What Went Down At The January Democratic Debate

Biden is, at least right now, the candidate most likely to win the Democratic nomination. He leads in national polls and is by far the favorite among black voters. And while most Democratic Party officials aren’t supporting anyone yet, Biden is getting the lion’s share of endorsements, suggesting that key figures in the party think both that the former vice president is the Democrats’ best candidate and that he is likely to win the nomination.

But Biden enters this debate with two obvious challenges. First, a Selzer poll of the Iowa caucuses released on Friday showed effectively a four-way tie for the lead, with Biden in fourth at 15 percent. (However, a Monmouth University poll released on Monday had Biden in first in Iowa, so things are still murky. Our primary forecast currently projects Biden as having the best chance of winning Iowa.) A fourth-place finish in Iowa wouldn’t necessarily damage Biden’s standing in other states, but I’m sure he and his campaign would rather not finish behind all three of the other leading candidates. Secondly, the Trump administration’s decision to kill Iranian military leader Qassem Soleimani has meant that the candidates and the media are talking more about foreign policy, particularly in the Middle East, which has left Biden, who voted for the Iraq War in 2002, largely on the defensive. Most notably, the former vice president inaccurately suggested to an Iowa voter earlier this month that he had opposed the war from its start.

So will Biden concede his war vote on stage or continue to try to explain it away? Neither approach is ideal for him — Sanders (because he voted against the war) and Buttigieg (because he has made his military service a center of his candidacy), in particular, are likely to attack Biden if he concedes he voted for the war. But at the same time, the other candidates and moderators are likely to be critical of Biden if he tries to suggest he did not vote for the war.

That said, the Iraq discussion, may not matter, even if it’s bad for Biden. He seems to have a strong base of support that is sticking with him, even though he has at times struggled in the debates. Biden’s rivals may decide to sharply attack him — this is the last debate before the Iowa caucuses. But I wonder if some of them realize that Biden’s lackluster debate performances aren’t really bringing his numbers down — and that the best way to defeat him may be to concentrate on winning in Iowa and New Hampshire, hoping that Biden losing in those states causes voters in other places to reconsider their support of him, too.

I’ll be following along with Sanders tonight on what I’m sure will be an active evening for him. He was caught up in two different scuffles this week with Warren. One was over Warren’s claim that Sanders told her in a private meeting that he didn’t think a woman could win the 2020 presidential election, and the second was over talking points that Sanders volunteers used to characterize Warren as the choice of “highly educated, more affluent people.” In both cases, the information was leaked to the press. There is just no way that the whole “a woman can’t win” thing won’t be interrogated on stage tonight. And given that the latest Des Moines Register poll showed Sanders in the lead, the other candidates will be out to score some body blows on him.

Lately, Sanders has pressed an electability argument — supporters at his rallies wave “Bernie beats Trump” signs — and he’s gone after Trump on breaking his promise to be a non-interventionist president. Given the inflamed tensions between the U.S. and Iran over the last couple of weeks, that’s sure to come up, too. Sanders, who voted against going into war with Iraq — unlike Biden — is sure to wave those bona fides all over the stage to bolster his case that the former vice president is part of the establishment problem. Mostly, though, I’ll be keeping track of how Sanders wears his sorta-kinda newly-gained front-runner status. We’ll see how it plays out!

As Nate said, there’s been some drama between Warren and Sanders in the lead-up to tonight’s debate with Warren confirming Sanders told her a woman couldn’t win the presidential election. Sanders is continuing to deny having made the comment, but it’s not a good headline for him going into the debate.

This is tricky terrain for Warren though, too. Questions around women’s electability can easily turn into a self-fulfilling prophecy — if voters are worried that a female candidate can’t win, they might be less inclined to vote for one. And it’s clear from polls and interviews that this is an issue that more than a few voters are worried about. A survey from the left-leaning group Avalanche Strategy illustrates this well: Warren is more popular when voters are asked to pick which candidate they’d choose if they could magically bypass the general election, and many mentioned gender as the reason.

That poll also found that very few Democrats think gender affects their own vote choice, but nearly half believe it affects other people’s vote. One risk for Warren if this topic comes up is that she could inadvertently reinforce some of these fears.