What Went Down At The January Democratic Debate

I’ll be following the candidate who came closest to not qualifying for this evening’s debate — Tom Steyer. The billionaire activist made it into the debate just under the wire last Thursday, with a Fox News poll that put him at 15 percent in South Carolina and a second Fox News poll where he hit 12 percent in Nevada. Those polls put him in an unexpectedly strong position in our polling averages for those two states, considering he’s only polling at around 2 percent in our national average. And with a much-coveted podium on a debate stage that features fewer candidates than ever, Steyer will get one more opportunity before voting begins in Iowa to make the case for why his business background — he’s made the bold claim that he understands the economy better than any of his rivals — and political activism on issues like impeachment and climate change make him a strong presidential candidate.

Voters in the early states are probably already quite familiar with Steyer, though, as he’s been busy blanketing the airwaves in Nevada, South Carolina and Iowa with ads, spending more than $26 million on TV ads alone in those three states. But Steyer has been defensive about his ad spending, arguing that it’s his message and grassroots organizing — not his money — that got him into the debate.

One thing I’ll be watching for tonight is whether any candidates attack him for the amount of money he’s spent so far. Tonight will be the first debate without any candidates of color, too, and Steyer has taken some heat from Booker (who dropped out of the race on Monday) for buying his way onto the stage. So Steyer could get some questions about whether he really earned his spot.

But Steyer’s main task this evening is actually pretty simple: He needs to deliver a strong performance and stand out from his higher-polling rivals. The trouble is that although he and his signature plaid ties have seemed more and more at home in the Democratic debates over the past few months, voters haven’t rated him especially highly. In our December post-debate poll with Ipsos, for instance, he was among the two candidates given the worst marks for performance, relative to his pre-debate favorability. He’s also lagged behind most of the other candidates in words spoken in recent debates. So tonight is all about making a positive impression — and, if he’s especially lucky, building on his recent uptick in the polls.

A couple blocks away, supporters are rallying for their chosen candidates (including some who didn’t qualify for tonight’s stage). Here’s a bunch of Klobuchar fans chanting while Andrew Yang supporters look on. Nearby, a tractor flying Trump-Pence banners tottered along.

Once again, our bloggers have randomly drawn candidate assignments, and tonight each of our politics reporters will be watching one of the six candidates on stage.

How it works is simple: Our politics reporters cover their candidates’ performances in detail, including a post on what they see as each candidate’s strategy going into the debate and a final write-up on how they think their candidates fared tonight. For example, was Sanders at the center of the debate tonight, fending off attacks from both Warren and Biden? Or did someone like Buttigieg or Klobuchar manage to steal the mic?

To be sure, we’ll still be watching the debate holistically and reacting to things as they happen in the moment, but the idea here is that we’ll also have a few folks dedicated to following whichever candidate they drew, providing detailed insight on how well (or poorly) that person is doing.

Here is who’s watching whom:

• Amelia Thomson-DeVeaux is watching Steyer.
• Geoffrey Skelley is watching Klobuchar.
• Nathaniel Rakich is watching Buttigieg.
• Nate Silver is watching Warren.
• Clare Malone is watching Sanders.
• Perry Bacon is watching Biden.

So next up is a series of posts on what our writers will be looking for from each candidate tonight. Amid the general back-and-forth of the live blog, Clare, Nate, Perry, Nathaniel, Amelia and Geoffrey will also periodically check in on how they think their candidates are doing.

If you have a candidate-specific or policy-specific question, please send ’em to us on Twitter. I’ll try to answer them here on the live blog.