What Went Down At The First Biden vs. Sanders Debate

The challenge of these debates is that Biden can’t quite say, “I’m always in the mainstream of the Democratic Party, so when I was wrong, Bill Clinton, Nancy Pelosi and Barack Obama were wrong too, so it’s less bad.” And he seems unwilling to say that he evolved on various issues. But Sanders harping on votes from 20 years ago doesn’t quite work without him really connecting that to the future — Sanders says Biden got the war in Iraq wrong, but what does that say about what issues he might get wrong in the future? I have watched all these debates, and Sanders hasn’t quite communicated this to me.

Presumably this question is about Hispanics because of the fact that Univision is a cosponsor of this debate. But the bigger question for Biden is not his underperformance with Hispanics — as I said earlier, the exit polls have put him down by 10 points among Hispanics against Sanders, not a massive margin — but rather among young voters. Biden has gotten destroyed among young primary voters while Sanders has gotten crushed among old voters. Sanders makes this point here in that he’s attracted much more support from younger voters.

In general, though, I think it’s dangerous to say that enthusiasm or support for candidates in the primary will matter for the general election.