What Went Down In The Fifth Democratic Debate

One of the two candidates I’ll be watching tonight is Steyer, although in many respects, he’s perhaps the least interesting candidate on stage. Polls show he does have a bit of a pulse Iowa and other early states, however, no doubt largely because of the massive amount of advertising money he’s spent there.

But frankly, I think Steyer’s job tonight is not to appeal to real Democratic voters but to “Morning Joe”-watchin’ elites who are clamoring for Bloomberg to enter the race. Steyer can plausibly claim to have several advantages over Bloomberg: He has already been running for several months, he doesn’t have Bloomberg’s problematic history with black voters because of New York’s stop-and-frisk policy, and he’s 62 years old rather than 77. I don’t really think Steyer has much of a chance anyway, but his chances probably go from slim to none if Bloomberg runs. So if you’re Steyer, you say whatever you have to say to appeal to these Acela-ridin’ elites, which probably involves some combination of liberalism on social policy and “common sense” (read: centrism) on fiscal policy. Then you hope folks decide that you’re a more viable candidate than the former mayor.

Tonight, I’m watching two candidates on the periphery of the race: Klobuchar and Booker.

Klobuchar got good reviews for her assertive debate performance in October, and it may have moved the needle in Iowa, where she has averaged 5 percent in polls conducted there entirely since the last debate. Of course, that’s only good for fifth place, but she has already qualified for the December debate — which is notable, as only six candidates have so far. But still, she’s got a ways to go before she cracks the top tier, so she’ll want to stay on offense tonight. For instance, Buttigieg got an even bigger boost coming out of the October debate by framing himself as the same type of moderate alternative that Klobuchar is aiming to be, so she might want to box him out or even attack him directly tonight. Buttigieg’s recent surge in Iowa polls (and New Hampshire) suggests that at least a portion of the electorate is still open to changing its mind, and that, specifically, there may be an appetite for a someone who pitches themselves as a pragmatic, electable Midwesterner — like Klobuchar.

For Booker, on the other hand, this debate is probably do-or-die. As things stand, he looks like a long shot to qualify for the December debate — he has not reached the new fundraising threshold, but an even bigger problem is that he has yet to collect a single qualifying poll with only about three weeks left until the deadline. And the more I think about it, the more I agree with Sarah, who argued in a recent Slack chat that he might very well drop out once he stops qualifying for debates. So Booker needs a distinguishing moment tonight — maybe something along the lines of Harris’s attack on Biden in the first debate? — for his campaign to survive. His shtick in the previous debates (playing the happy warrior against President Trump’s divisiveness), while strong in my opinion, clearly hasn’t been cutting it.

Tonight, I’ll be watching Harris and Yang, two candidates fighting for continued relevance. Once polling as high as 20 percent in some national surveys, Harris is now trying to recover from her long slide in the polls to return to the front-runner conversation. Meanwhile, Yang has gone from being a rounding error in the polls to a candidate with a small but committed base of support, and his next step is to be taken seriously as a viable alternative for the Democratic nomination.

After the first debate, Harris looked like a top-tier contender, but oh, how times have changed. At the end of October, Harris trimmed staff and shuttered field offices to go “all in” on Iowa, and her campaign is struggling with back-biting over what’s gone wrong and who is to blame. But Harris isn’t done for — she raised nearly $12 million in the third quarter, so she’s got the resources to keep going. She’s also had a poll bounce before, so another strong debate performance could give her campaign a much-needed shot in the arm. Given her focus on Iowa, Harris might shape her debate approach to maximize her appeal there, too. That could include making direct references to the state, but also focusing on why she is the best candidate to defeat Trump, which a new CNN/Des Moines Register/Mediacom survey found was the priority for 63 percent of potential caucus-goers. In that same poll, 46 percent still said they were considering Harris, so she may well be able to grow her support there. Her poll numbers might be down, but her campaign still has the potential to stitch together different factions of the party. The clock is ticking, though.

The question for Yang is whether he can become more than a candidate who’s best known for proposing a universal basic income. Historically, candidates with pet policies or narrow political agendas haven’t had much luck in presidential primaries, but few (if any) of those candidates ever built up the kind of loyal small-donor base that Yang has mobilized. Yang raised about $10 million in the third quarter, nearly as much as Harris and much more than some candidates close to him in the polls, such as Booker ($6 million) or Klobuchar ($4.8 million). So tonight’s debate presents an opportunity for Yang to argue that he can win the nomination and defeat Trump. The debate is also an important opportunity for Yang to stay in the political limelight: He’s still one qualifying poll short of making the December debate. He already has the donors he needs, though, so a solid showing tonight could also help him, at the very least, secure a spot on the next debate stage.