What Went Down At The December Democratic Primary Debate

Biden remains comfortably ahead of his opponents in national polls. In the early primary and caucus states, he is second in Iowa (Buttigieg is first), third in New Hampshire (trailing Buttigieg and Sanders) and in the lead in both Nevada and South Carolina.

The former vice president is in a fairly strong position in my view, not only because of his own strengths but also because Buttigieg’s rise doesn’t threaten him all that much. The South Bend, Indiana, mayor is in position to win Iowa and New Hampshire — states Sanders and Warren really need to win if they want to take on Biden. But because Buttigieg shows no signs of making gains among voters of color, he is a weaker contender once the primary process moves past the overwhelmingly white states of Iowa and New Hampshire.

As for his debate strategy tonight, I would expect Biden continues to employ the strategy he has pursued throughout the year — suggest he is the candidate best-positioned to defeat Trump, play up his ties to former President Obama and argue some of the more liberal policy ideas of Sanders and Warren won’t work and actually make it harder for Democrats to win the general election.

My big question tonight is this: How will Biden deal with Buttigieg, and vice versa? The former vice president, perhaps aware of what I laid out above, has not attacked Buttigieg all that much, even as the mayor has surged in polls. But I wonder if tonight Biden takes some jabs at Buttigieg, or plays up his experience to contrast with the 37-year-old. I tend to think Buttigieg winning in Iowa and/or New Hampshire, as opposed to Warren or Sanders, helps Biden, but of course, the safest course of action would be for the former vice president to win those states himself. And if the mayor starts more directly attacking Biden, casting him as a figure from an older generation that needs to give up power, how does the vice-president respond?

There is one big caveat to all this, though: It’s not clear this debate (or any of the upcoming ones) has big stakes for Biden, especially considering he has had bad moments in some of the previous debates and those have not really affected his poll numbers. Biden has remained between 25 and 28 percent in the polls for months now, suggesting his lackluster debate performances aren’t turning off his supporters. (Or perhaps they are only lackluster in the minds of journalists like me!)

I’m watching Sanders in tonight’s debate. And although he’s currently at a high point in his campaign (18.0 percent support, according to our national polling average), his standing has been remarkably steady, hovering between 14 and 18 percent. He really needs to break out of that range, though, to transform from a factional candidate into a nomination-bound front-runner. The problem for Sanders is that Biden’s numbers have also been remarkably steady, remaining between 25 and 28 percent. Something’s gotta give, probably for both Sanders and Biden, if Sanders is to surpass the polling leader.

Working to his advantage is the fact that Sanders is a consistently strong debate performer who delivers a message of economic justice in a rousing style — but that has only taken him so far. If Sanders wants to use tonight’s debate to break out of his usual polling range, some potentially effective tactics could include attacking Biden on electability or racial issues, where he might be vulnerable, or coopting the messages of other liberal or outside-the-establishment candidates.

According to an Emerson College poll conducted earlier this week, almost 60 percent of Sanders’s 2016 supporters aren’t supporting him this time around. Fifteen percent of Sanders 2016 supporters are currently with Warren, 16 percent with Biden, 10 percent with Buttigieg and 6 percent with Yang, so they seem like the best candidates for Sanders to attack — and Warren is at the head of that list. In my opinion, their friendship continues to hold Sanders back politically, causing them to play nice with each other when Sanders could potentially gain a lot from a weaker Warren. It’s probably no coincidence that Sanders’s recent uptick in the polls has come amid a Warren polling collapse.

I’ll be watching Warren in the debate but, wow, what a difference two months makes. In mid-October, Warren was riding high in the polls. She had successfully positioned herself as practically a co-front-runner for the Democratic nomination, attracting a coalition beyond her base of very liberal, white, college-educated voters (this included more moderate Democrats, voters without a college degree and some nonwhite voters). And although she still trailed Biden in the national polls, she had at least edged closer to him while also grabbing narrow leads in Iowa and New Hampshire.

But now Warren’s national support has dipped nearly 10 percentage points from its peak of around 24 percent in October, and she’s fallen to fourth place in Iowa and New Hampshire, according to our polling averages.

One possible explanation for her slide is her health care plan. Warren has essentially rolled out her own version of Medicare for All, even though it is not as popular as a public option that would allow Americans to keep their private health insurance, which could be costing her with voters. Warren has called for a slow implementation of her plan, stressing that it would allow people to have a “choice” in their health care plans, but it’s unclear how that’s resonating with voters at this point.

Of course, her struggles could also be tied to “electability” concerns among voters, who are concerned about voting for a woman — especially one who is among the most liberal candidates in the Democratic field.

The good news for Warren is that she’s routinely had strong debate performances, so this debate could be a kind of reset for her. And it wouldn’t be all that surprising if Warren tried to pivot away from health care to focus more on her proposed wealth tax, which polls much better than getting rid of private health insurance. For instance, a Fox News survey from earlier this month found only 41 percent of registered voters, including 57 percent of Democrats, favored getting rid of private insurance, while 68 percent overall, including 83 percent of Democrats, backed a 2 percent tax on a person’s wealth over $50 million.

Warren will still probably have to answer tough questions about her health care plan, but talking more about her wealth tax could help deflect some of the scrutiny. One more strong debate performance could be just what Warren needs to move back into second — or maybe even first — place.