Freeforall among top tier
Analysis: Rivals expose Biden’s vulnerabilities as candidates swing left
The Democratic Party primary race will shift after its first round of debates, as frontrunner Joe Biden’s vulnerabilities were exposed by his rivals Thursday and Kamala Harris and Julián Castro flashed strong performances that could push them up in the polls.
The debates were often cacophonous, as the presidential hopefuls fought to be heard on the crowded stage in Miami. But some trends started to emerge through the chaos.
Here are some takeaways from the debates
Wednesday and Thursday nights:
Harris picks up steam: The clear winner Thursday was Harris, the California senator, who provided a defining moment of the debate when she said she had to interject “as the only black person on this stage” and told former Vice President Biden that his recent comments about his ability to work civilly with those he disagrees with, namedropping notorious segregationists, were “hurtful.”
“You also worked with them to oppose busing,” Harris said. “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.” Harris lived in Berkeley at the time.
“So I will tell you that on this subject, it cannot be an intellectual debate among Democrats,” she said. “We have to take it seriously.”
Biden called Harris’ attack a “mischaracterization of my position across the board,” and fired back that he became a public defender instead of a prosecutor — a dig at Harris’ record as a former California attorney general and San Francisco district attorney.
She didn’t let it go, asking whether he still defends opposing busing — and Biden said he stood by his position that busing should be locally decided, not federally mandated. Harris replied that local control wasn’t good enough, noting it took nearly two decades after the Supreme Court decision that struck down forced segregation for her school to integrate. Biden gets rocked, Warren does not: Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren caught a break Wednesday night as neither the moderators nor the candidates challenged the highestpolling person on the stage. On Thursday, Dublin Rep. Eric Swalwell joined Harris in making Biden target No. 1, turning his age (76) and long career into vulnerabilities.
The 38yearold Swalwell said, “You can’t count on the people who have been in government for the last 30 years, who were around when this problem was created, to be the ones to solve it.” He said he was 6 years old when Biden said it was time to pass the torch to a new generation, and “He is still right today.” Swalwell urged him to “pass that torch.”
Replied Biden: “I’m still holding onto that torch.”
But Swalwell returned to the theme multiple times, closing by saying: “We can’t be a forwardlooking party if we look to the past for our leadership.” Left or center? Candidates are picking one of two lanes on policy areas such as health care: as left of each other as they can get, or as close to the center as possible. The debates showed how that split could divide the party even before Republicans fire up their attack ads.
Warren, one of the few candidates showing recent upward movement in the polls, said the first night that “I’m with Bernie on Medicare for All.” On Thursday, Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders and Harris were the only ones to endorse eliminating private insurance in favor of a governmentrun system.
Strategically, it makes sense for Warren to say that in a Democratic primary debate. It enables her to reassure Sanders’ supporters that she’ll carry the idea if she’s the nominee and he’s not.
Here’s the catch, though: Medicare for All is popular — 56% support a single payer health care plan, according to a January survey from the nonprofit Kaiser Family Foundation. But support plummeted to 37% when respondents were told they would lose their private health coverage.
“It’s not like people love their health insurance companies, with deductibles rising and all the hassles,” tweeted Larry Levitt, a senior vice president with the Kaiser Family Foundation. “But, requiring people to give up their current health insurance for a new system based on Medicare makes them nervous.”
Republicans hope that Warren’s and Sanders’ stance, and anyone else who follows them left, could endanger congressional Democrats in swing districts.
“If she’s the nominee, we’re going to tie everything she’s saying to these House members,” said Torunn Sinclar, regional press secretary for the National Republican Congressional Committee.
Candidates skew left on immigration: On both nights, immigration was center stage and the field skewed to the left. On Wednesday, Castro, the former federal housing secretary, went after former Rep. Beto O’Rourke for not embracing Castro’s proposal to decriminalize crossing the U.S. border without authorization. Other Democrats surely noted the heated exchange, as Castro bluntly told O’Rourke that “if you did your homework,” he’d see the wisdom of the idea.
Republicans assail the proposal as “open borders,” and some of the Democrats on the debate stage clearly shied away. Minnesota Sen. Amy Klobuchar, who like O’Rourke is running to the center, said only that she’d be “happy to look at his proposal” before pivoting to more comfortable ground extolling the virtues of immigrants.
On Thursday, all 10 candidates raised their hands when asked whether they favored covering health care costs for undocumented immigrants. It caught the attention of President Trump, who tweeted during a meeting with world leaders in Japan, “All Democrats just raised their hands for giving millions of illegal aliens unlimited healthcare. How about taking care of American Citizens first!? That’s the end of that race!”
How much talking about Trump is too much? Polls have consistently shown that Democrats prize one quality above all in their 2020 nominee: the ability to beat Trump. But some analysts say candidates should spend more time introducing themselves and less ripping on Trump.
Castro offered a good example Wednesday of how to balance the two, said Kelly Dittmar, a scholar at the Center for American Women and Politics at Rutgers University.
He spent most of his precious minutes onstage introducing himself and talking about policy, particularly immigration. He saved one of his two Trump namechecks until his last line of the night: “And on Jan. 20, 2021, we’ll say adios to Donald Trump.”
“He was showing that, ‘I haven’t forgotten about the end goal, but let me show you how to get there,’” Dittmar said.