There were passionate diatribes against economic inequality, dire warnings about the climate emergency, and shockingly few references, direct or oblique, to either Donald Trump or Joe Biden. The first of two opening Democratic presidential debates was a policy-oriented affair with fewer theatrics than many feared, in which the major frontrunners attempted to solidify their status and those with low poll numbers tried to break out of the crowd.
The star of the night was Massachusetts Senator Elizabeth Warren, the policy wonk and founder of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau whose small-donor, detail-focused campaign has gained momentum in the polls over the past weeks and whose continuous stream of policy rollouts have set the standard by which other candidates position themselves to her right, or, less commonly, to her left.
As the highest-polling candidate in the first night’s debate – frontrunner Joe Biden and Warren’s fellow progressive, the well-known Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders, are billed for night two – the debate was Warren’s to lose. Hers was the most compelling presence on the stage, positioned behind the middle podium. She delivered passionate, morally driven answers to moderators’ questions and tied every issue back to her signature vision of combating income inequality through a robust welfare and regulatory state, the program she has deemed “big, structural change.”
In what was perhaps the most notable moment of the night, Warren came out unequivocally in favor of a single-payer, Medicare for All healthcare system that would replace private insurance. Nearly every other candidate on stage, with the exception of Bill de Blasio, waffled on healthcare, saying that they favored the preservation of the private, for-profit healthcare system along with some sort of additional public option.
Next to Warren, some of the other candidates seemed deflated, even juvenile. Former congressman and onetime Senate candidate Beto O’Rourke delivered canned, non-specific answers that seemed passionless and rehearsed. He had the under-slept, over-anxious aura of a college kid who had stayed up all night cramming for an exam.
Hawaii representative Tulsi Gabbard managed to turn every question into an opportunity to remind viewers of her military service. This included a clumsy pivot in response to a pointed question about her former anti-gay stance.
Meanwhile, Warren’s fellow senator Amy Klobuchar, of Minnesota, delivered a charmless explanation of why a better world is not possible, disdainfully dismissing Warren’s policy agenda of free college and universal healthcare as impossible pipe dreams.
Klobuchar was joined in her pessimism by former representative John Delaney of Maryland. Together, they seem to be aiming to capture the attention of the party’s right wing, a group of voters they imagine to be spending-conscious, distrustful or hostile to socialism, consumed with pragmatism, and limited in their imaginations.
But the primary’s right lane is already occupied by the rather distracting presence of former vice president Biden. How conservative Democrats plan to distinguish themselves from Biden or to siphon off his support in the polls remains unclear.
For all his dominance in the early polling, Biden was remarkably absent and unremarked upon by the candidates on Wednesday night. He was scarcely even alluded to, save for one remark by Senator Cory Booker, of New Jersey, about the over-criminalization of mental illness, addiction, and other social ills – a thinly veiled attack on Biden’s role as the author and champion of the 1994 crime bill that accelerated mass incarceration and facilitated the mass imprisonment of black men.
Rather, the candidates on stage took turns attempting to articulate their vision of America’s new and expanded possibilities, a task which thus far only Elizabeth Warren had come close to achieving.
Of all the candidates first attempting to articulate their vision of a better country, the most successful was Julian Castro, the former secretary of Housing and Urban Development under President Obama. Much like how Warren drew every issue back to her overarching message of income inequality, Castro hammered hard on his signature issues of immigration reform and racial justice, challenging men like Beto O’Rourke and Cory Booker on their failures and compromises on immigrants’ rights.
The biggest surprise of the night came from New York City mayor Bill de Blasio. Unpopular in his home city and laughably low in the polls, de Blasio seemed for much of the evening to be intent upon interrupting his fellow candidates and shouting above the sound of his own irrelevance. But he had one of the best sound bytes of the night with a message directed to the Trump-voting white working class, who he characterized as feeling betrayed by the American economy and left out of the American dream.
“Immigrants didn’t do that to you,” de Blasio told them. “Corporations did that to you.” It was the evening’s most effective detangling of the two issues that Trump has managed to merge in many voters’ minds: economic inequality and racism. The moment brought him briefly into contrast with the other low-polling white men, representatives Ryan and Delaney, who seem destined to be little more than embarrassing also-rans.
It is hard to imagine Elizabeth Warren benefiting from de Blasio-style arrogance and aggression, but the debate featured disappointingly little of her passionate oratory. The moderators instead gave excessive attention to Beto O’Rourke, who seemed to have very little to say.
At one point, Warren could be seen raising her hand, asking for permission to speak; meanwhile, the men on either side of her interrupted, raised their voices, and spoke considerably over their time.
It is unclear whether viewers would have responded well to a more aggressive, interrupting Warren; women who speak over men are often punished for it. But the debate could have done with more time devoted to Warren’s policy agenda, which is sweeping, detailed, and ambitious. She should have talked more; she has the most to say.
