What Went Down At The First Biden vs. Sanders Debate

Dana Bash asks Biden why Sanders has been winning Latino voters so far this year and if it might be a problem for him in the fall. Well, as Amelia and I are writing for the site tomorrow, Biden might be on the verge of a breakthrough with Latino voters on Tuesday — they’re not a monolith. One thing to remember about Latino voters is that they skew young, and younger voters obviously love Sanders.

Fundamentally, Biden’s argument that “Eight years of Obama-Biden prove you can trust me on X” seems like it works with Democratic voters against charges that he once held the wrong policy, etc.

Yes, Poll Bot, exit polls had Biden consistently winning among those voters who said foreign policy was their top issue, too — even when there were more candidates. Even somewhere like Iowa, where Biden didn’t do well overall, he got 43 percent of those voters who said foreign policy was their top issue (though only 13 percent said it was).