Predictions of a Joe Biden pile-on were spot on. But while it wasn’t always pretty, the former VP held his own this time, remembering that his opponents have liabilities in their pasts, too.
The Democratic split over Medicare for All — the signature issue of a curmudgeonly senator from Vermont — once again dominated the opening minutes of a Democratic debate. Those who thought Kamala Harris might "take it easy"on Biden, as he suggested when they met on stage, were wrong. And while the palpable tension between two top-polling candidates was the big storyline of the night, Cory Booker and Tulsi Gabbard has their moments, too.
Here are five revelations from Wednesday’s feisty Democratic debate:
Biden shows he can handle the heat
The debate on Wednesday will be remembered more than anything as the night Biden woke up.
He sparred repeatedly with Harris and Booker, firmly holding the party’s centrist ground.
Barring a stumble, he will now likely own that space at least until the September debate. Every center-left Democrat trying to chip away at his base will have to find another way to do it.
What a difference a month makes. Last month in Miami, Biden appeared unsteady as Harris ripped into him on issues of race. On Wednesday, Biden still tripped over his words and struggled with recall at times. He abruptly cut himself off, beholden to time restrictions by some force unknown to any other candidate in the history of presidential politics. He called a 54-year-old female senator a “kid.”
The main impediment to Biden’s path to the nomination has always been the centrist profile he built during a decades-long career in Washington. Parts of it, as his competitors point out, are out of step with the Democratic Party’s progressive base of today.
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Hewing to a general election audience on immigration, Biden said, “People should have to get in line” to come into the country — a line that progressive activists aren’t going to like.
And swiping at Harris on health care — and, by extension, Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren, who were not on stage Wednesday — Biden said, “If you noticed, there is no talk about the fact that the plan in 10 years will cost $3 trillion. You will lose your employer-based insurance … This is the single most important issue facing the public.”
It’s not clear Biden did anything to expand his base of support. But for the front-runner, there is not yet an imperative to. And for the moderate lane he occupies, Biden hit his notes.
Booker auditions to be the candidate of racial justice
It was billed as a rematch between Biden and Harris. But Booker seized Harris’ role as Biden’s chief antagonist on Wednesday, and he will likely benefit from the role.
Even Biden, in a slip, called him the “future president.”
The New Jersey senator, stagnating in low-single digits, sorely needed the help. Where Harris hit Biden on issues of race last month, Booker seized on his record on criminal justice.
“Since the 1970s … every crime bill, major and minor, has had his name on it,” Booker said. “Those are your words, not mine.”
He criticized Biden for his “phony rhetoric,” and suggested he had helped to destroy “communities like mine.”
Biden, by raising questions about Booker’s own record as mayor of Newark, N.J. , fought Booker in a way he did not muster last month against Harris.
“Barack Obama knew exactly who I was,” he said. “I’ll take his judgment.”
If you didn’t think race was going to play a critical role in the 2020 primary, you weren’t paying close enough attention. Many moderate Democrats have expressed uneasiness about an election turning significantly on issues of race, fearful of alienating voters that President Donald Trump won in 2016 with rhetoric demonizing immigrants.
But the setting of the stage on Wednesday in Detroit — a heavily African-American city in the Midwest — served as a reminder that there’s another way for Democrats to win the heartland: invigorating base voters in the cities there, not just in diners outside of town.
The conversation Wednesday put Booker squarely in the field of vision.
Harris is a front-runner now — and was treated like one
If Biden was the chief target for his rivals on Wednesday, Harris was a close second. She received the first question from Jake Tapper. And it centered on what may be her greatest liability: her struggle to articulate a consistent position on health care.
But the resulting back-and-forth wasn’t just a two-person colloquy between Harris and Biden. Gabbard and Michael Bennet also took shots at Harris’ health care plan.
Later in the debate, Gabbard hit Harris on another perceived vulnerability, at least in the Democratic primary: Harris’ record as a prosecutor. “There are too many examples to cite, but she put over 1,500 people in jail for marijuana violations and then laughed about it when she was asked if she ever smoked marijuana,” Gabbard said.
Gabbard also hit Harris for blocking “evidence that would have freed an innocent man from death row until the courts forced her to do so” and keeping “people in prison beyond their sentences to use them as cheap labor for the state of California.”
Asked on CNN after the debate about the exchange, Harris dismissed Gabbard as unworthy of her attention.
"This is going to sound immodest, but I’m obviously a top-tier candidate,” said Harris. “And so I did expect that I would be on the stage and take hits tonight because there are a lot of people that are trying to make the stage for the next debate."
We’ll see how that response goes over. What Wednesday made clear is that Harris, as a top-tier contender, is in for commensurate treatment from her rivals and the media.
The also-rans have a night, but it won’t be enough
There were 10 candidates on the stage Wednesday night, but there are likely only five tickets to the next debate in Houston.
Because of the Democratic National Committee’s rules, half the field will almost certainly be excluded from the third debate.
Andrew Yang, the first-time candidate who was lackluster in the first debate but looked much more comfortable Wednesday, is on the verge of locking up a spot. Gabbard has an outside shot if she experiences a slight polling bump.
Some of the floundering candidates worked hard to make an impression. Bennet showed passion, and Kirsten Gillibrand took her best swing against Biden. But it’s unlikely to be enough for either of them.
Same for New York Mayor Bill de Blasio, a too-eager sparring partner who closed the debate with a cringe-inducing closing statement in which he tried to turn the tables by calling Trump “a socialist … for the rich.”
Biden hinted at de Blasio’s likely fate on Wednesday. After Hizzoner applauded Biden for his opposition to the renegotiated NAFTA trade deal, de Blasio said, “You know what? We believe in redemption, Joe. We believe in redemption in this party.”
“Well, I tell you what,” Biden responded. “I hope you’re part of it.”
Medicare for All is shaping up as the primary’s defining issue
For the second night in a row, Democrats fought over Medicare for All — both the substance of what it would mean to do away with private insurance, and the politics of pushing for it in a general election against Trump.
The disagreement is so prominent that it’s probably not going anywhere, anytime soon — even if some in the party wish it would just go away.
The issue is not only top-of-mind for voters, but also nuanced enough that it will likely feature prominently in every future debate. Candidates who have dodged the tax implications of their health care plans will be pressed on the cost. And candidates who have taken more moderate positions will be pressed on gaps in coverage.
Harris, for one, got a huge serving of that skepticism on Wednesday. She responded forcefully, but in broad strokes, about her plan to wait 10 years before government took over. That’s only likely to work for so long.
Biden, on the other hand, will continue to be pressed on how his plan to improve Obamacare would still leave millions uninsured. Even if he’s more realistic than other candidates about what’s possible to achieve, that’s not what activists want to hear during a primary.
For the electorate, it will help when the field is winnowed sufficiently that the conversation includes — on one stage — both the centrist frontrunner and the two leading progressives on the issue, Sanders and Warren. That could happen in September.