Here we go again…
The December 2019 Democratic Presidential nomination debate…
Seven Democrats go on stage to face the public…
Six of them will be trying to dislodge Joe Biden from the lead for nomination…
That does NOT mean they would go after Biden in the debate…
Some will try to go after others to climb ahead of them…
The first tier going into tonight’s show consists of Biden, Sanders, Warren and Buttigieg…
The others are in the single digits…
There are other people running….
But they, including the two rich guys, are NOT gonna be the nominee…
Seven presidential hopefuls will take the stage in Los Angeles on Thursday night for the last Democratic primary debate of 2019, as they look to close out the year with a bang.
The debate — the smallest one to date — comes less than two months before the first round of primaries and caucuses in February. The Democratic field still lacks a clear front-runner in the early voting states, with polls showing a four-way race between former Vice President Joe Biden, South Bend, Ind., Mayor Pete Buttigieg, Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) and Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.).
Those four candidates won’t be the only ones on stage. Sen. Amy Klobuchar(D-Minn.), former tech executive Andrew Yang and billionaire philanthropist Tom Steyer are also set to compete in the showdown on Thursday night….
Some clips on the debate from 538….
SARAH FROSTENSON8:08 PM
Perhaps unsurprisingly impeachment is the first question of the evening, as the House voted to impeach Trump last night. But there is now a question of whether the House has, in fact, impeached Trump. Harvard constitutional law professor Noah Feldman, who testified before the House, arguing that Trump’s behavior was impeachable, has now written a piece arguing that Democrats haven’t impeached Trump until they’ve transmitted the articles to the Senate, which they’ve talked about delaying.
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GEOFFREY SKELLEY8:12 PM
I’m watching Warren tonight, and she’s often positioned herself as a candidate focused on fighting corruption, so she pivoted nicely on the impeachment question to the need for a candidate who can “draw the sharpest distinction” against Trump on corruption.
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SARAH FROSTENSON8:16 PM
But doesn’t Steyer’s line about “Hey, I’ve been fighting for impeachment two years now” conflict with House Democrats’ messaging about impeachment? The messaging I picked up in watching yesterday’s testimony was look, this is a super grave situation that we don’t take lightly. Steyer seems to kind of contradict that.
AMELIA THOMSON-DEVEAUX8:17 PM
Interesting response from Yang — he says, essentially, stop focusing on impeachment because someone is still going to have to go up against Trump in 2020. Sounds a bit like other candidates who have said to focus not just on Trump but an entire political system that needs to be changed.
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NATHANIEL RAKICH8:17 PM
Today, the House gave Trump a pretty big win by overwhelmingly passing his North American trade deal, the USMCA. This is a potential trap for these candidates, many of whom probably support the deal but don’t want to be seen as agreeing with Trump on anything.
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SARAH FROSTENSON8:17 PM
This is also a bit of news, at it’s been unclear where the candidates stand on USMCA. Curious if Warren will join Sanders.
GEOFFREY SKELLEY8:19 PM
Between Klobuchar and Yang, they’ve already hit the Midwest by name and the states there, specifically on job losses and USMCA. Between the presidential primary and the Electoral College, this is obviously a key region.
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PERRY BACON JR.8:20 PM
“The middle class is getting killed,” Biden says. This is an interesting argument. Buttigieg says the same — regular people aren’t feeling the growth of the economy.
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CLARE MALONE8:21 PM
Buttigieg and Biden are essentially answering the economy question in the same way — middle-class voters don’t pay attention to the stock market. But Buttigieg throws in a little RFK riff on poverty, rather than just talking about the middle class. So, small differentiations, I suppose, for the younger of the moderates.
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PERRY BACON JR.8:22 PM
This is interesting in that these candidates, even the more moderate ones, are basically rejecting the idea that economic growth is being felt by real Americans. They all sound like Warren/Sanders circa 2015. It will be interesting to see if the Democrats take this tact in the general election, when Trump will likely run on the strong economy.
AMELIA THOMSON-DEVEAUX8:24 PM
Warren is hammering her corruption message over and over again. “Corruption, pure and simple” could be her tagline. And then she immediately pivots to the wealth tax — which she’s also been focusing on while out on the campaign trail.
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NATE SILVER8:25 PM
The wealth tax is an issue for which Warren is clearly well-prepared. I wonder how the primary might have evolved differently if that had been more of a focal point in the debates, rather than health care. And since the wealth tax is quite a bit more popular than Medicare for All, it wouldn’t have created as many potential electability issues for Warren.
NATHANIEL RAKICH8:29 PM
Interesting — Steyer agreed with Warren on the wealth tax. He’s actually pretty progressive, which you might not guess from the fact that he’s a billionaire.
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AMELIA THOMSON-DEVEAUX8:29 PM
Yes, Nathaniel, Steyer has been in favor of a wealth tax for a while. He recently wrote an op-ed telling Bloomberg to support a wealth tax or get out of the race. Kind of wonder if he should have dwelled on that for longer, since it does run counter to the billionaire stereotype and might have caught people’s attention.
PERRY BACON JR.8:31 PM
Not a ton of millionaires are sending their kids to public colleges, as others have noted. So this argument from Buttigieg is a bit overdone. Buttigieg does not support a wealth tax, but has been smart about kind of pivoting away from that position to more popular ones that are also contrasts with Warren and Sanders (Medicare for everyone who wants it, rather than Medicare for All, and free college for most people as opposed to free college for everyone).
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CLARE MALONE8:34 PM
Steyer is taking shots at Buttigieg for not being as progressive as his age cohort on climate change.
NATE SILVER8:37 PM
All the candidates have been reasonably sharp so far tonight. You sort of wonder if they were rarin’ to go after the political world was focused on impeachment for much of the past month.
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AMELIA THOMSON-DEVEAUX8:40 PM
Warren is really staying on message tonight — casting climate change as an issue, fundamentally, of corruption.
AMELIA THOMSON-DEVEAUX8:40 PM
Warren is really staying on message tonight — casting climate change as an issue, fundamentally, of corruption.
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SARAH FROSTENSON8:42 PM
Moderators are being tough on Warren tonight. This is the second proposal of hers they’ve described in terms that paint it as impractical. When talking about her wealth tax earlier, they said, “taxes of this magnitude would stifle growth and investment” and now on nuclear energy they said her goal of “net zero emissions by the year 2050 without utilizing nuclear energy” was “impossible.”
AMELIA THOMSON-DEVEAUX8:44 PM
Steyer comes off sounding knowledgeable about nuclear power. He says it’s too dangerous, and we should be considering wind and power instead. And he pushes back on the doom and gloom we’ve heard from other candidates, saying that this is an issue we can tackle.
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NATHANIEL RAKICH8:44 PM
Biden calling for a return to beyond normalcy.
NATE SILVER8:45 PM
Twitter’s not going to like this response from Biden, but rank-and-file Democratic voters mostly like the idea of compromise and cooperation.
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CLARE MALONE8:45 PM
Biden has gotten a lot more comfortable invoking Trump’s specific attacks on his family. That feels like a little bit of a new thing. It remains interesting to me, since I think a lot of voters probably have mixed feelings on Hunter Biden.
AARON BYCOFFE8:45 PM
Steyer didn’t get a ton of speaking time in previous debates, but he’s had the third-highest amount of time so far tonight.
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AMELIA THOMSON-DEVEAUX8:48 PM
It was kind of inevitable that Yang, as the only candidate of color, was going to get a question about diversity on the debate stage. He seemed prepared, and connected his answer to his universal basic income proposal in a way that didn’t seem cheesy. He said more people of color would be able to participate in the political system if they had an extra $1,000 a month.
NATHANIEL RAKICH8:48 PM
Oh dear. Sanders just tried to beg off answering a question about race, trying to address climate change instead. The moderator was not having it. That is not what he needed when he really needs to expand his coalition into communities of color.
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NATE SILVER8:50 PM
Yeah, Sanders almost never makes big screw-ups in debates, and I don’t think that it was a big screw-up, but it was at least a modest one. If you’re going to use your time to go back to an earlier question, you’d better make sure that you’re not sounding dismissive of the new issue you were asked about.
CLARE MALONE8:51 PM
In response to a question about American policy toward Israel, Sanders called himself “proudly Jewish.” One notable thing about this campaign is how much more he talks about his biography — he never talked about that before a couple of months ago. I have to think it has something to do with the rise of anti-Semitism in the U.S.
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AMELIA THOMSON-DEVEAUX8:53 PM
Sanders gets a question on Israel, which has become an increasingly controversial political issue, particularly on the left. He went right after Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu, saying he’s a “racist.” This is really a third-rail issue and I’m a little surprised the moderators asked about it.
LAURA BRONNER8:54 PM
“We need to treat our allies better than we treat the dictators” is a memorable line from Warren.
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CLARE MALONE8:56 PM
Biden dropping that he and “Bibi” know each other well is a perfect example of the advantage of having been V.P. … you automatically scan a little more “important” when it comes to matters of state.
NATE SILVER8:56 PM
There’s notably little explicit conflict between the candidates tonight.
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NATHANIEL RAKICH8:57 PM
Yeah, the most direct conflict might have been when Steyer said he wished Buttigieg were louder on climate change? Which, yikes.
SARAH FROSTENSON9:01 PM
“We don’t have to go to war [with China], but we have to be firm,” says Biden in response to the moderators’ question asking if the U.S. was on a collision course with China.
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NATE SILVER9:01 PM
Biden’s had a pretty strong first hour, but it’s worth pointing out that pretty strong Biden first hours have not always followed by strong second and third hours.
CLARE MALONE9:06 PM
Looks like Klobuchar is ramping up for a little bit of Buttigieg-bashing. Kind of muted for now, but she seemed like she was trying to insinuate a lack of experience, pointedly calling him “Mayor” and then going on to talk about her senatorial duties.
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NATE SILVER9:07 PM
Yeah, Klobuchar is more explicitly drawing contrasts with Buttigieg, something I thought she might do as part of an Iowa-centric strategy. I also thought Klobuchar’s implication that Trump is a whiner or wuss for complaining so much about foreign leaders was sort of a fun twist on Buttigieg’s response to the question.
PERRY BACON JR.9:08 PM
I think Biden has been fine. Kind of unmemorable. But I don’t think there have been major moments for anyone, really. I did think Yang handled the race question very well and Sanders, not so well. But even that was kind of minor.
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GEOFFREY SKELLEY9:08 PM
Warren’s been decent so far. She’s been talking about corruption, an issue where she can stick to hitting “the wealthy and well-connected” and talk about her wealth tax, which polls well. I’m interested to see what happens when health care gets brought up, since it’s been a problem area for her.
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AMELIA THOMSON-DEVEAUX9:09 PM
I think Steyer is actually doing pretty well, all things considered, as is Yang. But the fact that other candidates are also doing well isn’t great for them, since it just makes them look like acceptable alternatives to the higher-polling candidates who voters already like better. I’m sort of waiting to see if we get more conflict — are the gloves going to come off when we get to health care?
NATHANIEL RAKICH9:09 PM
I think we have kinda reached the debate singularity. Everyone is doing pretty well. I think it’s anyone’s guess who will see a polling bump after tonight.
NATHANIEL RAKICH9:14 PM
Tim Alberta is asking the candidates about President Obama’s recent comments that if women ran everything, we would have fewer problems and that old white men should “get out of the way.”
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CLARE MALONE9:15 PM
Biden says he doesn’t think Obama was talking about him.
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AMELIA THOMSON-DEVEAUX9:16 PM
Warren was asked a very similar question — about this comment from Obama — at an Iowa town hall on Monday. She answered, in part, by talking about the Women’s March and women’s activism. It will be interesting to see if she gets to answer it again on national TV and what she says.
NATE SILVER9:17 PM
For better or worse, I like how Biden just says how his experience is an asset instead of trying to get cute in his responses to the age question.
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CLARE MALONE9:24 PM
Buttigieg: “If you can’t say no to a donor, you shouldn’t be running for office in the first place.”
SARAH FROSTENSON9:18 PM
“I’d also be the youngest woman ever inaugurated,” says Warren in response to the question regarding her age if she were to be elected president. That was good.
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NATE SILVER9:20 PM
Warren’s joke went over a lot better than Bernie’s did. You sort of see how it’s easier to debate when the pressure is a little lower instead of when you’ve been rising in the polls and everyone targets you as a front-runner.
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PERRY BACON JR.9:20 PM
Oh, Warren is going there. She has been suggesting on the campaign trail that Buttigieg and Biden are spending too much time at fundraisers and potentially appointing donors as ambassadors. So she is now making that attack on the main stage.
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AMELIA THOMSON-DEVEAUX9:21 PM
Klobuchar isn’t wrong that female politicians get things done. There’s research showing that in Congress, for example, women often outperform men.
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GEOFFREY SKELLEY9:22 PM
Warren going in and hitting Buttigieg on going to a fundraiser in a super expensive wine cave. This is the most heated moment of the debate so far.
CLARE MALONE9:23 PM
Buttigieg points out that he’s literally the only person on stage who isn’t a millionaire or billionaire, responding to Warren calling out his fundraisers.
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NATHANIEL RAKICH9:23 PM
Buttigieg was ready for this attack from Warren.
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SARAH FROSTENSON9:24 PM
“Senator, your net worth is 100 times mine,” says Buttigieg.
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AMELIA THOMSON-DEVEAUX9:24 PM
Buttigieg is using this exchange to position himself as a pragmatist. His argument — why would I turn down money that could help me defeat Trump just because it came from a wealthy person?
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CLARE MALONE9:24 PM
Buttigieg: “If you can’t say no to a donor, you shouldn’t be running for office in the first place.”
NATE SILVER9:25 PM
It’s worth noting that Biden and Sanders have been (slightly) rising in the polls while Warren has been falling and Buttigieg’s momentum has recently stalled out. So the answer to “who won that fight?” might be Biden or Sanders or Klobuchar.
NATHANIEL RAKICH9:29 PM
Now Sanders gets in on the Buttigieg-Warren big fundraisers brouhaha. He compares the number of billionaire Biden donors (43) to billionaire Buttigieg voters (39) and jokes that Buttigieg is “energetic” enough to catch up to Biden.
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GEOFFREY SKELLEY9:29 PM
Biden defends his campaign finance record, pointing out that his average donation is $43.
PERRY BACON JR.9:31 PM
So Steyer shares the liberal stances of Warren/Sanders but has also run businesses. I don’t think I realized that’s the case until now.
NATHANIEL RAKICH9:32 PM
I feel like the term “wine cave” is going to be new to a lot of Americans after tonight. I wonder if that hurts Buttigieg, just because probably not a lot of people had heard about that fundraiser until now.
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SARAH FROSTENSON9:33 PM
Yeah, Nathaniel. If my count is correct — Yang, Klobuchar and Warren have all now disparaged Buttigieg’s wine cave.
CLARE MALONE8:45 PM
Biden has gotten a lot more comfortable invoking Trump’s specific attacks on his family. That feels like a little bit of a new thing. It remains interesting to me, since I think a lot of voters probably have mixed feelings on Hunter Biden.
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AMELIA THOMSON-DEVEAUX9:37 PM
Steyer ties Trump’s immigration policy to the broader racial politics of Trump’s presidency: “I think it’s important to note that this president is not against immigration. He’s against immigration by nonwhite people.”
CLARE MALONE9:37 PM
Buttigieg gets a question about financial compensation for children affected by the family separation policy. I think that’s the first time this has been brought up in a debate.
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SARAH FROSTENSON9:40 PM
Now the conversation is turning to reparations for descendants of enslaved men and women. Buttigieg is in support of it, but as Poll Bot pointed out, this isn’t a terribly popular idea among the general electorate
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CLARE MALONE9:40 PM
Biden successfully skirts the issue of talking about reparations.
GEOFFREY SKELLEY9:42 PM
This was an interesting moment for Buttigieg, who has struggled to make inroads with black voters. He played up his proposals to help minority groups. But as Amelia pointed out in our Slack chat earlier today, Buttigieg may be coming at appealing to those groups with a consultant’s mindset, which may not be the best way to do it.
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CLARE MALONE9:42 PM
Klobuchar is very much picking up on the line of attack against Buttigieg, saying he needs to “respect our experience.”
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NATHANIEL RAKICH9:43 PM
Klobuchar is really taking almost literally every opportunity to attack Buttigieg. This is the Buttigieg bashing we expected in the last debate.
GEOFFREY SKELLEY9:43 PM
Honestly, Biden must be enjoying this. He hasn’t gotten attacked much while Buttigieg is the guy taking the heat.
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NATE SILVER9:44 PM
Biden seems … a little smarter tactically overall in this debate. You remember early on how he was stopping as soon as his clock ran out and not quite getting the knack of when he could duck a response and when he couldn’t.
CLARE MALONE9:45 PM
Trying putting together a winning coalition as “a gay dude in Mike Pence’s Indiana,” Buttigieg says of his South Bend electoral win. Klobuchar counters by bringing up his failed run for statewide office and basically says, you didn’t really win in a red place, you won in a blue island of a city.
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GEOFFREY SKELLEY9:45 PM
Reminder that Buttigieg’s largest vote in a mayoral election was about 11,000 votes. And wow, Klobuchar hits Buttigieg for getting blown out in his lone statewide race, a 2010 treasurer contest in Indiana.
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NATHANIEL RAKICH9:45 PM
The head-to-heads in this debate, unlike some of the others (Harris-Gabbard, anyone?), have actually made tactical sense! Warren and Buttigieg are both fighting over college-educated whites, so it makes sense that they sniped at each other. Iowa is a must-win for both Klobuchar and Buttigieg, so it makes sense that they went nuclear on each other.
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PERRY BACON JR.9:45 PM
In that back and forth, Buttigieg mentioned he is a veteran and is gay. He talked about his identities, fine. But Klobuchar, who could have talked about her gender, instead talked about passing bills and her electoral record.
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PERRY BACON JR.9:47 PM
I think Klobuchar has been really strong tonight. I always think she does well. But she hasn’t really moved in the polls, so perhaps the voters aren’t seeing what I’m seeing.
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NATHANIEL RAKICH9:48 PM
I don’t know, Perry, she has been making moves in Iowa! She’s up to 6.6 percent there.
Share I don’t know, Perry, she has been making moves in Iowa! She’s up to 6.6 percent there. on FacebookShare I don’t know, Perry, she has been making moves in Iowa! She’s up to 6.6 percent there. on Twitter
SARAH FROSTENSON9:47 PM
Do you think that could change tonight? I think Buttigieg has also had some strong retorts, but all of the chatter about the “wine cave” and his fundraising tactics could maybe backfire if that becomes a soundbite from the evening.
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NATHANIEL RAKICH9:48 PM
I don’t know, Perry, she has been making moves in Iowa! She’s up to 6.6 percent there.
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CLARE MALONE9:48 PM
Klobu-surge in Iowa??
OK….
I’m Out on this….
I’ll have a recap later….
I thought that all of the Democrats had a good debate today. Good job!
It did seem a bit better…
Less people works…