Steve provides his analysis of the opening two nights of Democratic Presidential debates.
For two hours on Wednesday and another hour on Thursday,
the Democratic debates were spirited and energetic, but all seeming to little
effect. It appeared that there would be only modest shifts in the hierarchy of the
candidates’ standing, as most candidates turned in solid performances and no
one committed a train-wreck caliber gaffe.
Then, just after 10:00 on Thursday, Kamala Harris turned
and faced Joe Biden, and the tectonic plates underneath the race shuddered with
the force of a 7.0 Richter California quake.
Harris challenged Joe Biden directly on his recent remarks
about working with segregationist Senators, and then doubled down on her attack by
raising the issue of Biden’s position's on school busing. Harris
spoke with intensity and passion about her own personal experiences with race, and with busing specifically:
“There is not a black man I know, be he a
relative, a friend or a coworker who has not been the subject of some form of
profiling or discrimination. Growing up, my sister and I had to deal with the
neighbor who told us her parents couldn’t play with us because she—because we
were black. And I will say also that—that in this campaign, we’ve also
heard—and I’m going to now direct this to Vice President Biden. I do not
believe you are a racist and I agree with you when you commit yourself to the
importance of finding common ground. But, I also believe—and
it’s personal. And I—I was actually very—it was hurtful to hear you talk about
the reputations of two United States senators who built their reputations and
career on segregation of race in this country. And it was not only that, but
you also worked with them to oppose busing. And you know, there was a little
girl in California who was part of the second class to integrate her public
schools and she was bused to school every day... and that little girl was me.
It took all of five minutes for Harris to upend the Presidential
election campaign of 2020. She had not simply taken Biden down. She had
presented herself as a powerful leader willing to take on the toughest issues.
For a party that is desperately searching for the leader who has the guts,
gravitas, the personal power, and the savvy to take down Donald Trump, Harris’ tour de force was
mesmerizing. The inevitability of Biden’s nomination seemed to drain in real
time.
While that five minute segment was the most consequential
exchange in the four hours of debate over two nights, it was not an isolated
moment showcasing Harris’s strength. She put her stamp on the proceedings early
in the debate, scolding her shouting, interrupting colleagues: “Hey, guys.
You know what? America does not want to witness a food fight. They want to know
how we’re going to put food on their table.” Sure, it was a canned, planned
line… but it worked. It was an assertion of authority over all the candidates. Humanity. Candor. Strength.
Expect real gains in the polls for Harris. For all the clips you’ve seen of Rick Perry saying “oops”
or Lloyd Bentsen saying, “Jack Kennedy was a friend of mine,” the number of
times that the debates yield a moment of true consequence in the overall
campaign are rare. We witnessed one such moment last night.
Look for gains, too, for Pete Buttigieg, and even for tier
three candidate Eric Swalwell. From Wednesday night, Elizabeth Warren was outstanding, and Julian Castro and Bill de Blasio both elevated their standing.
Last night, Harris,
Buttigieg, and Swalwell -- each in a different way – were very effective in
reframing this as a generational race. The two older white men at the center of the
stage generally performed well, but the conviction, energy, and strength from
these younger rivals was visceral. Biden and Sanders are each over 75 years
old, and while they are remarkable for men their age, their age was apparent.
Biden, in particular, seemed to be struggling to keep up the with the frenetic pace.
Most important, gains registered for these three
younger candidates are likely to come directly at the expense of Biden and Bernie Sanders. Sanders,
who turned in a solid performance, is losing momentum to the rapidly
rising Elizabeth Warren, who is judged to have been the winner of the Wednesday
debate.
In short, the two old white guys who were the front runners
in this race will wake up to a new reality. And if Biden’s support ebbs in the next wave
of polls, it could feed a narrative that he is not strong enough to take on
Trump. In five short minutes on a Miami stage, and the direction of the race
has careened onto a new course.
For drama and consequence, the confrontation between Harris
and Biden was by far and away the most significant moment in the two nights of
debate. Indeed, until that moment, it
seemed that that the very strict structure required to manage a debate stage
with ten candidates was itself
inhibiting organic interchange between candidates, and causing many to begin
rudely interjecting comments and shouting over the moderators.
This shouldn’t have surprised us: Shove ten monster-sized
egos sardine-style on a small stage for two nights and threaten to cut off
their oxygen supply after sixty seconds, and you are going to get far more
hyperventilation, projectile speed-credentialing, and panicky interrupting than
anything resembling the reasoned exchange of ideas.
The frantic pace, hurtling verbiage, and sense that the
entire event was played on “lightening round” rules all served to diminish the
amount of serious content that could be aired and truly debated. There is no
better example of this than when Tulsi Gabbard was asked her position on equal
pay for women. Gabbard did not even pretend to address the question and
then pivot to her messaging strategy. She completely blew off the question and went
straight to the full-up sound-byte that she wanted to make for the evening:
Gabbard: “First of all, let's recognize the situation we're in, that the American people deserve a president who will put your interests ahead of the rich and powerful. That's not what we have right now. I enlisted in the Army National Guard after the Al Qaida terror attacks on 9/11 so I could go after those who had attacked us on that day. I still serve as a major. I served over 16 years, deployed twice to the Middle East, and in Congress served on the Foreign Affairs and Armed Services Affairs for over six years. I know the importance of our national security, as well as the terribly high cost of war. And for too long, our leaders have failed us, taking us from one regime change war to the next, leading us into a new cold war and arms race, costing us trillions of our hard-earned taxpayer dollars and countless lives. This insanity must end. As president, I will take your hard-earned taxpayer dollars and instead invest those dollars into serving your needs, things like health care, a green economy, good-paying jobs, protecting our environment, and so much more.”
That was her actual, verbatim, complete answer to a
question about equal pay for women. Uh, wha?
In this environment of hyper-compressed, well-rehearsed
sound-bytes, it’s a safe bet that most ardent fans of each candidate felt that
their favorite did as well or better than anyone else. One can imagine people in
bars on Grand Street in St. Paul celebrating: “Amy crushed it,” they likely crowed. “Amy just blew the doors off of that place, you knoo, like
hands down!”
No, Minnesota, Amy did not crush it. She did fine. She did not
disappoint – like Beto – but she didn’t significantly advance her cause, like Julián
Castro, Eric Swalwell, or Bill de Blasio. And last night Kamala Harris made it
one helluva lot harder for second tier candidates to merely maintain the status
quo. At a certain point, Klobuchar – and
others in her peer set – will have to figure out how to dramatically change the
game. But Klobuchar’s candidacy – like most – will live to see the next debate.
In our post on Monday of this week, we divided the
candidates into four tiers. We’ll grade out performances by tiers.
Tier One: The five front runners in the polls... Biden, Sanders, Warren, Buttigieg, and Harris.
Make no mistake: Joe Biden took a torpedo below the water
line last night. Even before his confrontation with Harris, though, Joe Biden’s
age was apparent as an issue. He simply looked significantly older than he did
in his last public gig as VP. We had noted
in our pre-debate forecast that Biden had a choice between going for the
jugular or being avuncular: would he attempt to play it safe and project the
aspects of his personality that are wise, measured, above the fray, and
presidential, or would he attempt to put forward a lusty, high-octane
charisma-fest to prove that he can still mix it up with the kids?
The answer,
unfortunately, seemed to be the worst combination: he appeared to be trying to
put on a high-energy performance, but was straining to do so.
Perhaps more troubling for Biden… in the entire two hours,
there was no singular moment in which he made magic happen. There will be no
video highlight to show he’s still got game. As the exchange between Harris and
Biden goes viral today, the primary visual that many Americans will have of
Biden is him in a defensive crouch, unable to successfully respond to a withering direct
attack.
It’s quite the comment on Pete Buttigieg’s remarkable rise that
he went into night knowing he was going to be a target for attack, too. He’s a
target because of his standing in the polls, to be sure, but also because of
his possible vulnerability due to his handling of the police shooting of a
black man in South Bend. Buttigieg handled the direct questioning on the topic
with humility and honest reflection, and appeared to have navigated that issue
well. Throughout the remainder of the evening, he was the Pete Buttigieg cable
news viewers have come to know well: thoughtful, richly informed, insistent on
peeling away the layers of problems and seeing deeper root causes and
unexamined consequences. As expected, Buttigieg did well.
Elizabeth Warren was so good in the opening forty-five
minutes of the Wednesday night debate that few seemed to notice that she
essentially disappeared for the rest of the evening. Nobody packed more into a
60 second response than Warren… she managed to re-frame each issue, identify the
underlying cause, and propose specific policy remedies in less time than it
takes McDonalds to hawk a McRib. In the second hour, Warren seemed content to
sit on her clear lead and let the playground fight between the anonymous, the
desperate, and the moderators devolve into a drone of irrelevance.
Make no mistake: the sizzling campaign success registered
by Warren of late has made life very difficult for Bernie Sanders, her rival
for leadership of the party’s progressive wing. The razor-sharp performance by
Warren the prior night raised the stakes. Bernie Sanders is an exceptional
debater, and he knows the power of a dramatic pause, a high-relief contrast,
and a shocking statistic. Still and all, he can sound like a one-note johnny,
and last night he seemed to push every issue through his singular filter of
income inequality. Yes, Bernie may have
been ahead of his time in 2016, but the ironic consequence is that he feels
like old news in 2020. Polling data suggests that progressives are shifting their bet to Warren. Bernie did not do enough last night to stem that tide.
Tier Two: Big Names with No Traction To Date.
Prior to the debate, we identified four candidates who
had been expected to be far more formidable than they have proven on the
stump so far: Beto O’Rourke, Cory Booker, Amy Klobuchar, and Kirsten Gillibrand.
Booker and Klobuchar put in performances that helped them rather than hurt, but
neither performance was a game-changer.
Beto O’Rourke, however, está en un gran
problema… it could be that the reason he broke into Spanish is that
he is not all that coherent in his native tongue. O’Rourke rose to prominence
with a rhetorical flair that soared on the wings of shared youtube videos, but
that gift was nowhere to be found on Wednesday night. The very first question
fired at O’Rourke sought to pin him down on a very specific tax policy issue, a
savvy move by Savannah Guthrie, as Beto is known to be long on Vanity Fair
and short on wonkspeak. O’Rourke fumbled uncomfortably and it seemed to torque
his mood for the evening.
Savannah Guthrie: “Congressman, that's time,
sir. I'll give you ten seconds to answer if you want to answer the direct
question. Would you support a 70 percent individual marginal tax rate? Yes, no,
or pass?
O’Rourke: “I would support a tax rate and a
tax code that is fair to everyone. Tax capital at the same rate... “
Guthrie: “Seventy percent?”
O’Rourke: “... that you -- you tax ordinary
income. Take that corporate tax rate up to 28 percent. You would generate the
revenues... “
O’Rourke’s stammering, stumbling reply – and refusal to
answer a simple, direct question -- set his tone for Wednesday evening, and his
competitors sensed he was rattled and vulnerable. It was as if O’Rourke became
the “easy target.” No one dared take on the uber-wonk Elizabeth Warren, so the
likes of Bill de Blasio and Julián Castro feasted off the far more vulnerable
O’Rourke.
Amy Klobuchar put in a solid but
unspectacular performance. She had a few good moments – particularly when she
defended the record of the women candidates and their commitment to women’s
reproductive health. But there is a dryness to Klobuchar’s personna – an
absense of emotional fire – that makes her recede on the debate stage. It is
the Micheal-Dukakis-in-a-helmet syndrome… she spouts policy but does not
seem to connect emotionally. She needs to make the jump into the first tier, and we did
not see that happening last night.
Perhaps Cory Booker made more headway. He was animated
and emotive, and was able to invoke personal stories of life in Newark, New
Jersey, to illustrate his beliefs… particularly on gun violence. Booker was
most impressive when he bluntly condemned the pharmaceutical industry
that is concentrated in the very state he represents. He was also able to
illustrate the interrelationship of divergent issues – how healthcare impacts
education and retirement, for example – and add urgency to the need to tackle
the hardest problems. Booker may enjoy an uptick in the polls, but he, too, did
not make a big leap through his debate performance.
If Kirsten Gillibrand did “better than expected,” it may
largely be because expectations were so low. Once expected to be a formidable
candidate, Gillibrand has barely made a ripple in the public consciousness. Gillibrand was particularly abrasive in the
first hour of last night’s debate, as she repeatedly interrupted her colleagues
on stage, talked over the moderators who sought order, and sounded whiny
and petulant in so doing. In that she
was essentially replicating the invasive style of Bill de Blasio on
Wednesday night, the two representatives of the Empire State did a pretty effective
job of proving to the rest of the country that New Yorkers are every bit as
obnoxious as their reputation would suggest. Gillibrand seemed to settle down as
the debate wore on, but we doubt that she made any real progress last night.
Tier 3: The “unloved knowns”
and the “total unknowns.”
Tier 3 candidates are the people who urgently needed a break-out
performance to rise above a sub-one-percent preference.
Two stood out head and shoulders above the
rest: Bill de Blasio and Julián Castro.
When de Blasio first spoke, it was to rudely interrupt
and challenge Beto O’Rourke about the latter’s advocacy of private health
insurance. At that moment, it appeared that Bill de Blasio’s core thesis was that the Democrats' best
chance to beat a pompous, self-involved, bloviating blowhard from New York City is
with their very own pompous, self-involved, bloviating blowhard from New York
City. It was de Blasio who tore the veneer of good behavior off the spectacle
when he brazenly interrupted O’Rourke in mid-answer. As if flagging down a beer vendor at Yankee
Stadium, de Blasio simply thundered over the restrained O’Rourke, and
commandeered the platform with a startling, confident swagger. He was
further emboldened when the moderators meekly allowed him to hijack the
moment.
What surprised everybody – including, probably, a fair
portion of the city he leads – was that de Blasio segued into remarkable
personal stories, and how those personal experiences inspire his candidacy. His discussion of his father's undiagnosed WW II PTSD was profound. Of
all the candidates, de Blasio seemed most intent on reminder Democrats what the
party stands for. By the time the evening was done, de Blasio had done much to
make people forget the noisy interruptions. Expect a jump in his polling.
Julián Castro sensed O’Rourke’s vulnerability and
startled one and all by going in for the kill on O’Rourke’s command of
immigration law. Castro called out O’Rourke by name, and at one point accused
him of “not doing his homework.” Castro had a defining moment was when he was
discussing the immigration crisis and the newly released horrifying photo of
a father and young child face down, drowned in the Rio Grande River.
“I'm very proud that in April I became the first
candidate to put forward a comprehensive immigration plan. And we saw those
images, watching that image of Oscar and his daughter, Valeria, is
heartbreaking. It should also piss us all off.”
There was something Castro’s blunt, crude, vernacular
that startled the audience. It instantly made him at once human, strong, and
forceful. Castro did very well, and he, too, should enjoy a significant jump in
the polls.
The remainder of the “one percenters” did their best to
wrest more than their share of attention, but no one really scored.
Tim Ryan seemed intent on demonizing his own party as a
bunch of coastal prep-school elites who are too busy sipping woody cabernets to
notice that his Ohio constituents were suffering. While strong and passionate,
he took heavy incoming from military veteran Tulsi Gabbard when Ryan appeared to
conflate the Taliban and Al Qaedi as the party responsible for 9/11. That was
the closest thing to Def Con 1 gaffe that happened either night.
Jay Inslee’s go-to was the phrase “I am the only
candidate on the stage who (fill in topic here).” This worked reasonably well
until he tried to go this route on women’s reproductive rights. This teed up
Amy Klobuchar’s scorching rebuttal that there were three women on the stage who
were doing one helluva lot about a woman’s right to make her own
reproductive choices. Inslee went soggy after Klobuchar klobbered him.
John Hickenlooper and Michael Bennet were each
well-informed, earnest, and credible. In any other year, their performance last
night might have led to further evaluation. But this party is looking for a
heavyweight puncher who can mix it up with a ferocious, bullying, lying,
utterly corrupt scumbag. The cerebral and mild-mannered Hickenlooper and Bennet are going
nowhere.
Tulsi Gabbard had strong moments as she leveraged her
military background to make powerful points about foreign policy. However, she
was called out on her past behavior relative to the LGBTQ community, and the
net of her evening was neutral to slightly positive. She did not do enough to
significantly change her trajectory.
Three candidates bombed.
Andrew Yang, bless his heart, was the only candidate who
refused to interrupt others in a desperate plea for mic time. His reward for
good behavior? He spoke only a few times all evening, and did not make enough
of an impression in any moment to break through.He, too, suffered from "Johnny One Note" syndrome, as he seemed to suggest that his proposal to give every American $1,000 a month was a universal panacea for everything from healthcare to climate change.
We anticipated that Marianne Williamson was the biggest
wild card of the 20 candidates, and we thought that her many years of public speaking
might make her the surprise of the debates.
Well, yes, she was a surprise all right.
Unfortunately, Williamson’s position at the far end of the stage was a
metaphor for the candidate who represented Pluto. She was in sequence goofy,
spooky, and loopy. While the other candidates may now go up or down in the polls, Ms. Williamson seems destined to go to return to low earth orbit.
The only candidate who utterly bombed was that
really nerdy looking guy way over on the right on Wednesday night… you know… what’s-his-name.
I think it was Delaney. Wow, what a whiny jerk! He kept talking over the
moderators, kept talking beyond his time allowance, and we can only hope that
he falls below the qualification line for the next debate.
We do always try to include one brief comment in our
debate analysis about the moderators. NBC’s line-up did very well with their
questions… they were tough, direct, and challenged the candidates on their
vulnerabilities. However, the moderators did a poor job of keeping order,
and failed to effectively shut down the most egregious violations of time
limits and decorum. They have to do better. Kamala Harris was right: Americans
do not want these debates to be food fights.
In fact, Kamala Harris was right about a lot of stuff
last night.
The Democratic Party is desperate to find someone who is sure to beat Donald Trump. That is the criteria, end of story.
Joe Biden's strong support to date has been because most people believe that he is the most likely to beat Trump. That belief system was shaken last night.
Harris intuited that the best way to prove that she is the one who can take it to Trump would be to take it to the current front runner. Sure, let other candidates attack O'Rourke or Buttigieg. Harris knew that the only way to position herself as the leader was to take on the leader.
In that moment, Biden needed to show how he could handle tough attacks, pivot, and fight back. He did not.
With 20 candidates, it seemed like it was going to be
hard to declare a single winner.
Turns out it’s not difficult at all.
Round one to the Senator from California.
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