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NBC’s Second Democratic Debate Brought Searing Clashes on Inequality
6 Takeaways From Night 2 of the Democratic Debate
(about 1 hour later)
In the most dramatic moment of Thursday’s debate, Ms. Harris and Mr. Biden directly clashed over the former vice president’s record on race as Ms. Harris laced into his recent remarks about working with segregationists in the Senate, as well as his active opposition to busing in the 1970s.
[Here’s the full transcript of the second night of the Democratic debate]
“I’m going to now direct this at Vice President Biden,” Ms. Harris said. “I do not believe you are a racist. And I agree with you when you commit yourself to the importance of finding common ground.
It was a two-hour debate with 10 candidates. But there was only one defining moment: Senator Kamala Harris of California invoking her personal history about being bused to school as she directly challenged Joseph R. Biden Jr., the former vice president, over his record on race and the use of busing to integrate schools.
But, she continued, “It is personal and it was actually very hurtful to hear you talk about the reputations of two United States senators who built their reputation and career on the segregation of race in this country.”
“I do not believe you are a racist,” Ms. Harris began the emotional exchange with Mr. Biden on Thursday night.
That was a reference to remarks Mr. Biden made at a fund-raiser last week in which he spoke fondly about what he described as a more civil time in the Senate, a time when he had working relationships even with segregationist Southern senators. Mr. Biden has since said he made those references to show that he was willing to work even with those whose views he finds abhorrent, but the remarks nevertheless rocked his campaign and angered many in his party.
It only intensified from there.
“A mischaracterization of my position across the board, I did not praise racists,” he said.
Here are the 6 standout moments from the second Democratic primary debate hosted by NBC:
Ms. Harris went on to press him over his record of fighting to oppose busing decades ago, noting that she was a beneficiary of that practice.
Mr. Biden, the early leader in the polls, has been the target of oblique swipes from opponents throughout his two-month presidential campaign. But midway through the debate, Ms. Harris put him on the defensive as she tore into his record on civil rights: She sharply questioned his opposition to busing programs in the 1970s and said that his recent remarks about cultivating working relationships with segregationist senators were “very hurtful.”
“Do you agree today, do you agree today that you were wrong to oppose busing in America then?” she said. “Do you agree?”
It was more evidence that Mr. Biden’s lengthy record — which contains episodes that now look controversial in this liberal era of the Democratic Party — can and will be aggressively re-litigated by his opponents. Some of them have previously been reluctant to draw direct contrasts with a former vice president who enjoys good will from many Democratic voters. Ms. Harris may have changed that on Thursday night.
“I did not oppose busing in America,” Mr. Biden said. “What I opposed is busing ordered by the Department of Education. That’s what I opposed.”
Mr. Biden assertively defended his record. He noted that he got into politics because of the civil rights movement and stressed his work on voting rights issues. He said he was a “public defender, I didn’t become a prosecutor” — an implicit jab at Ms. Harris, who was a prosecutor — and he nodded to his role as vice president to America’s first black president.
With about 15 minutes left in the debate, Mr. Sanders sought to draw a contrast with Mr. Biden over the former vice president’s vote to authorize the war in Iraq when he was a senator.
But he also appeared almost timid at times, raising his finger toward his face in a sign that he wanted to answer a question, but refraining from interjecting. Senator Bernie Sanders, too, at times raised his hand even as moderators turned to other candidates.
“One of the differences that Joe and I have in our record is Joe voted for that war,” Mr. Sanders said. “I helped lead the opposition to that war.”
And in contrast to Ms. Harris and others onstage, Mr. Biden — typically one of the more loquacious candidates out there — also abruptly cut himself off when he saw the sign that he had run out of speaking time.
Mr. Biden had previously defended his commander-in-chief’s credentials when asked why voters should trust his judgment after his support for a war that most Democrats and many Republicans now consider misguided.
He didn’t crumble onstage or make any memorable gaffes. But the episode with Ms. Harris highlighted, in the most public way yet, some of Mr. Biden’s vulnerabilities.
He noted the role he played in getting combat troops out of Iraq as vice president.
[Who was most effective during the first debate? Here are seven takeaways.]
“I was responsible for getting 150,000 combat troops out of Iraq,” Mr. Biden said, going on to add, “I believe that you are not going to find anybody who has pulled together more of our alliances to deal with what is the real stateless threat out there. We cannot go it alone in terms of dealing with terrorism.”
It was the ten-word interjection that upended the trajectory of the night, if not the 2020 campaign so far.
Several of the Democratic candidates sparred over health care policy, eliminating student loan debt and generational change, with a debate marked by notably sharper disagreements between the top tier candidates, including Mr. Biden and Mr. Sanders, than occurred during Wednesday’s debate.
“I would like to speak on the issue of race,” Ms. Harris declared.
While Mr. Biden aimed his fire mostly at President Trump, the other more moderate candidates on stage took aim at Mr. Sanders and his brand of democratic socialism, in particular his support for Medicare-for-All.
The room soon went silent.
Mr. Biden and Mr. Sanders disagreed over whether to scrape the health system established by the Affordable Care Act. Mr. Biden, after speaking emotionally about losing his son to cancer and daughter and first wife in an automobile accident, suggested he was interested in a more incremental approach, by building on the Affordable Care Act that was passed when President Obama and Mr. Biden, the former vice president, were in office.
Ms. Harris turned to address Mr. Biden, directly and personally, marrying her own identity as an African-American woman with a pointed critique of not just his recent rhetoric about working with segregationists but what they worked on together. “You also worked with them to oppose busing,” she said. “And you know, there was a little girl in California who was a part of the second class to integrate her public schools, and she was bused to school every day. And that little girl was me.”
“I’m against any Democrat who opposes, takes down Obamacare — and then a Republican who wants to get rid of it,” Mr. Biden said.
Mr. Biden protested. “A mischaracterization of my position,” he said.
Mr. Sanders, meanwhile, defended his Medicare-for-All plan without offering specifics on how such an expansive program would be implemented on a national level.
She pressed on, framing her follow-ups as the prosecutor she once was. “Do you agree today that you were wrong to oppose busing in America then? Do you agree?”
“We will have Medicare for All when tens of millions of people are tens of millions are prepared to stand up and tell the insurance companies and the drug companies that their day is gone, that health care is a human right, not something to make huge profits on,” Mr. Sanders said.
In that raw and intense moment, Ms. Harris flashed the political potential that many Democrats believed she held yet had heretofore not been realized. And she did so while boldly taking on the leading Democratic in the race, Mr. Biden, whom many in the field have shied from confronting because of his residual popularity from eight years as Mr. Obama’s No. 2.
The two men didn’t call each other out by name, but it was one of the clearest examples of their policy and ideological differences.
And it wasn’t even her only moment. Earlier, she had risen above the fray with the declaration amid cross talk that, “America does not want to witness a food fight. They want to know how we are going to put food on the table.” Then, too, she silenced the room.
One of the early clarifying moments came when the candidates were asked, as they were last night, to raise their hand if they would “abolish” private health insurers. While Mr. Sanders, Ms. Gillibrand and Ms. Harris all support Mr. Sanders’s bill only Ms. Harris and Mr. Sanders raised their hands.
In her closing statement, Ms. Harris touted herself as the candidate to “prosecute the case” against Mr. Trump. Of course, by then she had already showcased those skills against Mr. Biden.
That represented an about-face for Ms. Harris, who endorsed eliminating private insurers in an CNN town hall earlier this year and then said they would have a role under a Harris administration.
[The latest data and analysis to keep track of who’s leading the race to be the Democratic nominee.]
Mr. Buttigieg got the question he had to be expecting: on the recent police shooting in South Bend and why the police department in a 26 percent black city has only a 6 percent black police force still.
Mr. Sanders entered the debate as a top candidate in the polls and fund-raising, and there were big expectations he would use his stature to push his message of revolution and aggressively go after Mr. Biden.
“Because I couldn’t get it done,” Mr. Buttigieg said flatly.
But though many of the progressive policy ideas he has helped popularize dominated the night — most notably, universal health care — he at times got lost on stage, overshadowed in particular by Ms. Harris. He never really took a swipe at Mr. Biden, save near the end, striking a glancing blow when he contrasted his opposition to the Iraq war with Mr. Biden’s support for it. It’s a line he has used before though, and it hardly resonated after almost two hours of debating.
He continued on the shooting where the officer did not have on his body camera and where black residents have been outraged.
At times, Mr. Sanders appeared more than eager to jump in but got lost in the din. During an exchange about climate change, for instance, he could be seen on stage raising his hand as Mayor Pete Buttigieg of South Bend, Ind., spoke. But rather than turn to him, the moderators tossed it to John Hickenlooper, the former governor of Colorado. When Mr. Sanders did speak, he largely repeated sections from his stump speech.
“I’m not allowed to take sides until the investigation comes back. He says he was attacked be knife, but he didn’t have his body camera on,” Mr. Buttigieg said. “And when I look into his mother’s eyes, I had to face the fact that nothing that I say will bring him back.”
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“This is an issue that is facing our community and so many communities around the country,” Mr. Buttigieg said. “And until we move policing out from the shadow of systemic racism, whatever this particular incident teaches us, we will be left with the bigger problem of the fact that there is a wall of mistrust put up one racist act at a time.”
After the biggest political crisis of his campaign, Mr. Buttigieg was well-prepared to address the deadly police shooting of a black man there.
Mr. Swalwell, the second youngest candidate in the race after Mr. Buttigieg, called for him to fire the police chief.
In an otherwise flat performance, Mr. Buttigieg delivered a thoughtful response that touched on the political challenge of his role as mayor, saying he’s “not allowed” to take sides until an investigation is complete to determine why the police officer involved did not have his body camera turned on.
“You’re the mayor and you should fire the chief if that’s the policy,” he said, “And someone died.”
“It’s a mess, and we’re hurting,” he said. “This is an issue that is facing our community and so many communities around the country. And until we move policing out from the shadow of systemic racism, whatever this particular incident teaches us, we will be left with the bigger problem of the fact that there is a wall of mistrust put up one racist act at a time.”
Mr. Buttigieg stared at him without comment.
He didn’t get much breathing room before Representative Eric Swalwell of California, during a night spent tossing spitballs from the edge of the stage, demanded Mr. Buttigieg do something.
Mr. Swalwell took a direct swipe at Mr. Biden’s age early in the debate, describing a moment years ago when he said Mr. Biden “said it was time to pass the torch to a new generation of Americans.”
“If the camera wasn’t on and that was the policy, you should fire the chief,” Mr. Swalwell interjected.
“If we’re going to solve the issues of the nation, pass the torch. If we’re going to solve the issue of climate chaos, pass the torch. If we are going to solve school violence, pass the torch,” he said.
Mr. Buttigieg demurred.
Mr. Biden, 76, smiled.
Mr. Swalwell pounced again.
“I’m still holding onto that torch,” he said before pivoting to discuss his education plans.
“You’re the mayor and you should fire the chief if that’s the policy and someone died,” he said.
Just a few minutes into the debate, Mr. Hickenlooper took a veiled swipe at Mr. Sanders’s most expansive proposals: “You can’t eliminate private insurance for 180 million people, many who don’t want to give it up,” he said.
Marianne Williamson, a self-help author, then took the floor and changed the subject to reparations for slavery. Mr. Buttigieg made few waves thereafter.
Asked to respond to those who say nominating a socialist would re-elect Mr. Trump, Mr. Sanders, a proud democratic socialist, pointed to polls that show him ahead at this early stage in a head-to-head match up with the president.
The Democrats’ two nights of debates showed that liberalism is on the march in the party. All of the intellectual energy this week has been with the liberals, from Senator Elizabeth Warren’s plans Wednesday and Mr. Sanders’s ideas Thursday night.
“Well, President Trump, you are not standing up for working families when you try to throw 32 million people off the health care that they have,” Mr. Sanders said, adding that under Mr. Trump benefits go to “the top 1 percent.”
The top moderate in the race, Mr. Biden, spent most of the debate fending off attacks from his left without offering a real critique of Mr. Sanders and others proposing eliminating private insurance markets, among other ideas.
“That’s how we beat Trump,” he said. “We expose him for the fraud he is.
Others in the party’s center-left wing — Senator Michael Bennet and former Gov. John Hickenlooper, both of Colorado — tried injecting themselves in the Thursday discussion about Mr. Sanders’s sweeping proposals but made little headway.
Ms. Harris, whose record as a prosecutor has come under criticism from some on the left, leaned into her experience in that role as she called for proposals to reduce gun violence, whether through congressional or executive action, should she become president.
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“As a prosecutor, I have seen more autopsy photographs than I care to tell you,” she said. “I have hugged more mothers who are the mothers of homicide victims and I have attended more police officer funerals. It is enough. It is enough.”
The leftward shift was most evident on health care policy, which dominated the Thursday debate’s opening half-hour. Mr. Sanders along with Ms. Harris and Senator Kirsten Gillibrand of New York, committed to a single-payer Medicare-for-all system that four years ago was a vision embraced just by Mr. Sanders. All 10 candidates also endorsed allowing undocumented immigrants access to government health care programs.
In the span of just a few moments, Mr. Biden’s answer to a question about deportation evolved.
Perhaps a steadier version of Mr. Biden could have made the case against such a massive transformation of the American health care system. Instead he fell back on a reliable crutch: tethering himself to the legacy of President Obama.
José Díaz-Balart of Telemundo asked, “If an individual is living in the United States of America without documents, that is his only offense, should that person be deported?”
“I’m against any Democrat,” he said, “who wants to take down Obamacare.”
“Depending on if they committed a major crime, they should be deported,” Mr. Biden said, defending the Obama-Biden administration’s record on immigration and deportation even as he stressed that “we should not be locking people up.”
Isabella Grullón Paz contributed reporting.
Pressed again — “should someone who is here without documents and that is his only offense, should that person be deported?” — Mr. Biden replied, “That person should not be the focus of deportation.”
Ms. Harris contrasted with Mr. Biden, saying it was an area where she did not agree with the Obama administration, though she strained to avoid President Obama’s name while doing so. “Absolutely no, they should not be deported,” she said.
The first question to Mr. Buttigieg was about his opposition to the proposal of Mr. Sanders to eliminate all student debt and make public college tuition-free.
“I just don’t believe it makes sense to ask working class families to subsidize even the children of billionaires,” Mr. Buttigieg said. “I think the children of the wealthiest Americans can pay at least a little of tuition. While I want tuition costs to go down, I don’t think we can buy down every last penny for that.”
Mr. Buttigieg, 37, said he was sympathetic to student loan, saying he has “six-figure student debt.”
Mr. Swalwell jumped in. “I have a $100,000 student loan debt for myself. If I can’t count on the people around when this problem was created to be the ones to solve it,” he said.
Mr. Swalwell added, “This generation is ready to lead.”
Mr. Biden was asked about his recent remarks to donors that he would not “demonize the rich” as president. He used the opening to pivot to attacking President Trump, a move that has been the centerpiece of his campaign.
“Donald Trump thinks Wall Street built America,” Mr. Biden said at the start of his answer, contrasting himself with the president.
He mentioned Mr. Trump two more times, saying that “Donald Trump has put us in a horrible situation” in regards to “income inequality” and that he would seek take aim to “eliminating Donald Trump’s tax cuts for the wealthy.”
The crowd cheered.
In his next turn, Mr. Sanders starting in on Mr. Trump too, calling him a “pathological liar” and a “racist.”
“That’s how we beat Trump, we expose him for the fraud he is,” Mr. Sanders said.
The crowd cheered yet again.
[What happened at the first debate? Seven takeaways.]
Mr. Sanders was pressed twice on whether taxes for the middle class would go up in a Sanders administration as Mr. Sanders pushes for a sweeping, boldly progressive agenda.
“Will taxes go up for the middle class in a Sanders administration and if so, how do you sell that to voters?” she asked.
Mr. Sanders emphasized the challenges of income inequality in the United States and reiterated his support for Medicare for All and tuition-free public college.
Pressed again, he replied, “Yes, they will pay more in taxes but less in health care for what they get.”
Reported and written by Katie Glueck, Shane Goldmacher and Sydney Ember.
