What Went Down At The December Democratic Primary Debate

I’ll be following along with Buttigieg in the last Democratic debate of 2019. And the mayor of South Bend, Indiana, comes into this showdown in as good a position as he could hope for. The first voting contests are in just over a month and Buttigieg has consistently performed well in polls of Iowa (he’s leading) and New Hampshire (he’s in second), though his national polling average is maybe not quite where he wants it (he has hovered around 9 percent over the past month). But those polling numbers are actually up since November, which is part of the reason why I think you’ll see Buttigieg at the center of a lot of attacks tonight.

He’s a real threat to Warren in particular, given that they both hold an appeal to white, college-educated voters. In the last month, she’s attacked his private fundraisers and even appeared to call his strategy “naive” during one New Hampshire speech. I’ll be keeping a close eye on that dynamic as the debate unfolds tonight. Even though Buttigieg has cultivated a Midwestern nice young man charm on the campaign trail, he is a sharper, more aggressive presence on the debate stage. He’s already tangled with opponents over policy and character issues in previous debates, which makes me think that he’ll come out fighting tonight. And I have no doubt that he and his team know that they’re the target of left-leaning factions of the party, given some recent coverage about why certain blocs of the party seems to so strongly dislike him. So, stay tuned for fightin’ Pete, I guess!

I was assigned Amy Klobuchar tonight — which works pretty well because she has a lot on the line this evening.

For a couple of months now, at least some influential Democrats have been hoping someone can break into the current top four, which consists of candidates they consider to be too old, too young, too far left, too “unelectable,” or some combination of the above. It’s not clear that rank-and-file Democratic voters share this sentiment. Voters are happy with the field, and the top four all have loyal followings.

Still, there’s at least a little bit of an opening for someone else to emerge. And if someone does, they’ll probably start to get favorable press coverage, because the media likes nothing more than an underdog candidate surging at the last minute.

Enter Klobuchar. As a third-term, 59-year-old senator who has been elected by big margins from a Midwestern swing state, and who is somewhere between a liberal and a moderate, she’s the sort of nominee that party elites are usually looking for. And with Kamala Harris out of the race and Booker not on the stage tonight, she’ll have the underdog/spoiler role somewhat to herself, at least among candidates who have traditional credentials for the presidency (i.e. not Yang or Steyer).

Is there any actual sign of Klobuchar momentum so far? Maybe just the slightest bit. She’s up to 2.8 percent in our national polling average, which obviously isn’t great — but is the highest point that she’s been all campaign. Perhaps more importantly, she’s up to 6.6 percent in Iowa, a position held by previous candidates (e.g. Rick Santorum in 2012) who came from behind to win the caucuses.

I don’t know that Klobuchar has any strategic imperative tonight other than to just deliver a solid performance from start to finish and make enough of an impression that she’s a part of the post-debate conversation. She’s improved notably over the course of the debates, which is a nice way of saying that her performances were flat early on — but voters who saw her in the October and November debates mostly liked what they saw.

But one thing Klobuchar could try is drawing a contrast with Buttigieg. Their coalitions — white, relatively moderate, college-educated — overlap a fair bit, and as the two major Midwesterners left in the race, they’re both reliant on Iowa to gain momentum. If Klobuchar can convince Iowa voters that she has the qualities they like in Buttigieg while also having some things he lacks — a long record of experience in government, and a track record of getting elected in a swing state — she’ll have a shot in Iowa. And anyone who has a shot in Iowa has a shot, however remote, at the nomination.

Tonight, I’m following entrepreneur Yang and billionaire activist Steyer, two lower-polling candidates who both stand to benefit from the smaller debate stage — that is, if they can manage to grab more airtime and attention. Their task is to show why they belong among the candidates who made it into tonight’s debate, especially when other low-polling candidates with more traditional presidential credentials (like Sen. Cory Booker) failed to qualify.

Yang was the last candidate to qualify for the debate, and he’s also the only candidate of color on the stage tonight. He’s coming off a strong November debate performance in which he made one of the largest gains in net favorability, according to our post-debate poll with Ipsos, but he also spoke the least. With fewer rivals to jostle with for speaking time tonight, he’ll be under even more pressure to make the case for why he’s a viable option. That likely means focusing on something other than the issues for which he’s best known (universal basic income and automation) to convince watchers that he’s more than a niche candidate with an extremely loyal fan base.

The fact that the debate is taking place the day after the House voted to impeach the president, meanwhile, could tee up Steyer to tout his activist background, which has focused on impeaching the president — before it was cool. However, he didn’t particularly stand out in the November debate and underperformed his pre-debate favorability, which means there’s significant room for improvement on his end. Steyer needs to make the most of the smaller debate stage to prove that he’s not there simply because of his money. Maybe by emphasizing his support for a wealth tax, which could hurt billionaires like him, he can draw a contrast with Michael Bloomberg, the other billionaire who made a late entrance to the race.