AP
... and how they were covered^ NEWS^5
What happened
Sens. Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren
fought off a spirited assault upon progressive
policy proposals such as Medicare for All dur-
ing the first round of the second Democratic
presidential debates this week, as moderate
rivals cast them as peddling unrealistic, far-left
ideas that will only help President Donald
Trump win re-election. (The second round of
the debate, featuring another 10 candidates,
was due to take place after The Week went to
press.) On stage in Detroit, Montana Gov. Steve
Bullock bemoaned candidates offering “wish-
list economics,” while former Maryland Rep. John Delaney warned
that Medicare for All—which would phase out private insurance—
would “turn off independent voters.” Former Colorado Gov. John
Hickenlooper cautioned that if Democrats embrace the Green
New Deal, a sweeping progressive plan to fight climate change, we
“might as well FedEx the election to Donald Trump.”Sanders and Warren, who place second and third in polls, acted
almost in partnership in parrying the attacks. Sanders said grand
proposals such as canceling student debt would energize young
Americans who might otherwise not vote. Warren castigated her
moderate rivals for lacking ambition. “I don’t understand why any-
body goes to all the trouble of running for president,” said the Mas-
sachusetts senator, “just to talk about what we really can’t do and
shouldn’t fight for.” Amid the ideological tussle, South Bend, Ind.,
Mayor Pete Buttigieg sought to position himself as a compromise
candidate, championing a “Medicare for all who want it” policy that
would offer a public plan that competed with private insurers.What the columnists said
Centrists have spotted an opening, said Jona-
than Chait in NYMag.com. Following former
Vice President Joe Biden’s stumbles in the first
debate, candidates such as Delaney, Bullock,
and Minnesota Sen. Amy Klobuchar—all of
whom are polling at less than 1 percent—are
hoping to grab a big chunk of the moderate
voters the front-runner “has had to himself.”
But they’ll never do that simply by slamming
their left-leaning rivals’ plans; they also have to
offer up some ideas of their own.The debate has “laid bare the divide in the party” over how best
to defeat Trump, said Kristen Soltis Anderson in Washington
Examiner.com. Either go with a “strongly liberal and disruptive
agenda or with a more pragmatic, if timid, approach.” But for all
their talk of being bold, Warren and Sanders repeatedly dodged
tough questions over just “how much their policies will cost and
how much they will require average people to change their way of
life.” That “isn’t bold or brave at all.”“A note of interpretive caution,” said John Harris in Politico.com.
As much as the first round of debates in Miami left “an exaggerat-
ed impression of the party’s leftward drift,” people should be wary
of “viewing Detroit as an equally abrupt lurch to the center.” Even
avowed centrists such as Delaney talked about hiking taxes on the
rich to support liberal policies, while Klobuchar, among others,
argued in favor of tighter gun controls. The inevitable conclusion:
Democrats as a party are becoming “more progressive and aggres-
sive, even if they are zigzagging a bit along the path.”Sanders and Warren: United, for nowModerates vs. progressives in Democratic debate
What happened
The House Judiciary Committee told a federal court last week
that it is investigating “whether to recommend articles of
impeachment,” a major turning point in Democrats’ efforts to
remove President Trump. The committee is suing to access grand
jury testimony redacted from Robert Mueller’s report, and be-
lieves that an official impeachment probe will strengthen its case
in court battles to obtain Trump’s tax returns, testimony from
his aides, and other information the White House has refused to
provide. At least 19 members of Congress came out in favor of an
impeachment probe after the Mueller hearings, bringing the total
to 114—nearly half of the House Democratic caucus.Polls suggest only a minority of Americans support impeachment.
Though House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has opposed it, she insisted
she’s “not trying to run out the clock,” and reportedly signed
off on the Judiciary Committee’s lawsuit. Committee Chairman
Jerrold Nadler balked at calling the move part of an “impeach-
ment inquiry.” But Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-Md.), a member of the
Judiciary Committee, argued that it doesn’t take a full, formal
House vote to begin the impeachment process. While “the Consti-
tution does not delineate” what an official inquiry looks like, said
Raskin, “that’s obviously what we’re doing.”What the columnists said
“At no point in Trump’s wretched rule has impeachment appeared
more probable,” said Michelle Goldberg in The New York Times.Fence-sitting House Democrats can no longer say they’re still wait-
ing for Mueller’s testimony, which successfully highlighted Trump’s
“lawlessness and disloyalty to the country.” Pelosi and Nadler
devised a shrewd plan to go forward, allowing Nadler’s committee
to gather evidence through “high-profile hearings” while Demo-
crats from conservative districts can avoid a perilous vote.If that impeachment vote ever does occur, said Jim Geraghty in
NationalReview.com, there’s a “very good chance” it will cost
Democrats control of the House. Their caucus includes “31 Dem-
ocrats from districts Trump carried in 2016,” and none of them
supports impeachment. Pelosi realizes a vote would be terrible for
those “vulnerable incumbents,” sure to anger either progressives
or the Trumpists they’ve tenuously won over. They won them by
focusing on policy issues like health care, said Jonah Goldberg
in the Los Angeles Times. Yet Democrats like Nadler from “very
blue districts” won’t stop “flirting with impeachment” in order to
pander to their base. Keep it up and they’ll give Trump a second
term and a Republican Congress.“Democratic dithering” could be even worse, said Quinta Jurecic
in TheAtlantic.com. Pelosi and Nadler are terrified of the “I”
word, but are hedging their bets. By reducing the process to
“political horse trading,” they erase “the sense of moral crisis that
House Democrats worked so hard over the course of Mueller’s
testimony to build up.” Impeachment requires “moral clarity,”
yet Democratic leaders exude only “confusion.”House pushes forward on impeachment question