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Democratic Debate Highlights: Candidates Make Forceful Cases for Progressive Policies
7 Takeaways from the First Democratic Debate
(about 1 hour later)
The candidates who were on stage tonight: Bill de Blasio, Tim Ryan, Julián Castro, Cory Booker, Elizabeth Warren, Beto O’Rourke, Amy Klobuchar, Tulsi Gabbard, Jay Inslee and John Delaney.
Night One of the first Democratic debate of the 2020 race is in the books. There was no standout moment for any of the 10 candidates; no one suffered real damage either. While the NBC moderators tried to get the moderate and liberal Democrats to criticize each other, they were polite for the most part and stuck to their preferred issues and messages.
Several Democratic candidates on stage gave an aggressive defense of their party’s progressivism on economic inequality, guns, abortion and immigration. Ms. Warren emerged as the early center of gravity in the debate, especially on economic matters, but the jousting among the 10 candidates led to an often-fragmented first hour.
But there were some standout moments and takeaways about the Democratic race:
Some of the clearest contrasts came on health care, as Ms. Warren and Mr. de Blasio embraced abolishing private insurance for a government-run program while the rest of the field endorsed a less drastic approach, even as they all proclaimed the same control of universal coverage.
Mr. Castro, who has been a middling performer since launching his campaign in January, needed a big showing to break apart from the pack of one-percent candidates.
“We have a giant industry that wants our health care industry to stay the way it is,” Ms. Warren said of her embrace of Medicare-for-All.
Mr. Castro was assertive in key moments but didn’t appear desperate. He took ownership of the immigration discussion, and others on the stage willingly agreed with him. He won the brief sparring match with former Representative Beto O’Rourke — an old family rival — and delivered the night’s lone winning canned applause line: “And on January 20, 2021, we’ll say ‘adiós’ to Donald Trump.”
While her opponents were forced to respond repeatedly to Ms. Warren’s economic and other proposals in the early minutes of the debate, she faded more to the background as the night wore on, as some of the more desperate and lower-polling candidates battled each other and the moderators for airtime. At one point, Mr. de Blasio was only silenced by an impending commercial break.
Ms. Warren, the leading candidate on Wednesday’s debate stage, faced the first question for the night. Savannah Guthrie of “Today” noted Ms. Warren’s many plans — “free college, free child care, government health care, cancellation of student debt, new taxes, new regulations, the break up of major corporations” — and asked, “What do you say to those who worry this significant change could be risky to the economy?”
Ms. Warren said the economy is “doing great” for a “thinner and thinner slice at the top,” from “giant oil companies” to “people who want to invest in private prisons. Just not for African-Americans and LatinX whose families are torn apart, lives destroyed, communities ruined.”
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“We need to make structural change in our government, in our economy and in our country,” Ms. Warren said.
The 44-year-old Texan, who served as mayor of San Antonio and President Obama’s housing secretary, spoke little about his record in office and instead addressed the Democratic Party’s aspirations such as ending President Trump’s immigration policies and reforming urban police departments.
Ms. Klobuchar, offered a chance to critique Ms. Warren’s plans, offered a relatively gentle jab at the plans of liberal candidates like Ms. Warren to make college tuition free.
What happens next is less clear. Mr. Castro’s team must capitalize on his performance or risk falling back to the bottom of the pack. But Thursday night’s debate — featuring heavyweights like Joseph R. Biden Jr., former vice president, and Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont — may gobble up attention from the media and voters. Look for his team to create viral moments to boost his small-dollar donor appeal.[Read the full transcript from the first night of the Democratic primary debate.]
“I do get concerned about paying for college for rich kids. I do,” Ms. Klobuchar said. But then she pivoted to attack President Trump.
“Donald Trump just sits in the White House and gloats about what’s going on” in the economy she said.
Mr. Booker later got a question about tech companies and some of Ms. Warren’s rhetoric about breaking them up. Mr. Booker also took a pass at directly disagreeing with Ms. Warren.
After Mr. Inslee highlighted his record of defending abortion rights as governor, Ms. Klobuchar shot back, “I just want to say that there are three women up here who have fought pretty hard for women’s right to choose.”
She was joined onstage by Ms. Warren and Ms. Gabbard. Three more women candidates will appear onstage Thursday: Ms. Harris, Ms. Gillibrand and Ms. Williamson.
Democrat after Democrat chimed in to flash their bona fides on abortion, one of the most hot button issues in the nation.
“I don’t believe only in reproductive freedom, I believe in reproductive justice,” Mr. Castro said to relatively loud applause. He went on, “What that means is that just because a woman — or let’s not forget someone in the transcommunity, a transfemale is poor, doesn’t mean they shouldn’t have the right to exercise that right to choose.”
Ms. Warren added on, “It’s not enough for us to expect the courts to protect us.” She called to make Roe v. Wade a “federal law” as “state after state undermined Roe.”
Chuck Todd of NBC asked the field who the biggest “geopolitical threat” was to the United States. And the Democrats did not agree. Here were their answers:
Mr. Delaney: “The biggest challenge is China.” He added, “The biggest geopolitical threat remains nuclear weapons.”
Mr. Inslee: “The biggest threat is Donald Trump.”
Ms. Gabbard: “Nuclear war.”
Ms. Klobuchar: “China” (as an “economic threat”). But, she added, “the major threat is what is going in the Mideast with Iran.”
Mr. O’Rourke: “Climate change.”
Ms. Warren: “Climate change.”
Mr. Booker: “Nuclear proliferation and climate change.”
Mr. Castro: “China and climate change.”
Mr. Ryan: “China.”
Mr. de Blasio: “Russia.”
Ms. Warren got the first question — and it was right in her wheelhouse: How could she justify the risk that her many plans might disrupt an economy that is doing well by several indicators? She answered it with a question central of her own that is central to her candidacy: “Who is this economy really working for?” Ms. Warren said, “It’s doing great for a thinner and thinner slice at the top.”
For the first stretch of the debate, Ms. Warren looked the part of the polling leader on stage: dominating the discussion thanks to her own presentation, the ways her rivals framed their ideas and even a moderator’s follow-up to Senator Cory Booker about breaking up big tech.
Notably, no one on stage seemed eager to highlight contrasts with Ms. Warren. Mr. Booker and Senator Amy Klobuchar both took passes when offered explicit opportunities.
In fact, by the 9:40 p.m. mark, Representative Tulsi Gabbard’s Twitter account, run by her sister during the debate, complained, “It’s clear who MSNBC wants to be president: Elizabeth Warren. They’re giving her more time than all the other candidates combined.”
But while Ms. Warren was loomed largest on economic matters, her center of gravity on the discussion seemed to wane as the debate dragged on and the moderators spread time around to all 10 candidates on stage. She went large periods without piping up, as others jostled aggressively for time. (Mr. Booker ended up speaking the most.)
She did land one memorable line late when asked by Chuck Todd about what would happen should Senate Republicans block her agenda or nominees as president. “Do you have a plan to deal with Mitch McConnell?” Mr. Todd said.
She paused for a momentary beat. “I do,” she said.
Mr. Booker, who faced fierce backlash from some of his constituents when he ultimately supported the Iran nuclear deal during the Obama administration, was the only one onstage not to raise his hand when the candidates were asked who would sign on to the 2015 nuclear deal as originally negotiated.
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Mr. Trump pulled out of that deal and recently tensions between the United States and Iran have escalated.
Several candidates who needed big nights didn’t deliver — in part because their long-winded answers didn’t play well in such a rat-a-tat debate format.
“We need to renegotiate and get back into the deal, but I’m not going to have a primary platform to say unilaterally I’m going to rejoin that deal,” Mr. Booker said.
Both Mr. O’Rourke and Mr. Booker, who are known for their eloquence and storytelling abilities, had trouble breaking through din. At times, the length of their answers obscured the points they were trying to make — if they were trying to make them at all. Ms. Klobuchar, too, who is known to prepare assiduously for these types of appearances, struggled to hit her points concisely and was not a big factor.
Ms. Klobuchar has also been critical of the deal. She called it “imperfect but it was a good deal for that moment.” She said she didn’t think that the country “should conduct foreign policy in our bathrobe at 5 a.m.”
Which all goes to say: The loquaciousness that can dazzle in the House and Senate did not work for these candidates on stage.
Ms. Gabbard, a veteran who is also known for her controversial overtures toward the Syrian government which has been accused of major human rights violations, was adamant in her position: “No war with Iran.”
Other candidates who did not make much of a ripple on Wednesday were Representative Tim Ryan, Ms. Gabbard and Gov. Jay Inslee.
“This president and his chicken hawk cabinet have led us to the brink of war with Iran,” she said. She called for a de-escalation of tensions and said that “Trump needs to get back in the Iran nuclear deal.”
Mr. Ryan was all but ignored during the first half of the debate before he started shoehorning himself into the conversation. Ms. Gabbard was strongest on her foreign policy answers but hardly played a role otherwise. And Mr. Inslee, despite seizing on the segment about climate change — his signature issue — and offering some robust answers to other questions, was largely overshadowed.
Ms. Warren has reveled in having “a plan” for a wide range of policy issues. On Wednesday night she said that applied to dealing with Senate Mitch McConnell, the majority leader, who has been successful in blocking many Democratic ambitions over the years, as well.
Mr. Booker was the first presidential debate candidate to reference protecting the rights of transgender people. Mr. Castro followed up shortly thereafter.
Asked whether she had “a plan to deal with Mitch McConnell” — especially if Democrats don’t take back the Senate next fall — Ms. Warren replied simply, “I do.”
The discussion was another significant breakthrough for the transgender community, which in recent years has been rocked by so-called bathroom bans in North Carolina and other parts of the country and by President Trump’s rollback of Obama-era rules that banned discrimination against transgender people in the military.
“Short of a Democratic majority, you better understand the fight still goes on,” Ms. Warren said.
The shout-outs by Mr. Booker and Mr. Castro also served as attempts to endear them to the party’s most progressive activists, who see L.G.B.T. rights as a civil-rights issue akin to racial and gender equality.
It “starts in the White House,” she continued, and said that every person “we energize in 2020 stays on the front lines come January 2021. We have to push from the outside and have leadership from the inside and make this Congress reflect the will of the people.”
It’s a striking contrast from the last elections when each of the 2016 Republican candidates stressed their opposition to L.G.B.T. rights — and even the Democratic candidates in 2008 when no candidate endorsed gay marriage.
NBC producers suffered an audio problem that briefly interrupted the proceedings, leaving candidates confused and viewers at home watching an unexpected set of advertisements.
Mr. Biden and Mr. Sanders may be leading in national polls, but their candidacies did not meaningfully come up in the first debate. This may be an indication that other candidates feel no need, at this early stage of the primary, to draw many contrasts with major Democratic opponents.
Chuck Todd, who came on to co-moderate the debate’s second hour, told the audience that the microphones of the previous moderators — Ms. Guthrie, Lester Holt, and José Díaz-Balart — were still live, scrambling the audio feed.
That was not a given going into Wednesday night’s debate, and Thursday nights’s debate could be rough when Mr. Biden and Mr. Sanders appear onstage together. Still, the fact that no one called out those two leading candidates in absentia — even Ms. Warren noted her general agreement with Mr. Sanders on health care — indicates that the Democrats are still reluctant to engage with each other more forcefully.
It was a brief interruption but enough to merit the attention of one TV-savvy viewer: President Trump, who was monitoring from his trip to Japan on Air Force One.
Among the lower-polling candidates, there were some clashes. A heated one developed between the Texans, Mr. Castro and Mr. O’Rourke, over their approaches to immigration. Another boiled up toward the end of the second hour between Ms. Gabbard and Mr. Ryan, who disagreed over American involvement in Afghanistan.
“.@NBCNews and @MSNBC should be ashamed of themselves for having such a horrible technical breakdown in the middle of the debate,” the president wrote, using the problem as an excuse to repeat one of his usual attacks on the network. “Truly unprofessional and only worthy of a FAKE NEWS Organization, which they are!”
But the debate was devoid of the sharp attacks that underdog candidates in previous cycles have used to try to have breakout moments.
The two Texans on stage, Mr. Castro and Mr. O’Rourke, engaged in one of the most heated and detailed exchanges of the debate as they argued over immigration policy, as Mr. Castro pressed Mr. O’Rourke to go further, invoking specific code sections of immigration law that should be repealed.
Mayor Bill de Blasio exceeded the very low expectations that greeted him in the debate, bringing an energy honed in the New York City political culture.
Mr. O’Rourke, who represented the border city of El Paso in Congress, began his answer in Spanish — the second time he has done so. But as he transitioned to English, Mr. Castro sought to butt in, pressing him to endorse repealing a human trafficking provision currently used to justify actions at the border.
Mr. de Blasio was the first candidate to interrupt someone else, cutting off Mr. O’Rourke when the former congressman defended maintaining the private insurance industry in his health care proposal. “Why are you defending private insurance?” the mayor asked.
Mr. O’Rourke declined to embrace what Mr. Castro was calling for, promising a comprehensive overhaul. As part of that, he said, “We would not detain any families, in fact fleeing the deadliest countries on the face of the planet today.”
Though there has been so far little evidence on the trail that he is running a serious campaign — there is little staff, few solo events and next to zero interest from early-state Democrats — Mr. de Blasio may get a bump in interest from voters outside of New York who knew little about him before Wednesday night’s debate. The question then is does he have the infrastructure to take advantage of one good night.
Some Democrats have hoped either Mr. O’Rourke or Mr. Castro would run for Senate instead of president, and the exchange was a reminder of the sub-primaries within the broader primary.
In his first question of the debate directed at him, Mr. O’Rourke chose to answer in two languages: English and Spanish.
But in neither language did Mr. O’Rourke answer the specific question — whether he would support the highest tax rate being 70 percent, even as Ms. Guthrie pushed to follow up. He called for a “fair” tax code and raising corporate tax rates.
Later, Mr. Booker answered a question about his day one immigration agenda in Spanish, as well.
“The situation now is unacceptable, this president has attacked, he has demonized immigrants. I am going to change this,” Mr. Booker said.
Mr. Castro also introduced himself to the audience in Spanish.
After nearly 20 minutes of limited interaction between the candidates on stage, Mr. Holt pulled out his first raise-your-hand question: Which candidates on stage support abolishing private health insurance companies in favor of a government-run plan.
Only two of the 10 candidates on the stage raised their hands high in the air: Ms. Warren and Mr. de Blasio.
Later, Ms. Warren explained why she embraced the so-called Medicare-for-All approach to health care, and criticized politicians who said it was unfeasible.
“What they’re really telling you is they just won’t fight for it,” she said. “Well, health care is a basic human right and I’ll fight for it.”
The crowd applauded.
“Private insurance is not working for tens of millions of Americans,” Mr. de Blasio later added.
The Florida debate came in the same state as the deadly Parkland school shooting, and the Democrats engaged in a long discussion of guns and what can be done to mitigate the increasingly common gun violence plaguing America.
“For millions of Americans, this is not a policy issue, this is an urgency,” Mr. Booker said. “For those that have not been affected, they’re tired of living in a country where their kids go to school to learn about reading, writing and arithmetic and how to deal with an active shooter in school.”
More than once in the debate, Mr. Booker pointed out that he is the only candidate who lives in a poor community, citing a recent neighborhood victim of gun violence. Mr. Booker also pressed his plan to have every gun owner get a license, just like a driver’s license. He noted that not everyone on stage agreed. He did not name Mr. O’Rourke, but the Texas congressman has raised questions about that proposal.
Ms. Klobuchar compared the battle for gun control to the gay rights movement.
“These Parkland kids from Florida started literally a national shift, you know why? It’s just like with gay marriage. When kids talked to their parents and grandparents and say ‘I don’t understand why we can’t put these sensible things in place’, they listen,” Ms. Klobuchar said.
