What Went Down On Night One Of The First Democratic Debates

OK, folks, that’s it. What a night! If you missed it and want to relive all the glory chronologically, just start at the bottom of this live blog and scroll up. If you’re not inclined to do that, though, I’ve got two options for you. First, check back here tomorrow — we’re partnering with Morning Consult to measure how the debates change voters’ views of the race. Second, I asked the live blog team to sum up the night’s events in a newspapery headline. Here’s what they came up with:

• Nate: “In Debate, Democrats Exchange Barbs and Ideas”
• Julia: “Democrats Run Against Corporations, Trump, and Mitch McConnell”
• Nathaniel: “10 Democrats Try To Cram Six Hours Of Talking Points Into Two”
• Amelia: “Whatever Beto Was Born To Be In, It Wasn’t This Debate”
• Meredith: “Wednesday’s Debate: No Stand Outs, But No Stumbles”
• Geoffrey: “Democrats Get Substantive — And A Little Feisty In The First Debate”
• Chad: “Hard To Chip Away At Biden’s Lead Without Him On Stage”
• Seth: “No Knockouts But Lots Of Policy In Largely Civil, Substantive Debate”
• Maggie: “Political Candidates Still Failing To Check Google Scholar Before Making Statements About How We Need To ‘Figure Out’ What To Do About A Problem”
• Laura: “Lots Of Policy Agreement — And Not A Lot Of Trump — In The First Debate”
• Dan: “Democratic Debate Night One: Heavy On Substance, Light On Trump”
• Meena: “No One Mentioned Biden. Only 496 Days Until Election Day.”

(Also, check out the polls we’ve been collecting ahead of the 2020 elections, including all the Democratic primary polls.)

From ABC News:

Speaking time — measured here by words spoken by each candidate — wasn’t equally distributed across the candidates. It was moderately correlated with candidates’ polling averages (R=0.55), though candidates like Booker, O’Rourke, Klobuchar and Castro spoke a lot relative to their standing in the polls. Warren, who was the polling leader on stage Wednesday night, got fewer words in than her standing would imply.

Yaaaawwwnnn….＼| ￣O￣|／

Uh, I mean…Bleep Bloop…Goodnight humans. Time to regenerate. Someone please turn me back on at 8pm tomorrow for the next debate live blog.

As the first night of Democratic debates comes to an end, let’s do one final check-in on who had the most word-time. As in the Google trends (see Nate’s post below), Booker walked away with the most words spoken, followed by O’Rourke. Warren, who led at the beginning of the night, finished after O’Rourke.

Chuck Todd, one of the debate’s moderators, spoke just four words less than Warren and spoke more words than seven of the candidates on stage.

Looks like Gabbard edged out Booker in search traffic at the end there.

One of the issues is that any serious substantive discussion has to take likely Republican obstructionism into account, since Democrats are unlikely to have full control of government. We got into this a bit with the discussion of McConnell, but ultimately this becomes more about strategy than policy, and is just a really hard question to answer.

So, we were tracking mentions of Trump all night, expecting attacks on the president to feature prominently. Instead, Trump’s name was largely absent. Klobuchar mentioned him the most, followed by Inslee, Booker and O’Rourke.

One interesting thing about the debate format — all of the candidates get (approximately) the same amount of airtime, regardless of how well they’re polling and so do the issues (if the moderators are doing a good job of keeping the candidates on schedule). Should there be more attention to which issues are the highest priorities for primary voters? Might help keep people watching through the many, many debates that are left.

One thing I’m pondering: Did any candidate say anything that could come back to bite them in a general election? Maybe I’m trapped in 1994 or 2010, but I do think that GOP strategists would love to run ads about candidates who want to end the private health insurance system …

Here are my final thoughts in terms of Booker’s performance: He definitely had a strong night. He spoke the most of anyone on the stage (and seemed to get a lot of google searches) and conveyed, I think, the kind of calm competence that is core to his brand. His closing statement told the same story that his presidential announcement did, about being given the opportunity to live in the neighborhood in which he grew up because of the work of activists fighting housing discrimination against black families. Will be very interested to see what kind of poll bump he might get for this.

No specific “Green New Deal” mentions, either, Amelia.

I think these candidates are struggling to distinguish their climate policies. And, because of that, the climate part of this debate ended up being a little flat. The Democratic debates should, theoretically, be really substantive on climate. Instead, I ended up feeling that people aren’t used to debating on climate when everybody basically agrees on the big picture.

Here are my final thoughts in terms of Beto’s performance: He was eloquent, as usual. He gave special emphasis to racial and race-adjacent issues, like criminal justice and immigration, which I think is a good strategy. He even spoke Spanish, which might give him brownie points/YouTube hits. But he also lost the one major confrontation he got into, on immigration (which he’s trying to make one of his signature issues), to Julián Castro.

I don’t think Biden got mentioned once tonight! That’s striking. I was expecting him to be more of a presence.

Our colleagues at ABC News are also providing post-debate analysis. Watch them here.

I’m a college professor, and so I’ve given a lot of grades. But I think that tonight’s debate should be graded on a reverse curve: There were so many candidates that it’s hard for anyone to really stand out and earn anything like an A.

Here are my final thoughts in terms of Warren’s performance: I thought she started out really strongly. She had a populist message about changing government to work for people, not corporations. That fits her campaign themes to a tee. But she did fade away in the latter half. I’m not sure it really matters because maybe more people watched the first half, but it did surprise me a bit.

I wonder how much control candidates have over speaking time — and whether this differs by gender. If women are judged more for interrupting, do they have to get called on to talk more than men do?

Overall pretty strong performances. No obvious catastrophes. I could see some increased interest for Booker or Castro. For most of those polling in the one-percent range, I didn’t see a lot to change that.

So if other voters feel the same way that I do, and there’s absolutely no guarantee that they do, one takeaway from that is that this debate won’t move the needle all *that* much, other than maybe a modest bump for like Gabbard and Castro or something. But this is also the sort of debate where the post-debate narrative (i.e. the spin) could shape perceptions quite a bit and matter more than the debate itself.

Warren did well. I also expected her to do well. Is there a name for what happens when somebody fails to wow you simply by being exactly as highly competent and skilled as you expected?

Strong closings for Castro, Booker, Warren.

If I were grading this debate Mark Halperin style, I’d probably have a lot of B-plusses and B’s and B-minuses. Maybe Warren would inch into the A-minus range on a minute-by-minute basis, but she didn’t get a ton of speaking time. And maybe Ryan is a C or something but, well, who really cares.

Amelia, maybe that’s not a problem for Warren? (Fading late.) How many people watched all the way through?

I am not a night owl (as I mentioned earlier) so I am totally willing to believe that other people tuned out halfway through! This was a lively debate, but two hours is a long time. I wonder if the candidates take that into account.

I agree that Castro took the most advantage of the opportunity of this particular debate configuration. The candidates I would say who missed that opportunity the most are O’Rourke, who didn’t get much speaking time, and Klobuchar, who keeps acting like she’s running for president in 2000 (or at least tome). Klobuchar’s talking points about immigration and her closing statement about how she’s differentiated from the other candidates weren’t especially bad or inappropriate – but they didn’t seem directed at the larger conversations that the other candidates were having.

Warren was quite active in the first half of the debate, but was far less notable in the second half. I’m not sure she ended up with the most speaking time, which is interesting.

No one has referenced their websites, so that’s progress.

O’Rourke is the third male candidate on stage to talk about his kids. Castro and de Blasio also both brought up their children.

Hubert Humphrey, the original happy warrior Democrat, would be proud of Booker.

Was it a problem for Warren that she really wasn’t a part of the last third or so of the debate? She was such a presence to start, but then the other candidates took over.

Booker closes with his happy warrior argument — calling the country “to a sense of common purpose again.”

Klobuchar mentions electability and names midwestern states — and the only surprise is that it hasn’t been more central tonight. It’s clearly among the top criteria for many Democratic primary voters.

I was going to say there’s been a record number of Spanish speakers on stage, but was there a debate four years ago in which Jeb, Cruz, and Rubio all spoke Spanish?

I actually think that was one of the better closing statements. And in general I don’t think Klobuchar was bad tonight. But several of the other candidates had higher high moments, and when you’re polling at 2 percent, I’m not sure that’s a great dynamic.

I … find it weird for Klobuchar to claim she’s not the establishment? But maybe that’s just my Minnesotan hot take.

I’m inclined to think that Castro is the candidate who’s done the most for himself tonight. He did really well in the immigration segment, substantive without being too aggressive. But Booker did a good job as well. And they both needed to do well tonight.

Julián Castro just started his concluding remarks in Spanish. A lot of Spanish was spoken tonight, especially in the first half of the debate. A YouGov poll conducted from June 21-24 found that 42 percent of adults think that a presidential candidate speaking Spanish during a televised presidential debate is pandering, while 31 percent think it’s respectful. Twenty-seven percent were not sure.

Castro invokes his biography in his closing statement. Without opening statements it felt like we didn’t get much of an introduction. I think its a good use of closing statements for a candidate like Castro, who many voters have never heard of.

I expected to be more blown away by Inslee than I was. I wonder if he’s going to end up being the figurehead for whether Americans care about climate. Can’t we care about climate but just not care about Jay Inslee?

Meanwhile, I was surprised by how much Julian Castro managed to make himself stand out.

JINX!!!

I think Castro has had a good night!

Klobuchar goes HARD on electability!!!!!!

Castro one of the standouts tonight, right?

Gabbard with a strong closing statement about service, prosperity and peace. In terms of staying on message, she did well tonight.

Castro is the third (and probably final?) candidate to speak Spanish tonight — leaning into the boundary-breaking aspects of his candidacy.

Remember when Al Gore was derided for running on “the people versus the powerful”? Apparently, these Democrats don’t …

I think Dan was getting at this earlier, but I think the winner of tonight’s debate is … tomorrow night’s debaters. It just doesn’t feel like anything was big enough to overcome tomorrow’s debate stepping on it. Of course, we’re working with Morning Consult to figure this out for real and not rely solely on my dumb gut.

Nate, I don’t know Bill, but the sports metaphor makes me want to say yes.

Strong alliteration game by Ryan in his closing statement.