The immediate question of the evening was whether Elizabeth Warren, who is approaching parity with front-runner Joe Biden, would go on the attack against him. The broader question of the evening was whether Democrats were setting themselves up for success in 2020. The answer to the first was no. The answer to the second was—well, let’s talk.
Warren had a good outing overall, and laying off of Biden didn’t hurt her. She left the sparring with Biden to Bernie Sanders, and her brand as Bernie Lite allows her to avoid a lot of specifics. In the Medicare for All debate, Warren never had to account for any differences she might have with Sanders on the issue, whereas Kamala Harris and others were made to do so. Warren remains strong on the stage and seems much less canned than she used to. She also dodges questions with more aplomb than some of her fellow candidates onstage, and dodge she did, such as when she was asked whether middle-class taxes would have to rise to pay for her health care plan.
The surprise of the evening was that Biden had a decent night. His performance in the last debate was, in the opinion of this viewer, a disaster. Not this time. In Houston, Biden managed to be combative without being nasty, and he was one of the few candidates onstage who stayed in the realm of genuine argument rather than sloganeering. (Sanders, Pete Buttigieg, Andrew Yang, and Amy Klobuchar were the others.) Those hitting at Biden often looked small, such as when Julián Castro claimed Biden was contradicting himself on health care policy. “Are you forgetting already what you said two minutes ago?” Castro asked, in an ostensible effort to plant the idea that Biden is getting senile. The audience didn’t like it. Later, when Biden argued that a certain kind of executive order on gun control would be unconstitutional, Harris said to him, “Hey, Joe, instead of saying, ‘No, we can’t,’ let’s say, ‘Yes, we can,’” and let out a laugh so long and forced that it made Yellow 5 look natural.
This isn’t to say that Biden is without serious vulnerabilities. Confronted with inconvenient, un-woke blemishes on his record of nearly five decades in politics, Biden seems to think he’s best off changing the subject. Why did Biden say something in the 1970s about not owing anyone for the sins of his fathers? An expedient answer would be to say that he has learned so much in the decades since and become wiser, or something like that, but Biden ignored it and went off on a babble fest. Why did he stand by when Barack Obama was deporting so many people? In this case, too, Biden launched a babble fest—an inexcusable failure of preparation, since he was asked the same exact thing in his last outing. But overall he seemed alert and presidential, and, when he was asked about resilience, his story of moving forward after losing a child (in his case, two) remained moving.
Bernie Sanders was hoarse, and it hurt his performance, but he continued to distinguish himself as the only economic radical onstage, despite Warren’s efforts to tap into his movement. He made plain that taxes would be required to pay for his ideas. He disavowed the past two decades of trade agreements. He called the United States an oligarchy. His case is clear, and, although most of the press seems to dislike him, his brand is good. It’s telling that no one on the stage save Biden was willing to challenge Sanders head-on. However, his stagnancy in the polls suggests his appeal is strong but limited.
As for whether the Democrats came across well overall, it depends on whether you’re talking about the base or the voters who might be persuaded to defect from Donald Trump. Working-class Americans are doing worse than they were a generation ago, and the appeal of a Marshall Plan for Honduras, as Julián Castro was proposing, or talk of systemic racism and similarly ambitious plans to address it, will be a tough sell. LBJ could launch a war on poverty because the country was rich and getting richer, but that isn’t the state of the country now. People who are seeing their station and security erode are likeliest to want to hear about how they’ll be helped, not about how someone else will be helped first.
As for awkward questions, if you want to see Democrats scatter like antelopes meeting a lion, ask them how they intend to enforce the border. Warren dodged it. So did Castro. So did everyone who was pressed on the subject by Univision’s Jorge Ramos. Clearly everyone on the stage viewed—and views—any hint of border control as political suicide in the primary. The trouble is that, post-primary, such reticence could prove to be a different sort of suicide.
Aside from Castro, who came out worse from his exchanges with Biden, and Harris, who seemed unable to answer any question directly or depart from rehearsed lines, all of the also-rans had a not-bad evening. Klobuchar came across as substantive and sensible. So did Buttigieg. Yang got to reveal more of what makes him unusual. Cory Booker had several good quips. Beto O’Rourke drew applause for his policy on gun control and plaudits from his fellow candidates for his response to the recent mass shooting in El Paso. Still, nearly all seemed to be talking to blue-state 20-somethings rather than a broader coalition. It might work for primary voters. Will it work afterward?
