A8 EZ M2 THE WASHINGTON POST.THURSDAY, AUGUST 1 , 2019
were questioned in increasingly
pointed ways. Later, Harris and
Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand (N.Y.)
teamed up to criticize his posi-
tions on working women and
abortion.
“Everybody’s talking about
how terrible I am on all these
issues,” Biden said at one point.
“Barack Obama knew exactly
who I was. He chose me and he
said it was the best decision he
made.”
But the former president’s leg-
acy also faced frequent scrutiny,
as candidates sought to a re-
markable degree to distance
themselves from his administra-
tion’s trade policies and record of
deporting millions of undocu-
mented immigrants, and to pro-
mote proposals that could dis-
mantle his signature health-care
law.
Biden was eager to remind
voters of the stature he built over
nearly five decades of public
service — and to shed the image
of him as the halting and lacklus-
ter candidate he was in the first
debate, in June — by vigorously
challenging his opponents’ rec-
ords. But they were just as sharp
with him, drawing attention to
his age — 76 — and to positions
he still defends.
“There’s a saying in my com-
munity,” Booker told Biden amid
a discussion about criminal jus-
tice. “You’re dipping into the
Kool-Aid and you don’t even
know the flavor.”
Wednesday’s exchange con-
cluded the second round of 12
scheduled Democratic debates,
with some campaigns hoping
that they did enough to shake up
a race that has largely been
guided by four candidates:
Biden, Harris, and Sens. Bernie
Sanders (I-Vt.) and Elizabeth
Warren (Mass.).
If the first night was a show-
case of the liberal-vs.-moderate
split within the party, the second
night put on display other di-
vides and a thirst to have a
nominee who represents the par-
ty’s growing diversity. Half of the
10 candidates onstage Wednes-
day at the Fox Theatre were
minorities, making it a histori-
cally diverse lineup.
“Mr. President, this is Ameri-
ca,” Biden said, addressing Presi-
dent Trump, pointing to the di-
versity in race and experience
onstage. “And we are stronger
together because of this diversity.
Not in spite of it, Mr. President.
We love it, we are not leaving it.
We are here to stay. And we’re
certainly not going to leave it to
you.”
Much like the night before, the
debate began with a prolonged —
and at times intense — discus-
sion about health care, with can-
didates sparring over whether to
eliminate private insurance as
part of a push to provide univer-
sal coverage.
Harris, who formerly support-
ed Sanders’s Medicare-for-all
plan — which would abolish
private health insurance and put
a government-run plan in its
place — released a new proposal
Monday that would allow private
insurance as long as it followed
Medicare’s coverage rules. Biden
accused her of being inconsistent
in her positions, and of not being
DEBATE FROM A
forthcoming about the costs for
middle-class taxpayers.
“This idea is a bunch of malar-
key, what we’re talking about
here,” he said. “I don’t know what
math you do in New York, I don’t
know what math you do in Cali-
fornia.”
“Yeah, let’s talk about math,”
Harris responded, calling Biden
part of the “status quo” and citing
the billions of dollars in profits
going to the pharmaceutical and
insurance industries. “You do
nothing to hold insurance com-
panies to task for what they’ve
been doing to American fami-
lies.”
But the verbal crossfire was
perhaps most frenetic during a
prolonged exchange about the
criminal justice system.
Booker had spent the week
before the debate forecasting his
lines of attack, with an emphasis
on Biden’s criminal justice record
as a senator, which resulted in
harsh penalties for offenders.
Referring to Biden’s signature
1994 crime bill, and the increase
in African Americans put in pris-
on as a result, Booker called him
“an architect of mass incarcera-
tion.”
In the weeks leading up to the
debate, Biden released a criminal
justice policy that would elimi-
nate the death penalty and re-
duce punishments for some drug
offenses, rolling back aspects of
the laws he helped put in place.
“This is one of those instances
where the house was set on fire
and you claimed responsibility
for those laws,” Booker said. “And
you can’t just now come out with
a plan to put out that fire.”
Biden defended his record
while challenging Booker over
his handling of the Newark Police
Department while he was mayor.
Biden said Booker stood by idly
while the department engaged in
stop-and-frisk policies that dis-
proportionately targeted black
men.
“If you want to compare rec-
ords — and, frankly, I’m shocked
that you do — I’m happy to dothat,” Booker said.
Harris faced criticism for her
record as a prosecutor, particu-
larly from Rep. Tulsi Gabbard
(Hawaii), who said Harris did not
adequately use her power as an
insider to protect people victim-
ized by the criminal justice sys-
tem.
“The people who suffered un-
der your reign as prosecutor, you
owe them an apology,” Gabbard
said.
New York Mayor Bill de Blasio
was implicitly challenged for not
firing a New York police officer
who killed Eric Garner, an un-
armed black man, using an unau-
thorized chokehold in 2014. Ju-
lián Castro, who was housing
secretary under Obama, and
Gillibrand said the officer, Daniel
Pantaleo, should have been fired
even though prosecutors had not
charged him. Some in the audi-
ence jumped in with chants of
“Fire Pantaleo” early in the de-
bate.
Although Democrats have uni-
formly criticized Trump’s immi-
gration policies — which include
family separations and mass de-
portation raids — they have been
deeply divided over the appropri-
ate legislative response to a surge
of migration at the U.S.-Mexico
border.
During the June debate, most
Democratic candidates raised
their hands when asked whether
they would decriminalize unau-
thorized border crossings, an is-
sue that has since caused a rift in
the party.
Castro targeted Biden, who
does not favor decriminalizing
the crossings.
The former vice president also
said he and Castro had sat to-
gether in many Cabinet meet-
ings.
“I never hear him talk about
any of this when he was [housing
and urban development] secre-
tary,” Biden said. “The fact of the
matter is, if you cross the border
illegally, you should be able to be
sent back. It’s a crime. It’s a
crime.”Castro replied: “It looks like
one of us has learned the lessons
of the past, and one of us hasn’t.”
Pointing to various border-con-
trol measures, he added: “What
we need is politicians that actual-
ly have some guts on this issue.”
Biden responded: “I have guts
enough to say his plan doesn’t
make sense.”
Several candidates pressed
Biden to explain whether he
opposed the Obama administra-
tion’s deportation policies, and
he dodged repeatedly.
“I was vice president. I am not
the president,” he said. “I keep
my recommendations private.”
Booker, who has struggled to
wrest away some of Biden’s sup-
port among black voters, quickly
jumped in with a sharp retort.
“First of all, Mr. Vice President,
you can’t have it both ways,” he
said. “You invoke President
Obama more than anybody in
this campaign. You can’t do it
when it’s convenient then dodge
it when it’s not.”
Obama remains highly popu-
lar in the Democratic Party, mak-
ing any internal critiques of his
record politically perilous for
candidates vying to become pres-
ident.
“Am I the only one that misses
Barack Obama in this room?”
Tom Perez, the chairman of the
Democratic National Committee,
asked the debate audience in the
lead-up to the exchange, as the
crowd erupted in cheers.
But as several Democrats on-
stage Wednesday rushed to criti-
cize Biden, they grew increasing-
ly comfortable with criticizing
Obama’s legacy by proxy. The
Obama administration’s record
on deportations, criminal justice,
trade and health care was chal-
lenged implicitly and explicitly
by several candidates.
Even Biden stepped away from
the former president on one
issue, saying he no longer sup-
ports the Trans-Pacific Partner-
ship, a trade deal Obama backed.
The debate marked a rematch
between Biden and Harris. Shedirectly attacked him in the June
forum over his willingness to
work with segregationist sena-
tors, particularly on measures to
restrict court-mandated busing
as a way to further integrate
schools. Biden was caught off
guard, with advisers offering var-
ious explanations, including that
he had endorsed her in her 2016
Senate race and that she had
been friends with his late son,
Beau Biden.
Before Wednesday’s debate,
Biden’s campaign aides insisted
that he was ready for the on-
slaught of attacks, and that he
had learned from the first debate
in Miami that his record would
come under deeper and more
personal scrutiny than he had
anticipated.
“Go easy on me, kid,” Biden
told Harris as she came onstage
and shook his hand. She smiled
and said, “You good?”
Biden faced a barrage of direct
challenges for his record on gen-
der equality and abortion rights,
with Gillibrand and Harris lead-
ing the charge.
Gillibrand questioned Biden
repeatedly about past comments
in which he suggested that out-
sourcing child care was not good
for families. She characterized
his quotes as being opposed to
women working outside the
home.
Biden pushed back on the
senator from New York, saying
that she had previously praised
his record on women’s issues and
indicating that her attack was
politically motivated.
But there was no letup, as
Harris immediately jumped in
and trained her fire on Biden for
his support of the Hyde Amend-
ment, which restricts federal
funding for abortion. Last month
on the campaign trail, Biden
reaffirmed his support for the
measure before saying the next
day that he would abolish it.
“Why did it take you so long to
change your position on the
Hyde Amendment?” Harris
asked.More than half of the candi-
dates in the field are at risk of not
meeting the polling and donor
thresholds to qualify for the next
round of debates in September.
The first night of the second
debate attracted only about half
the television audience as the
first night of the June debate.
Trump weighed in before
Wednesday’s exchange with his
views about the first night of the
debate, tweeting: “Very low rat-
ings for the Democratic Debate
last night — they’re desperate for
Trump.”
The contentious and rowdy
tone of the debate at times forced
Democrats to concede that the
president and Republicans might
ultimately benefit from their in-
ternal squabbles.
“The person that’s enjoying
this debate most right now is
Donald Trump, as we pit Demo-
crats against each other, while he
is working right now to take away
Americans’ health care,” Booker
said.
Tim Murtaugh, the Trump
campaign’s communications di-
rector, clipped part of Booker’s
quote and endorsed the idea that
Trump was enjoying the Demo-
crats’ dust-up.
“Fact Check: TRUE,” he tweet-
ed.
Trump was referenced several
times during the debate, with
Gillibrand saying the first thing
she would do as president is
“Clorox the Oval Office” and An-
drew Yang, an entrepreneur, say-
ing he was building a coalition of
“disaffected Trump voters.”
“For the last three years, we’ve
been consumed by a president
who, frankly, doesn’t give a damn
about your kids or mine,” said
Sen. Michael F. Bennet (Colo.).
“Mr. President, kids belong in
classrooms, not cages. And they
deserve something better than a
bully in a White House. Let’s end
this three-ring circus in Washing-
ton.”
[email protected]
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[email protected]campaign 2020
From start,
candidates
were ready
to attack
BRENDAN SMIALOWSKI/AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE/GETTY IMAGES
From left: Sen. Michael F. Bennet, Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand, former housing and urban development secretary Julián Castro, Sen. Cory Booker, former vice president Joe
Biden, Sen. Kamala D. Harris, entrepreneur Andrew Yang, Rep. Tulsi Gabbard, Washington Gov. Jay Inslee and New York Mayor Bill de Blasio appear onstage.BY ELISE VIEBECKFormer vice president Joe
Biden and Sen. Kamala D. Harris
both faced tough questions about
their criminal justice records
Wednesday night.
For Harris, the attacks focused
on her time as attorney general of
California.
For Biden, rivals zeroed in on
his role passing tough-on-crime
legislation as a senator from Dela-
ware in the 1970s, 1980s and
1990s.
“Sir, you are trying to shift the
view from what you created,” Sen.
Cory Booker (N.J.), one of three
black candidates, told Biden at
one point. “There are people right
now in prison for life for drug
offenses because you stood up and
used that tough-on-crime phony
rhetoric that got a lot of people
elected but destroyed communi-
ties like mine. This isn’t about the
past, sir. This is about the present,
right now.”
The exchange was one of sev-
eral charged moments on race and
criminal justice, which remain
pivotal issues in the race for the
2020 Democratic presidential
nomination.
“It continues to be a historic
election when it comes to criminal
justice reform,” said Udi Ofer, dep-
uty national political director and
director of the Campaign for
Smart Justice at the American Civ-
il Liberties Union. “Twenty years
ago, Democrats were trying to out-
compete each other on who could
be tougher on crime. Today,
they’re attempting to outcompete
each other on who can be smarter
on justice.”
Biden and Harris were not the
only candidates who faced criti-
cism. Biden went after Booker’s
time overseeing police as mayor of
Newark, and New York Mayor Bill
de Blasio was accused of mishan-
dling the case of Eric Garner, a
black man killed during an en-
counter with city police officers in
2014.
Booker was the first to criticize
Biden on Wednesday night, echo-
ing his earlier attacks on Biden’scriminal justice overhaul plan, re-
leased last week. That proposal
would undo virtually all the
tough-on-crime policies Biden
helped enact as a senator, such as
mandatory minimum penalties
and a sentencing disparity be-
tween crack and powder cocaine.
It would also eliminate the
death penalty, which was expand-
ed by several laws that Biden
helped to pass.
On the debate stage, Biden de-
fended the legislation he wrote as
reflecting a political consensus
around tough-on-crime policies in
previous decades. Two of Biden’s
most significant bills — the 1986
Anti-Drug Abuse Act and the 1994
Violent Crime Control and Law
Enforcement Act — passed with
support from most black lawmak-
ers.
But Biden also pitched himself
as a candidate who would pursue
changes as president, highlight-
ing his proposal to eliminate the
remaining crack-powder sentenc-
ing disparity.
“I think that we should changethe way we look at prisons,” Biden
said. “Right now, we’re in a situa-
tion where, when someone is con-
victed of a drug crime, they end up
going to jail, into prison. They
should be going to rehabilitation.”
Biden accused Booker of failing
to rein in the Newark police de-
partment when he was mayor
from 2006 to 2013. The police
force was investigated by the U.S.
Justice Department in 2011 and
subsequently came under federal
oversight.
“Nothing happened the entire
time you were mayor,” Biden said.
“There was nothing done to deal
with the police department that
was corrupt.”
Booker said he implemented
changes that were endorsed by
civil liberties advocates, then piv-
oted back to Biden, saying that “all
the problems that he is talking
about... he created.”
“This is one of those instances
where the house was set on fire,
and you claimed responsibility for
those laws,” Booker said. “And you
can’t just now come up with a planto put out that fire.”
Biden also went on the offen-
sive against Harris, accusing her
of failing to bring cases against
school districts in Los Angeles and
San Francisco, which he described
as “two of the most segregated
school districts in the country.”
Rep. Tulsi Gabbard (Hawaii)
joined in, saying she was “deeply
concerned” about Harris’s record.
Among other issues, Gabbard ac-
cused Harris of prosecuting mari-
juana offenses, fighting to keep
cash bail and pursuing other pol-
icies that disproportionately hurt
people of color. “The people who
suffered under your reign as pros-
ecutor, you owe them an apology,”
Gabbard said.
Harris, who is black, defended
her record and portrayed herself
as a leader who implemented
changes while facing difficult de-
cisions, such as whether to pursue
the death penalty in certain cases.
“I dare anybody who is in a
position to make that decision to
face the people I have faced to say,
‘I will not seek the death penalty.’That is my background. That is my
work. I am proud of it,” Harris said.
“I think you can judge people by
when they are under fire. It’s not
about some fancy opinion on a
stage. But when they’re in the posi-
tion to actually make a decision,
what do they do?”
Oversight of police depart-
ments arose as another theme.
Julián Castro, a former secre-
tary of housing and urban devel-
opment, called for a national use-
of-force standard for police and
described himself as the “only can-
didate that has put forward a po-
lice reform plan.”
And early in the evening, sev-
eral protesters targeted de Blasio
with cries of “fire Pantaleo,” a ref-
erence to Daniel Pantaleo, the po-
lice officer accused of killing Gar-
ner with an illegal chokehold.
De Blasio said Garner’s family
was “going to get justice” soon in
New York City, referring to a com-
ing decision from NYPD Commis-
sioner James O’Neill about wheth-
er Pantaleo should keep his job.
[email protected]Biden, Harris attacked on their records as debate pivots to criminal justice