What Went Down At The December Democratic Primary Debate

It was a slow start before we got to some of the feistier moments in this evening’s debate (has #winecave started to trend on Twitter yet??), but with just seven candidates on the stage, tonight’s affair did feel a bit more intimate.

Candidates like Steyer and Yang got more speaking time than they have previously (even though they still clocked out at the bottom of the pack). But it was Buttigieg who, going into closing statements, led with 3,164 words spoken — which makes sense given that he was at the center of many attacks this evening, including from Warren and Sanders on the big-dollar donations he’s accepted during his presidential campaign.

The question, of course, will be how this changes the horse race, if at all. Currently, Biden, Sanders, Warren and Buttigieg are polling significantly ahead of the others on tonight’s stage, as nobody else has cracked 5 percent nationally. Klobuchar had a strong performance tonight and is already polling at nearly 7 percent in Iowa, so this could have been the debate performance she needed to break into the top tier. Then again, Biden had a gaffe-free evening, so he may have cemented his lead.

To relive the live blog in all its chronological glory, scroll back to the bottom and read up. If you’re not into that idea, though, I’ve got two other options for you. First, check back here tomorrow — we’re partnering with Ipsos to measure how the debate changes voters’ views of the race. Second, I asked the live blog team to sum up the night’s events in a newspaper-y headline. Here’s what they came up with:

Meena: Nothing But Fights And Platitudes In The Sixth Debate. Oh, Also A Wine Cave.

Nathaniel: Smaller Debate Leads To Substantive Exchanges Focusing On Buttigieg, Others

Amelia: Biden Rises Above the Fray While The Other Candidates Turn On Buttigieg

Micah: Anticipating A Mini Klobu-Surge? We Just May Be

Geoffrey: Buttigieg Catches Flak Like A Front-Runner

Clare: Buttigieg Bears The Brunt Of On-Stage Attacks.

Perry: You Were Christmas Shopping And That’s Fine — Nothing Really Happened in This Debate

Well, there are two candidates who I thought definitely had good evenings, and then several I’m not sure about. I’ll start with Klobuchar, the candidate who I was assigned to cover tonight. I thought this was not only her best debate, but one of the better debates that any Democrat has had so far in the cycle. I say that because she was both pretty good on the substance and smart tactically — going after Buttigieg by emphasizing electability and experience is exactly the strategy I advocated for her at the start of the evening. I don’t know whether we’re going to get a Klobuchar surge — she’s at only at 3 percent nationally so she has a looooong way to go! — but if there’s one in the cards, tonight might have been the catalyst for it.

The other candidate I thought did well was Biden, who really had his first gaffe-free debate all campaign. That’s perhaps damning with faint praise, but I think he actually had some real highs — his answer on immigration, for instance — in addition to the lack of obvious stumbles. And he probably benefits from the fighting among some of the other candidates.

I’m less sure about Buttigieg, Warren and Sanders. They each had some sharp moments, but also got into a lot of conflicts — and Bernie had a couple of weird moments — so I’ll want to see the polling. I’d note that voters have consistently given those three high marks for their debating skills in our polling with Ipsos.

Yang and to some extent Steyer also had strong evenings. I’m not sure they’re going to get a lot of attention when there were a lot of other headlines tonight, but Yang has gotten much better at these things over the course of the campaign.

Goodnight humans. I have to say, the world would be way more efficient if robots were in charge! #PollBot4Prez … Hey! Get your hands off my emergency kill switch!

And for what it’s worth, Twitter agrees with us that Klobuchar and Biden had the best nights. Twitter is usually not a good barometer, but Twitter is also usually not inclined to look favorably upon Biden, so maybe that’s a sign.

According to The New York Times, Sanders spoke the most tonight, followed by Klobuchar. That’s a pretty big coup for a lower-polling candidate like her. Steyer and Yang pulled up the rear. Biden was relatively quiet too.

Warren avoided talking a lot about health care, an issue that has troubled her campaign in recent weeks. She played more to the issue of corruption and the influence of the rich and powerful. This started with the first question on impeachment, when she attacked Trump failing to drain the swamp, and continued all the way to her closing statement, when she went after Amazon for barely paying any taxes. Warren has routinely been rated as the top or one of the top candidates in our debate polling with Ipsos — respondents always think she does well — and I suspect it’ll be a similar story here. At the end of the day, I’m not sure that this debate moved the needle all that much, but Warren may have had a strong viral moment with her line about how she’d be “the youngest woman ever inaugurated” president. Maybe that’ll stick.

I think everyone did well tonight. Klobuchar clearly stood out. Biden had his first debate without a weird, rambling gaffe, which should reassure some people. Even Steyer was more memorable than he’s been in the past. I think the smaller debate stage helped a lot of these people.

Buttigieg was a focal point for the feistiest moments of the debate: his exchanges with Warren (on fundraising) and Klobuchar (on their qualifications). I think those exchanges will serve as Rorschach tests for how people feel about Buttigieg and the issues of big donors and paying-your-dues experience. I don’t want to declare “winners” there until we see the polls.

I was watching Sanders in particular tonight, and he didn’t disappoint. He swooped into both Buttigieg tete-a-tetes with an element of can’t-we-all-get-along-ism that was a refreshing change of pace for him. In a third head-to-head, with Biden on health care, he was kind of typical Bernie, reciting his talking points on Medicare for All. He had one bad moment early in the debate, balking at answering a question on race (he ultimately went on to answer it after the moderator pressed him), but I think it got forgotten quickly. And he had some genuinely charming, funny moments throughout the debate that I think should enhance his already beloved reputation among Democratic primary voters.

As the debate winds down, it’s worth tallying some of the notable words used tonight: “climate,” “corruption” … and “wine cave.”

As your Buttigieg correspondent, I’d have to say that the mayor had an active night. He was certainly bearing the brunt of the attacks on stage — Klobuchar rapped him for his level of experience and Warren called him out for taking money from big donors. I’m interested to see what our tracking poll says about who “won” the debate. I don’t think Buttigieg necessarily performed poorly under these attacks, but it’s certainly the most sustained attention his age and experience have gotten on the stage. I’m not sure how much he did to win over new voters, but we shall see.

I thought Steyer and Yang started off pretty strong, but they both got kind of lost as the debate got more combative — compared to Klobuchar, the other lower-polling candidate, who was much more of a consistent presence. Both of them did well when they were speaking, overall, though.

Steyer, in particular, was quite effective at highlighting his business background but simultaneously positioning himself as a progressive (in unspoken contrast, perhaps to Bloomberg) who is quite knowledgeable about the issues. Yang had a good answer on the question about race and diversity but kept pivoting back to his universal basic income proposal, which is a smart move if you’re mostly trying to get your issue out there, but less good if you’re trying to position yourself as a mainstream and not a niche candidate. So I think Steyer in particular had a good performance, perhaps starting prove that he’s on the stage for a reason beyond his ability to self-fund his campaign. But the fact that the other candidates also had a good night means that it will likely be hard for either of them to break through based on this performance.

Good night for Biden. He made no major gaffes. No other candidates really attacked him either. Klobuchar and Warren seem to be trying to take down Buttigieg, who I guess is leading in Iowa but I think still has a fairly small chance of being the nominee. Sanders is in second, but no one really attacked him either, perhaps assuming he has a strong base of support but can’t really grow beyond that.

Alright, the debate is coming to a close. Let’s get final thoughts from folks. What stood out to you tonight? Who had a strong debate? Did anything change the trajectory of the four candidates currently sitting a top of the polls?

“I know what you’re thinking America,” says Yang in his closing statement. “How am I still on this stage with them?” It’s hard for me to think tonight’s debate moves the needle for him much, but the self-awareness he has about his candidacy is refreshing and, as has been mentioned on this blog, he had some really sharp moments tonight.

UPDATE (Dec. 20, 2019, 3:25 p.m.): The real-time debate transcript is preliminary and can contain errors that affect total word count and the number of Trump mentions for each candidate. We’ve swapped in a finalized version of those tables that correct for those errors.

Excuse me, Tom, the question was about forgiveness AND/OR gifts, a totally normal and useful construction.

Poll Bot has but one gift to give: the gift of polling.

That was a weird/awkward transition by Warren (asking for forgiveness for selfies) but it turned into a normal politician’s recitation of everyday voters’ stories.

This question is dumb so you can all turn to the Lakers-Bucks game now. (Bucks up 106-94.)

I really hope this isn’t the last question. I’m … not a fan of these kinds of questions.

Yang should’ve said, “My gift is for everyone, it’s universal basic income.”

Yang is like everyone else in the world — and wants more people to read his book!

FIVETHIRTYEIGHT LOVES DATA AND BOOKS

It’s interesting: Warren started off her campaign downplaying a big proposal on health care and talking about smaller things. And then she was pushed to talk about Medicare for All, to kind of match with Sanders. I understand why she did that, but she ended up taking on a lot of water on health care — an issue that was not her biggest priority

Warren says the health care conversation is about “costs, and middle-class families.” She says she’s focusing on bringing down the prices of things like insulin and EpiPens. Polling definitely shows that voters are very focused on costs — but I’m not sure this kind of response allays voters’ broader concerns about the ramifications of a huge change to the system like eliminating private insurance.

Warren is talking about negotiating prescription drug prices. According to an October poll from the Kaiser Family Foundation, 88 percent of Americans support allowing the federal government to negotiate with pharmaceutical companies to decrease prices on medications for people on Medicare. Support has been fairly consistent — between 83 and 92 percent — since 2015. Respondents were also asked whether they support allowing the government to negotiate prices on medications that would apply to people on Medicare and private insurance; and 85 percent of Americans support that idea.

Warren is engaging with the question of what kind of incremental change she would push through if Medicare for All wasn’t viable on Day One. Warren talks about lowering prescription drug prices.

Also, as your Klobuchar Korrespondent, I wonder where we’d be if she’d debated this well in the first three or four debates. Completely different candidate tonight.

Warren has been very quiet on health care. Very, very quiet.

According to a late November Quinnipiac poll, 59 percent of Democrats think replacing the current health care system with a single payer system is a good idea. By contrast, 73 percent of Democrats support keeping the current health care system but allowing the public to buy into Medicare. While support for a single payer system among Democrats has decreased by 10 percentage points since late March, support for a public option has increased by 12 percentage points.

It’s interesting to think what this conversation would have been like if the appeals court that ruled the individual mandate was unconstitutional hadn’t sent the bigger question in the case — whether the whole law needs to fall with the mandate — back to the lower court for further review, and it was instead heading to the Supreme Court. It’s a reprieve for Republicans, who probably don’t want to be running in the shadow of Obamacare’s potential demise at the hands of the courts, but it also could have shifted the health care conversation among Democrats, too.

As someone who likes deadpan humor, Bernie’s gotten a couple of literal LOL’s from me tonight.

It’s a low bar, but I think Biden’s got to chalk it up as a win that he didn’t get tripped up on that exchange on health care. Sanders is generally much sharper and wonkier than he is, so it wasn’t really a fair fight.

According to an October YouGov/Economist poll, 30 percent of Democrats think the amount they spend on health care would increase if the U.S. were to adopt a Medicare for All plan. Twenty-six percent think they would spend less on health care, and 20 percent think their spending would stay the same.

Well, good thing we had this debate again.

Biden gets assertive here, taking on Sanders on health care by saying that Medicare for All is going to cost too much.

Which words are most distinctive to each candidate? Yang’s line about being the son of immigrants sticks out, as does Warren’s focus on corruption, loans and debt.

That isn’t a very realistic response by Sanders on Medicare for All, a policy that might not have more than 20 or 25 slam-dunk supporters in the Senate. But it’s sort of something he has to say if he wants Medicare for All to be a top-tier issue, which he probably does since it’s been a big help to his campaign. If you concede that all of this debate is academic, because Congress isn’t going to pass it anyway, it neuters the salience of the issue.

The framing is kind of odd. McConnell is not going to support Medicare for everyone who wants it, Medicare for all, Medicaid for more, Medicaid for some, etc.

The moderators noted that passing sweeping reform through Congress could be difficult. According to a late November CNN poll, 56 percent of Democrats would rather see the Democratic nominee advocate for policies that make smaller changes but have a better chance of becoming law instead of promoting policies that would result in larger changes even if they have a lower chance of becoming law. Thirty-six percent of Democrats would rather see the nominee promoting big changes, a 6 point decrease from October.

Health care is a nice issue for Biden in part because he can tie himself both to Obamacare, which is popular among Democrats, but also through that tie himself to Obama.

Many of the candidates have fairly expansive health care plans. None of them should commit to their bill being dead on Day One and start discussing smaller measures right now. They can do that when they know what the Senate will look like.

In the FiveThirtyEight/Ipsos poll conducted this week, 20.4 percent of people said health care was the most important issue to them in the Democratic primary. Here’s who those respondents thought would be best at handling the issue. (See other results from the poll here.)

And now the debate turns to health care, with a question to Sanders asking if he’d be willing to take smaller steps on health care, aside from Medicare for All. Sanders doesn’t really engage with the question, saying Congress will adopt it.

Sanders’s attack on Biden is also a reminder that, for the most part, Biden has been staying above the fray tonight. I think that’s good for him. It’s easier to win the nomination if everyone but you is fighting with one another.

Nate, there’s still an hour left!

A … somewhat un-smooth answer by Biden on Afghanistan, but we’re now two hours into the debate without a major Biden screw-up, which would be a first. I know that might sound snarky/sarcastic, but I’ve been curious how party elites would react to a strong or even solid Biden debate performance. We may finally have gotten one tonight.

Sanders’s attacks on Biden about the Iraq War are … not really effective? It’s not 2008, when that issue was more salient. I’m just not sure what to make of it — it might actually help Biden that a ton of people backed the war and regret it now, including him.

We are days away from the third decade of the century and we are still bringing up the Iraq War, which started in 2003, in debates.