Democratic Debate Night 2 Part 2 Full Video Upload Reddit

A field of xx Democratic presidential candidates was split into two groups of 10 for the offset debate of the 2020 ballot, taking place over 2 nights.

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iv winners and 2 losers from the ii nights of Autonomous debates

Kamala Harris was a winner. Bernie Sanders and Joe Biden ... non so much.

By Jun 28, 2019, 12:25am EDT

The first Democratic debate of 2019, and so big it had to exist spread out over 2 nights, is finally over. Nosotros made it through! Take a moment to be proud of yourselves.

The entire ii-dark spectacle was chaotic, to be certain, but too substantive, with pregnant exchanges on issues ranging from race to health care to foreign policy.

But debates are ultimately selection mechanisms, bear witness that voters are supposed to utilize to effigy out which candidates they might desire to elect and which ones they don't. So the biggest question we're left with is this: Which candidates and ideas ended up in a ameliorate identify than where they started — and which ones are worse off?

Obviously, nosotros won't be able to answer those answers definitively for months or possibly years later on this entrada. Then consider this a crude cut, a first stab at trying to make sense of what we've been watching over the past two nights. Here, according to the best of my abilities, are the winners and losers of the first Autonomous mega-argue extravaganza.

Winners: Julián Castro and Kamala Harris

Earlier the debate, at that place were basically three tiers of candidates in the polls. You had the elevation three in double digits (Joe Biden, trailed by Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren), two runners-up around 6 percent (Kamala Harris and Pete Buttigieg), and then a whole mess of candidates virtually the bottom. Past the end of both nights, there were only ii candidates who seemed like they may have performed well plenty to move upwardly a tier: old Housing and Urban Development Secretary Julián Castro and Sen. Kamala Harris.

Democratic presidential hopeful former Housing and Urban Evolution Secretary Julián Castro speaks during the showtime dark of the Democratic presidential primary debate.

Jim Watson/AFP/Getty Images

Castro's extremely low poll numbers — he'due south under 1 percent currently — were always a little odd. He's a former mayor who was in President Obama'southward Chiffonier and too rumored as a potential VP choice in 2016. He had by far the nigh sophisticated policy platform on the high-contour issue of immigration. He'southward done a lot of stuff and had ideas to offer only couldn't seem to get traction.

From that standpoint, he couldn't have hoped for a improve night than the one he had on Wednesday. Castro's bold idea on clearing — to decriminalize illegal entry — was taken up by other candidates onstage so was endorsed by the vast bulk of candidates on Thursday. He used his mastery of the issue to pounce on a fellow Texan, former Rep. Beto O'Rourke, making O'Rourke look like an empty suit while elevating his ain profile. (O'Rourke had a bad night in general, only Castro was the single biggest reason.)

Information technology's too early to tell what the event of all this will be, but information technology seems like Castro's numbers have at least a decent shot at going up; if they don't, he certainly is looking like a more promising VP for whoever emerges on height.

Harris, meanwhile, needed to go out of her dead heat with Buttigieg — who is far from being her equal in national profile — and make it into the commencement tier. She did that brilliantly, dominating the conversation overall and delivering what feels like the biggest unmarried moment of the debate: her takedown of Joe Biden, the frontrunner, on race.

Sen. Kamala Harris and erstwhile Vice President Joe Biden speak as Sen. Bernie Sanders looks on during the second night of the showtime Autonomous presidential fence on June 27, 2019.

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Recently, Biden had been immersed in a controversy nearly his fond recollections of working with segregationist senators. In his heed, this was a testimony about the time when the US government worked better because fifty-fifty people who disagreed could cooperate. Only to a lot of Democrats, it sounded like nostalgia for a time when black people were systematically excluded from politics — and Harris pounced.

She slammed Biden'southward comments, connecting them to his tape of opposing busing every bit a ways of immigration, then revealed that she herself had been a beneficiary of busing. Biden'south answer was defensive and rambling.

It's a particularly strong attack line considering Biden needs black voters, who currently support him at relatively high levels, to maintain his pb over Harris and the rest of the next tier of candidates. Harris may have made a plausible argument that they should abandon Biden and consider her instead; nosotros'll find out in the adjacent wave of polls.

Winner: Bernie Sanders'southward ideas

During the 2016 campaign, Bernie Sanders was seen past the Autonomous institution equally a wild-eyed radical whose "democratic socialism" could never win with the American public. In the first fence of the 2020 cycle, Bernie'southward policies dominated the chat.

Autonomous presidential hopeful Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) speaks to the press after the 2d Democratic principal debate.

Jim Watson/AFP/Getty Images

The debate over health intendance wasn't over whether the federal authorities should provide insurance, only over whether it should straight control the entire insurance market or just a big chunk of it. There was no Bill Clinton-like conversation about how "the era of big government is over"; the candidates debated major expansions of the land on issue after issue after consequence. Even on foreign policy, several candidates articulated Sanders'due south critiques of America'due south interventionist strange policy.

The Democratic Party was primed for this kind of leftward shift for quite some time: The party's voters have shifted profoundly to the left over the past ii decades. Here'southward some striking data from a November slice in the Atlantic:

On economics, three-quarters of Democrats say that the regime doesn't do plenty to help poor people, upwards from half in 1994. 2-thirds say that government should regulate business more, again up from one-half in 1994. Conversely, in 1994, 2-thirds of Democrats believed that people could get ahead if they were willing to work hard. Now just half do. The percent of Democrats who believe that corporations make too much money is upward 12 points. But the movement is not uniform. While the portion of Democrats who say that the regime should do more than to help the poor, fifty-fifty if it requires taking on debt, rose from 58 pct in 1994 to 71 pct in 2017, it is still below the peak of 77 percentage, in 2007.

The political party's representatives, nonetheless, had not sufficiently moved with its base, as the attempt to functionally coronate Hillary Clinton in 2016 proved. Sanders's emergence during that entrada brought the left-wing sentiment base in the party to the fore, showing that in that location really was massive need for bolder progressive ideas like Medicare-for-all.

Sanders's 2016 presidential run appears to have played a major galvanizing function here, opening up space for a genuinely left-wing shift among Autonomous leaders that produced a crop of progressive 2018 stars like Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. In July 2018, YouGov asked self-identified Democrats whether they wanted candidates for the midterm elections to exist "more or less like Bernie Sanders." Fifty-vii percentage said they wanted more than candidates like Sanders; a scant 16 percent said less.

You saw a response to this underlying reality this night. The candidates weren't fighting to claim the mantle of "electable" centrist — more than on that in a flake — but rather competing to define themselves equally the about ambitious and authentic progressive. That's one hell of a win for the Sanders motion.

Loser: Bernie Sanders

Democratic presidential candidate former Vice President Joe Biden and Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) wait on during the second night of the outset Democratic presidential contend on June 27, 2019.

Drew Angerer/Getty Images

It's non that Bernie Sanders had a bad night on Thursday per se. He did fine, delivering his signature arguments in the characteristic style we'd come to await. He largely shrugged off attacks from gadfly fringe candidates trying to set on him, and didn't make any gaffes of note.

But as the profile of Bernie's ideas rose, it seemed that Bernie the candidate lost a fiddling bit of his luster.

The cardinal to Sanders's rising in 2016 was running every bit a foil to Hillary Clinton. He ran to her left virtually beyond the lath, filling voter need for a more than progressive alternative to a candidate that a lot of them didn't love or particularly trust. He assembled a coalition of various immature voters and older white progressives and concluded up with a strong showing.

But thanks to Bernie'due south success in paving the left-fly way, his 2016 voters at present have a lot of different options. All the candidates today are fighting over who will be best at moving beyond Obamacare and toward regime-run health intendance. Sen. Elizabeth Warren — who performed strongly on Midweek night — has similar potent anti-billionaire credentials and a more specific and expansive set of policy proposals. And if the economy isn't your outset priority, and you lot're more moved by the party'south shift to the left on like immigration and race, Castro, Harris, and Sen. Cory Booker all came beyond every bit strong alternatives.

Two months ago, Sanders was at 23 pct in the RealClearPolitics national poll average while Warren was at 6.5 percent. Today, Sanders is at 16.9 percent and Warren is at 12.8 percentage. She'southward clearly pulling away some of his support on the party's left flank, showing how the widespread adoption of his ideas is hurting him this fourth dimension around. It's hard to imagine that this debate will turn things around on its ain.

Loser: "electability"

1 of the big themes in the meta-conversation surrounding the debate was the notion of "electability."

Rank-and-file Democrats are overwhelmingly preoccupied with a concern about who can beat President Trump in 2020, for understandable reasons. However, there'south real reason to worry that their judgments about who'south "electable" are based less in cold reason than in biases nigh what kind of person America might exist comfortable voting for — that "electability" is used to justify the notion that the party should nominate a straight white guy considering he's a straight white guy.

My estimate is that this is one of the reasons Biden had been performing and then well in polls prior to the debates. But if there's ane affair the contest showed, it's that stereotypes near who would exist able to out-compete Trump might not exist as ironclad as people think.

The truth is that Biden looked bad on Thursday. He didn't have any compelling moments, got blown out of the water by Harris on race, and badly fumbled a question on his vote in favor of the Iraq State of war — a question he had to know was coming. And there are rumblings of discontent from his staff.

A source close to the Biden campaign tells me his staff is "freaking out" about his poor functioning tonight.

— Olivia Nuzzi (@Olivianuzzi) June 28, 2019

It's actually difficult to know which candidates would exist more than likely to beat another one. Polling information isn't always predictive, particularly once you lot add together in the Electoral Higher — see 2016 — and y'all can't exactly redo an election as a controlled experiment.

That's what too much of the electability conversation had been so far. Biden'due south poor functioning, and potent showings of candidates deemed less electable like Warren, suggests that people should exist a little more apprehensive in their claims about who can trounce Trump.

Winner: social justice

Social justice, identity politics, wokeness — whatsoever terminology yous want to phone call the modern left-wing arroyo to bug relating to historically disadvantaged social groups, it dominated the stage on both nights.

Candidates didn't just broadly reference minority rights and social equality on Midweek; they discussed specific causes nearly and beloved to the hearts of progressive activists. Booker mentioned the high murder rate amongst black trans individuals; Castro used the social justice code phrase "reproductive justice" and redefined the immigration policy debate around concern for the undocumented.

On Thursday, the former guard's views on race — Biden's concession to white anxiety on busing — got obliterated by a blackness adult female. Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand centered her pitch on her work in the Senate on gender equity. The first-ever openly gay candidate in a major debate (Buttigieg) took the stage as an utterly normalized candidate, receiving no questions posing his sexuality equally a potential problem for his candidacy.

Democratic presidential hopeful Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand (D-NY) speaks to the press after the 2d Democratic master fence.

Jim Watson/AFP/Getty Images

A great number of commentators, spanning the spectrum from reactionary correct to middle left, have argued that the Democratic Political party has gone besides far on these sorts of issues — that left-wing "identity politics" are turning off working-class voters and pushing them toward Trump. This claim, which has limited support in the data, is normally presented as dauntless truth-telling despite being widely shared by many professional writers today.

Yet despite the ubiquity of the anti-social justice warriors in public discourse, there was no evidence of their influence on the debate phase on either night. No one, not even Biden, put upwards much of a fight on these fronts. The Autonomous candidates seemed to largely ascribe to the notion that all politics is identity politics, and that there is no way to seriously take into account structural inequalities without speaking to the detail situations of oppressed groups.

The Democrats haven't go the political party of overreaching, immature college activists — the parody of social justice activism ofttimes offered by its opponents. Only the 2020 primary field is, at this point, taking the spirit and ideas of the identity-focused left seriously.

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Source: https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2019/6/28/18906744/democratic-debate-2019-miami-who-won

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