A10 EZ M2 THE WASHINGTON POST.THURSDAY, AUGUST 1 , 2019
hugged. Booker responded: “Mr.
Vice President, you can’t have it
both ways.”
The “Republican talking
point” talking point: This one
was popular in Tuesday night’s
portion of the debate, and it
reared its head again on
Wednesday. “We cannot keep
with the Republican talking
points on this,” Harris said amid
attacks on her Medicare-for-all
proposal, echoing Sanders and
Warren from the night before.
Castro at one point hit back at
those criticizing the proposed
decriminalization of illegal
border crossings. “Open borders
is a right-wing talking point,”
Castro said, “and frankly I’m
disappointed that some folks —
including some folks on this
stage — have taken the bait.”
Who called decriminalizing
illegal immigration tantamount
to open borders? That would be
Jeh Johnson, Obama’s former
homeland security secretary.
Debates are about
disagreement. Just because
Democrats don’t believe in
more-aggressive policies doesn’t
mean they are doing the GOP’s
bidding. In fact, they are often
espousing positions that used to
be their own party’s default not
that long ago. Maybe they
simply disagree. Both Biden and
Bennet hit back against the
“Republican talking point”
talking point, with Bennet
saying “this has nothing to do
with Republican talking points”
when criticizing Sanders’s
Medicare-for-all plan. Bennet is
not exactly some conservative
Democrat.
CNN’s censors: At one point,
Booker noted Trump’s private
reference to “shithole countries,”
using that word himself on live
TV. It was not bleeped. At least it
was in prime time, right?
Daniel Pantaleo: We recently
found out that the New York
Police Department officer who
was involved in the fatal arrest
of Eric Garner would escape
federal charges. In his opening
statement, de Blasio was met
with chants of “Fire Pantaleo.”
After the protesters chanted
again during Booker’s opening
statement, his staff tweeted
“good for you” to the protesters
from his account. Later,
Gillibrand, the senator from
New York, agreed that Pantaleo
should be fired — “now” — and
Castro said he should be “off the
street.”
[email protected]deftly segued into her decision
not to pursue the death penalty
as a prosecutor. Being that
prepared and passionate will be
key moving forward.
Joe Biden: It wasn’t as bad as
the first debate, but it wasn’t
good either. Even more so than
last time, Biden was getting it
from all sides, with candidates
often deflecting attacks on
themselves into attacks on him.
He fumbled his own campaign
text-message number in his
closing statement. Maybe his
worst moment came when
de Blasio challenged him on the
deportations under Obama. He
asked repeatedly whether Biden
counseled against those
deportations. Eventually, Biden
responded, “I was vice
president. I am not the
president. I keep my
recommendation to him in
private.” Not exactly an
endorsement of the president
whose legacy Biden has bear-devoted (but small) bases.Losers
Kamala Harris: She was the
big winner in the first debate,
and on Wednesday night she
was in for a much tougher time.
Her tough-on-crime history as a
prosecutor and her equivocation
on certain issues, including
busing and Medicare-for-all,
made her a convenient target.
She didn’t exactly handle it well.
Challenged repeatedly by some
of the lower-polling candidates
on the stage, she was at times
halting and didn’t seem fully
ready for the challenge at hand.
She rose in the polls briefly
after the first debate, but only
momentarily. Wednesday’s
performance doesn’t seem likely
to rebuild her former
momentum. Her strongest
moment came when she was
challenged on defending the
death penalty as California
attorney general, when sheBiden: “Mr. Vice President, it
looks like one of us has learned
the lessons of the past, and one
of us hasn’t,” he said while
talking about immigration.
“... What we need are
politicians who actually have
some guts on this issue.”
Andrew Yang: A night after
the least heralded and most
unorthodox candidate on the
stage, Marianne Williamson,
made a good second impression,
Yang had his own moments. His
line about his immigrant father
securing more than 65 patents
was strong. His opening
statement line about how he was
the most opposite of Trump — as
“an Asian man who likes math”
— was well received. And his
closing statement, keying on
how he doesn’t wear a tie, was
also spot-on. It’ll be interesting
to see whether he and
Williamson actually gain
support or continue to be niche
candidates with exceptionallydebates. Splitting up the leading
candidates so they can’t debate
one another is... not ideal. But
the last two nights showed the
upside. The lesser-known
candidates engaged the leaders
on substantive differences, often
taking positions that the leaders
won’t on issues such as health
care, immigration and criminal
justice. And in some ways,
Democrats should be thankful
the top hopefuls are being tested
so much. It may not always be
pretty, but it helps a party at a
crossroads decide what it’s
about.
Julián Castro: Castro might
have been the standout. He
ranked second after the first
debate when it came to who
pleasantly surprised people the
most, but he didn’t get really any
polling bump out of it. He was
strong again on Wednesday
night — when he got the chance.
At one point, he got in one of the
most crowd-pleasing digs atWednesday night
concluded the
second
Democratic
debate of the
2020 election,
with Sens. Cory Booker (N.J.)
and Kamala D. Harris (Calif.)
and former vice president Joe
Biden as the headlining
candidates. None of them
turned in a resounding
performance.
Below are some winners and
losers.
Winners
Trump the debater: At one
point, New York Mayor Bill
de Blasio called out Biden for
failing to directly respond to his
challenge on the millions of
deportations under President
Barack Obama. “I guarantee
you, if you’re debating Donald
Trump, he’s not going to let you
off the hook.” The prospect of
going toe-to-toe with Trump has
loomed over these early debates,
and on Wednesday night
especially, the leading
candidates didn’t exactly
demonstrate their debating
prowess.
Biden and Booker were both
thrown off by protesters early in
the debate. Biden kept mixing
up the cost of Medicare-for-all
(was it $3 trillion over 10 years,
or $30 trillion?). Biden, Harris
and Sen. Michael F. Bennet
(Colo.) kept stumbling over their
words, with Biden at one point
referring to Booker as “the
future president.” Sen. Kirsten
Gillibrand (N.Y.) at one point
had nothing ready to go when
she was brought in on a
discussion, emitting a painful
“um” that drew laughter. And
even in Harris’s opening
statement, while hailing her
own ability to prosecute the case
against Trump, the senator
messed up her talking point,
saying she would “prosecute the
case of four more years of
Donald Trump... and against
him.”
Bernie Sanders and
Elizabeth Warren: No, they
didn’t debate Wednesday, but
they were solid on Tuesday night
— and their performances were
even better in contrast. They
handled the heat better,
especially when defending
Medicare-for-all.
The also-rans: I’ve been as
critical as anybody when it
comes to how the Democratic
Party has structured these
campaign 2020
O≠stage candidates and also-rans are biggest winners of debate’s second night
Aaron
Blake
THE FIX
BRENDAN SMIALOWSKI/AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE/GETTY IMAGES
Candidate Julián Castro, who was housing secretary under President Barack Obama, makes his way through the spin room in Detroit
after the second round of the second Democratic debate of the 2020 presidential campaign.the border illegally, you should
be able to be sent back. It’s a
crime,” Biden said.
“Mr. Vice President, it looks
like one of us has learned the
lessons of the past and one of us
hasn’t,” Castro said.
Sen. Michael F. Bennet (D-
Colo.), lamented that the
Democrats were wasting time
litigating the past and ignoring
both the urgent problems of
today and the threats posed by
the Trump administration. His
voice went largely unheard by
the others on the stage.
By the conclusion Wednesday,
it seemed almost as if the
Democrats had decided to put
their worst face forward. Their
disagreements overwhelmed
almost everything else. Attacks
on Trump were infrequent. And
the absence of a message of hope
or uplift seemed a big missed
opportunity.
The two nights of debating in
Detroit neither moved toward
resolving the substantive
differences nor helped answer
which Democrat is best
prepared to run against Trump
in 2020. More Democrats
currently see Biden that way, but
the campaign will bring more
challenges to him.
Those in the progressive wing
of the party left Detroit
emboldened by what happened
on Tuesday night, when Sen.
Elizabeth Warren (Mass.) and
Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.)
fended off attacks from more
moderate rivals. Other
Democrats privately sounded
more worried that the two
sessions provided Republicans
with ample ammunition for a
general election.
What Detroit showed most of
all is that the Democrats face a
lengthy period in which they will
be asked to sort out basic
questions of who they are and
how they plan to run against an
unconventional president who
has changed many of the rules of
politics and already is in
general-election mode.
[email protected]When the discussion turned
to criminal justice, Booker
attacked Biden for sponsoring
crime legislation in the past that
had resulted in massive
incarcerations, particularly of
black men. “This is one of those
instances where the house was
set on fire and you claimed
responsibility for those laws,” he
said. “And you can’t just now
come out with a plan to put out
that fire.”
Biden then attacked Booker
for policing problems in Newark
when he was the mayor, saying
Booker had instituted a stop-
and-frisk policy that drew sharp
criticism and that he had done
little to clean up the problems.
“Mr. Vice President, there’s a
saying in my community,”
Booker responded, standing
next to Biden. “You’re dipping
into the Kool-Aid and you don’t
even know the flavor. You need
to come to the city of Newark
and see the reforms that we put
in place.”
And so it went. Gov. Jay Inslee
(D-Wash.) found Biden’s climate
plan lacking urgency. Biden
strongly disagreed. Former
housing secretary Julián Castro
came under fire from Biden for
seeking to decriminalize the
southern border. “If you crossby New York Mayor Bill de
Blasio to say whether he had
pushed President Barack Obama
to change the administration’s
deportation policies.
Biden deflected the question,
praising Obama’s immigration
policies and calling it “bizarre”
to in any way compare those
policies with the Trump
administration. When de Blasio
pressed him again, he declined
to answer.
“I was vice president,” he said.
“I am not the president. I keep
my recommendation to him in
private. Unlike you, I can expect
you would go ahead and say
whatever was said privately with
him. That is not what I do.”
Booker pounced. “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
and then dodge it when it’s not.”and the two set off on a set of
exchanges, interrupted
occasionally by others, that was
both flat in tone and not
particularly illuminating to a
television audience not familiar
with the complexities of what
she was offering.
Biden was accused of not
being bold enough and in turn
attacked his attackers for not
being honest with people about
the true cost of Medicare-for-all
or the size of the tax increase
needed to pay for it. He said his
plan would not eliminate private
insurance but would not require
anyone to keep it if they
preferred a government plan. He
called the criticisms “a bunch of
malarkey.”
Booker, having signaled his
readiness to confront Biden on
criminal justice issues, was good
to his word. But the first volley
came not over that issue but
immigration. Biden was pressedWhat took place showed the
limitations of a field of more
than 20 candidates and a set of
qualifications for participation
that encourage conflict and the
pursuit of viral moments at the
expense of more civil and
substantive discussion about the
problems facing the country.
Biden began the night with an
off-mic quip. As Harris walked
onstage and greeted him, he
joked, “Go easy on me, kid.” But
it was Biden who hit first,
attacking Harris for her new
health-care proposal that would
move the country toward
Medicare-for-all, but only after a
10-year transition period. Biden
found fault with the plan and
with Harris’s explanation of it,
calling it at one point “double
talk” that would never be
successful against the
incumbent president.
“You’re just simply
inaccurate,” Harris responded,likely wanted. By the end of the
evening, the candidates had
done as much to make a case
against one another as against
the president, without offering
much in the way of an
aspirational message or
connecting directly with the
voters they will need to win the
presidential election.
The reality is that little
changed as a result of the
debate. The absence of clear
winners and the absence of the
emergence of a candidate with a
hopeful message for a broader
audience produced a status quo
ending.
Biden was not the only
candidate who came under
attack. Sen. Kamala D. Harris
(D-Calif.), who clashed with
Biden in Miami in June, found
herself a target, and not just
from Biden. Sen. Cory Booker
(D-N.J.) attacked Biden on
criminal justice issues and found
his record as the mayor of
Newark pilloried by the former
vice president.
Tuesday’s debate highlighted
the ideological fissures within
the party, but the candidates
generally remained on a higher
plane of substantive
disagreement. Wednesday’s
debate included moments when
those same issues — health care
or immigration or climate
change — were debated, but in
ways that probably left viewers
confused about whom to believe
or what those differences were
really about.
By the time it ended, almost
no one had escaped the fallout.
Biden did better than in Miami,
but also emerged battered over
his record in the past and his
ideas for the future, both of
which one or another rival
found inadequate. Harris
delivered a more uneven
performance than in Miami.
Booker, by his aggressiveness
toward Biden, made his bid to
move up in a race where he has
struggled.
TAKE FROM A
THE TAKE
A debate equation: No clear winners + no hopeful message = no real change
ANDREW HARNIK/ASSOCIATED PRESS
At Shaw’s Tavern in Northwest Washington, people watch former vice president Joe Biden and
Sen. Kamala D. Harris (Calif.) spar at the second Democratic presidential primary debate in Detroit.THE WASHINGTON POSTMinutes spoken
During the second night of the debate
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