What Went Down At The Nevada Democratic Debate

Well, we don’t know yet how this debate will affect the race, but one thing is clear: Our earlier prediction of Bloomberg dominating headlines tonight seems to be spot on. Take Politico’s front page currently: “Bloomberg takes a beating, Sanders defends socialism in fiery debate.” Or The New York Times: “Rivals Attack Bloomberg In Most Brutal Debate So Far.” (And keeping with tradition, we collected some of our own headlines from the live blog team that you can peruse below, in addition to the live blog in all its chronological glory.)

But of course, the real question after tonight’s debate is whether it will have been enough to move the dial in Nevada before the caucuses on Saturday — and whether Sanders will handily win the state, or if there might be a surprise upset or a close second- (or third-) place finish that affects the narrative moving forward. Setting Bloomberg aside for a moment, it did seem that Warren was poised for a comeback this evening, and Sanders’s defense of socialism and his own electability was particularly impassioned as well. Biden also seemed to have a strong performance in contrast to Bloomberg and may stand to gain now at Bloomberg’s expense. We’ll just have to wait and see what happens next.

In the meantime, here are our topline takeaways for the evening:

• Clare: You Wanted A Show, The Democratic Field Gave It To You
• Perry: Everybody Hates Mike
• Nate: BLOOMBERG BOMBS
• Amelia: Warren Is Ready For Her Comeback
• Kaleigh: The Most Fiery Debate Yet, With Bloomberg Serving As Tinder
• Meena: None Of These Candidates Came Here To Make Friends
• Nathaniel: Warren Leads The Charge As Candidates Pile On Bloomberg
• Geoffrey: The Bloom Is Off Bloomberg’s Rose
• Chad: All That Blooms Must Wilt
• Micah: Bloomberg Had A Really Bad Debate. Like … Seriously. /// Dek: What effect will it have? 🤷‍♀️
• And a special headline from former FiveThirtyEighter Meghan Ashford-Grooms: Why The Democratic Party Is Thinking, ‘Do We Have to Televise the Next One of These?’

I thought Sanders benefited from Bloomberg being on stage. Sanders is the front-runner, but Bloomberg was the center of the debate. So Sanders did not get the crush of attacks a front-runner normally gets.

“Mean Pete” did well for Buttigieg in earlier debates, but we got a concentrated dose of mean tonight, and it seemed focused mostly on Klobuchar. I wonder whether it crossed the line into seeming like he was picking on her.

Biden had a good debate. Like an actual good debate, not just a relatively OK one compared to his many mediocre showings this cycle. He came into tonight needing a good performance that could produce positive headlines, and he might have done that. Thing is, I wonder if Warren’s strong showing will get the “comeback” treatment more so than Biden’s. She was involved in a number of potentially viral moments, going after Bloomberg as well as other candidates, that might have resonated more. So Biden probably did what he needed to, and now it’s just a question of how things are portrayed going forward.

The second half of the debate was sort of in line with what I thought was a 30th percentile expectation for Bloomberg given fairly low expectations — i.e., it seemed stilted and awkward at times, rusty at other times, didn’t really come across as a Democrat, and was certainly the opposite of folksy. But OK on the substance for the most part and nothing that necessarily amounted to a huge gaffe. So middling-to-poor, but not terrible. But the first half .. wow. One of the worst performances I can remember, particularly for his nonanswers about women and nondisclosure agreements, and pretty much everyone else on stage was willing to twist the knife in. These were not easy things to defend, necessarily. But he came across as smug and unrelatable and dismissive, and he’s going to give fodder to the media and to the other candidates to investigate these lines of attack. There’s a range of possible voter reactions from “minor hiccup that he’ll paper over with $100 million of ads” to “completely blew his shot at the nomination” — with the most likely outcomes being somewhere in between. But this was not a very good debut.

Buttigieg was … extremely predictable tonight. Basically everything I said I was looking for going into the debate came true. He spoke Spanish. He effortlessly inserted himself into questions that weren’t directed at him, getting a fair amount of speaking time. He went back to the “mean Pete” mode that seemed to serve him so well in the October debate, attacking both Sanders and his fellow moderates like Bloomberg and Klobuchar. The attacks on Sanders were an effective way to set himself up as the moderate standard bearer, in my opinion, but his multiple scraps with Klobuchar produced a less clear winner; Klobuchar landed a few good hits on Buttigieg there too on his lack of experience. Overall, I think Buttigieg did well insofar as every candidate not named Bloomberg did well. But I don’t think he’ll be the story after tonight.

I’m not sure what the protestors yelling during Biden’s closing statement said, but I think I heard, “We don’t want you here.”

Wow, kind of crazy that’s the first time the mass shooting was mentioned.

This was not Klobuchar’s most polished debate. She nudged in a few of her signature jokes (still not sure if she knows how roulette works), but she got hard questions from the moderators and her opponents about her record as a prosecutor and her voting record on immigration — and her now-infamous flub on the president of Mexico. She didn’t fade into the background, though, which I think is probably good for her right now. My other takeaway is just boy, does she hate Buttigieg!

I think Warren’s sharp attacks are what stick out to me the most. There were some sideshows between Buttigieg and Klobuchar for sure, but I think Warren vs. everyone — particularly Bloomberg, but also coming after Sanders for plans that aren’t as well thought through as hers — felt very specific to this contest.

All right, folks, we’re closing in on the last few minutes of the debate. Give me your topline takeaways for who you were following tonight — and how you think tonight either helped or hurt them moving in Nevada or beyond.

In terms of word count, this might be one of the most even debate so far — perhaps even the most even. Klobuchar is at the top and Bloomberg is at the bottom of the table, but there are less than 600 words between them.

We should also note of course that Sanders is by far the most likely Democrat to win a plurality but not a majority of delegates. There’s a 21 percent chance of that happening, per our model. Bloomberg and Biden are next with a 9 percent chance each.

Minor critique but I think Bernie should just have opened by saying “the person with the most votes/pledged delegates should become the nominee” instead of bringing up the superdelegates.

Well now, THIS is a revealing question. Chuck Todd asks if the candidate with a plurality of delegates should automatically become the nominee in the event of a contested convention. Bloomberg, Warren, Biden, Buttigieg and Klobuchar all say not necessarily. Sanders — who our forecast says is by far the likeliest to get a delegate plurality — says yes.

Buttigieg hit Klobuchar on her record on immigration — specifically, the fact that she voted for an amendment that would have reversed an executive order requiring federal agencies to provide materials in languages in addition to English. That’s another thing she’s been getting some questions about since her New Hampshire.

That’s my thought, too, Amelia. But as Micah and others have said earlier I’m hesitant to read too much into this one performance. Biden’s durability earlier in the cycle surprised me, and maybe Bloomberg will continue to surprise us now. I agree though that it seems unlikely judging on his performance tonight alone.

I also think this debate might give voters who had thought Bloomberg was a potentially strong opponent against Trump some pause. Apart from all the attacks, he just hasn’t seemed that prepared.

Since all of Bloomberg’s supporters started backing him pretty recently, Micah, I think they’re all vulnerable to being stripped away by an attack that hits one of their top issues. So I think each new attack is a decent chance to pull some voters away from him, even if he already cleared the “very bad debate” threshold.

I liked Nathaniel’s take that Bloomberg may be making Biden look more liberal to viewers. Bloomberg is doing the dirty work of attacking Sanders from the right, so Biden doesn’t need to fill that role, which may be freeing for him. For the most part, Biden has continued to look quite sharp tonight. He fumbled a bit on the question about climate change policies, but he was arguably smart later when he didn’t take the bait when Lester Holt asked him what he thought about “socialist candidates.” Instead, he talked about his background as “the poorest man in Congress” and the fact that he thought taxes should be higher on people like Bloomberg and that, in his classic way of saying it, “the middle class is getting killed.”

I haven’t been focused on a particular candidate, so I’ve been able to take a bit of a step back. All of the candidates who really needed to show up tonight did — with the exception of Bloomberg, who needed a stronger debut. But with so many aggressive performances, I think it’s hard to identify a clear “winner” this time around.

Nobody has spoken about giving jobs to robots yet. Poll Bot misses Andrew Yang.

We’re an hour and a half into the debate, and the bulk of mentions about Trump happened early on. Overall, the number is rising pretty slowly. His name has been mentioned more in recent debates, but this is — so far — more similar to earlier debates, when the president wasn’t invoked as often.

I think almost all the candidates are being very effective versions of themselves. The exceptions, I would say, are Bloomberg — as others have covered — and Klobuchar, who I think has been struggling a bit to make up for past hiccups like forgetting López Obrador’s name.

I don’t have a candidate, but here’s a semi-🔥 take: Has Bloomberg had so many bad moments tonight that the marginal damage of each is smaller and smaller — i.e., could the effect on his support be less than we think because a bad debate is a bad debate? Or is there room for a super, terrible, 🤯 -bad debate-sized effect?

Watching Bloomberg, I also can’t help but think about what would have happened if he had taken his millions and given them to a moderate candidate of his choice, rather than running himself. This could have been such a different debate and race!

I don’t think I knew that Sanders had three houses. Bloomberg has hit him fairly effectively at times. That said, the debate has been clarifying in that Warren and Sanders are so much different than Bloomberg — and that contrast has been useful to see on stage.

My take is that the debate is about Bloomberg’s performance, and the next-most-important question is who is poised to benefit the most if he declines. That might be Biden, actually, although I think Warren has had the best debate on her own terms.

Honestly, Sarah, I think the whole debate calcified in that first hour. No candidate, including the one I’m watching (Buttigieg), did much to change his or her trajectory in the past 30 minutes.

OK, folks, it seems as if we’re nearing final remarks from the candidates or some kind of feel-good question from the moderators. But level with the folks following at home. How have the candidates done? Who’s had a great night? Who’s had an only OK night?

I’m not sure it works to attack every other candidate in a minute, as Warren just did. It looks like you have practiced to attack every other candidate in a minute. It’s not subtle or effective in any way.

As Poll Bot mentioned in the last debate, according to a January NBC News/WSJ poll, only 19 percent of registered voters had positive feelings towards “socialism,” while 53 percent had negative feelings. In comparison, 52 percent of registered voters had positive feelings toward “capitalism,” while 18 percent had negative feelings.

As Warren was saying a few months ago, you can’t claim that Medicare for All raises taxes without noting that you also eliminate premiums.

Warren returns to the rapid-fire attacks on Klobuchar, Biden and Buttigieg that were so effective in the first half.

You’re not wrong, Micah. Geoffrey has written about how a lot of Americans aren’t big on socialism. In June 2015, for instance, Gallup found that 50 percent of respondents said they would not be willing to vote for a socialist if their party nominated one, but as Geoffrey also points out, attitudes on socialism have changed a lot since the 1940s when it first emerged as a bogeyman.

Here is the essay that Buttigieg wrote about Sanders, complete with a GREAT photo.

Kind of a weird question to Buttigieg, asking him to explain a laudatory essay he wrote about Sanders in high school. How many of us still hold the same views we had in high school?

Bloomberg is quick on his feet here and a very strong contrast to the ideas of Warren and Sanders. I don’t know how great of a strategy this is to win the Democratic primary, but I do think Bloomberg is a good representative for the Never-Trump Republican/Blue Dog Democrat.

In terms of “electability” — meaning in this case, “chances of defeating Trump” — there is a real issue with socialism, right? Isn’t the polling pretty conclusive on that front?

Holt asks Sanders a question about the latest NBC News/WSJ poll released yesterday, saying that two-thirds of voters said they were uncomfortable with a socialist candidate for president. But Sanders smartly pivots to point out that he was leading that poll quite handily too. Sanders was in first at 27 percent support, while Biden was in second with 15 percent.

I think Bloomberg has provided a foil for Biden tonight — to make Biden look more liberal.

I think Bloomberg has finally arrived to the debate.

Sanders saying we’re living in a socialist society already in many ways gets a few “that’s rights” and “yups” from the watch party.

OK, I spoke too soon about no personal attacks against Bloomberg in this section. Sanders and Bloomberg are practically spitting bile at each other.

I think the “socialism for the rich and rugged individualism for the poor line” from Sanders is a decent response to the attacks he’s going to get going forward about the “socialism scaries.”

It was weird that Buttigieg praised Denmark, which Sanders of course happily picked up on.