What Went Down At The First Biden vs. Sanders Debate

To the point about not drawing general election lessons from the primary: Just think about 2016, when Hillary Clinton essentially won the nomination thanks to overwhelming support among black voters but then lost the Electoral College, among many other reasons, because black turnout lagged 2008/2012. (That might have been inevitable, post-Obama, but it still proves the point.)

Seconded, Nathaniel. I’m skeptical of reading too much into the general from primary election results. Even in a high-turnout primary, you’re not going to see turnout in most states approach that of a general election.

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.