qualifying poll to make the September debate, and I think (and hope) he’ll get there. I don’t think he’ll win the nomination, but he’d be a formidable choice as Vice President, especially for a candidate like Warren or even Harris.
I’d enthusiastically support them: Gillibrand, Inslee, Booker, Harris
Kirsten Gillibrand really increased her stock this week, in my opinion, and she definitely needed to. She doesn’t currently have enough donors nor a single qualifying poll at 2% or better to qualify for September’s debate. Biden definitely got a jab in at her which landed pretty effectively (relying on the same misogynistic tropes she’s faced this whole campaign), but for the most part she made herself better known and got to speak a lot more than she did in June, making several good points regarding race, healthcare, and especially gender.
Jay Inslee had a marginally better night than he did last time, but he still didn’t focus enough on his signature issue, climate change. He’ll have a hard time making the next debate as well, and with nothing momentous from tonight to carry him on, I’m afraid his candidacy might be in its dying days.
Cory Booker had a good night on all fronts. He took the mantle from Kamala Harris as Biden’s antagonist-in-chief, confronting Biden on his absolutely horrendous history regarding criminal justice law, even connecting it to present-day realities for thousands of black and brown people incarcerated under drug laws largely pushed by “tough on crime” Democrats such as Biden. Booker is already safely in the next round of debates, but he increased his stock tonight.
It’s tough to sugarcoat it: Kamala Harris had a rough night. In June, she was almost undoubtedly the best candidate in the debate, but this week told a different story. She seemed unprepared for Tulsi Gabbard’s analysis of her record as prosecutor in California, and the new healthcare plan that she rolled out just earlier this week seemed to cause some confusion even to herself. She did some of the heavy lifting early on, going to toe-to-toe with Biden once again for the benefit of all of us, but she came out looking a bit less appealing than before.
They’re ok, I guess: Buttigieg, Gabbard, Williamson, de Blasio, Yang
I’ll admit that I fell for Pete Buttigieg’s gig in the beginning. But this debate made it painfully clear that he’s not the young, progressive savior that he tries to make himself out to be. His answer about the racial divide (as flawed of a question as it is) was easily the worst of any candidate’s on Tuesday night, but I will give him a bit of credit for calling out “socialism” as a dumb Republican talking point. It’s about time someone said it.
Tulsi Gabbard is…a lot. I still wouldn’t feel comfortable voting for her because of her past support for actual conversion therapy (and her lackluster attempt to apologize for it) and her playing buddy-buddy with Assad. However, I do appreciate her willingness to challenge Harris on her prosecutorial record, something that seemed to resonate, and as it was the most memorable moment of the debate for her, she moves up this month.
Same goes for Marianne Williamson, as some of her books feature “health” opinions and advice that are concerning at best, downright dangerous at worst. But her ability to speak truth to power about race, campaign finance, and the entrenchment of politicians on Tuesday night was beautiful. I just wish that she wouldn’t always ruin it with some big rant against logic. She won’t be here in September, anyway.
Bill de Blasio stays static because of his unimpressive performance overall. He was challenged by multiple candidates on his handling of Eric Garner’s death as Mayor of New York, and never gave a good answer, and as my mom put it, he’s just annoying. Which I know is a bad criticism, but I have to agree with her. He’ll be gone by September.
Andrew Yang, on the other hand, will be on the debate stage in September (as long as he gets one more qualifying poll). He did much better staying on message this time and repping his major policy, universal basic income, than he did last month. I still can’t support him as he’s a venture capitalist, but it’ll be interesting to see where he goes from here with his campaign.
The irrelevant centrists: Bennet, O’Rourke, Klobuchar, Bullock, Ryan, Hickenlooper, Delaney
These candidates are easy to write about because they’re all essentially the same: they’re the easy foils to Sanders and Warren and they can (usually) try to make an “electability” argument to win over more voters who think progressive policies will turn off centrist voters. The only problem with that is that it’s been tried by the left and the right and it just doesn’t hold water (look at Donald Trump, for instance). The other problem they have is that their combined polling average is just 6.2 percent. As in, if they all merged and became one candidate pushing for moderate do-nothing platitudes, they’d still be in essentially a statistical tie for fifth place.
The worst of the bunch: Biden
Biden didn’t have a terrible debate. He was more prepared than last time and was able to defend himself a bit better from some (but not all) of the attacks that other candidates brought against him. But he’s still the worst candidate in the field, considering his record on immigration (which he tried to both defend and distance himself from), criminal justice (which he leaned into hard), and healthcare (which nobody seemed to know anything about on Wednesday). He had some Certified Biden Moments™ both good and bad, but overall he won’t change his standing in my list.
So who won, and why was it the progressives?
Warren and Sanders clearly won the first night of the debate, hands down. They didn’t fall for CNN’s bait trying to get them to attack each other — they even defended and apologized to each other when something went wrong. Both of them stayed on message while quickly dismantling the “arguments” that the moderates brought at them. I’d almost feel bad for how bad Delaney, Hickenlooper, Ryan, and Bullock were demolished by the progressives’ sound logic and real plans, except for the fact that I don’t particularly care about them and kinda want them to lose this election, if that wasn’t clear enough already.
But how did they win the second night? Easy. The healthcare debate on Wednesday was much less focused than it was on Tuesday. None of the candidates onstage had a healthcare plan that could come close to rivaling the competence of Sanders’ Medicare for All bill, and Kirsten Gillibrand even launched into a full defense of it when asked. Later in the debate, Jake Tapper quoted Warren when posing a question to the candidates, only increasing her name recognition and her policies’ credibility. Much of Warren’s vision for America is shared by Sanders, and they made their purpose at these debates clear: work together to ensure that a real progressive gets elected while not ceding any ground to the milquetoast neoliberals.
We should continue to see Warren’s polling numbers gradually improve, and now that she’s dealt with John Delaney, September will be the time for her and Sanders to end another man’s whole career.
