What Went Down On Night Two Of The First Democratic Debates

Last night’s debate was about many things, but electability was not one of them. As I observed at the time, the candidates didn’t focus on Trump very much until the final segment of the evening. Dan Hopkins and I both noted that there didn’t seem to be much emphasis on mobilizing voter anger against the administration. This makes sense if we think about it through an electability lens — drawing voters’ attention to their dissatisfaction with Trump could raise questions about who the likeliest candidate to beat the president might be. And that’s not something any of the candidates from last night’s stage can really count as a strength.

Tonight is a different story. There’s a higher concentration of candidates who are polling well. Joe Biden is obviously the one whose name has been most strongly associated with the fraught concept of “electability.” Others have argued that Harris has the ability to mobilize key groups in the Democratic coalition, including women and people of color. Buttigieg surprised everyone with high-level fundraising and ability to draw media attention. With tonight’s field, I think we are more likely to see arguments about which candidate can best unite the party and make broad appeals in the general election, whereas last night we saw more arguments about policies and the direction of the party.

I continue to think it’s a bit risky for Sanders to cite his polling against Trump, which his campaign is really fond of doing. For one thing, Biden’s actually doing better in head-to-head polls right now than Sanders is — although Sanders is doing well — and increasing the profile of “electability” tends to help Biden overall. For another, general election polls are famously prone toward shifting this early in the campaign. If we get to next March or something and the candidates have spent 9 months beating up on one another, some of their numbers are gonna go down against Trump. Also, some of the candidates who aren’t well-known now will probably see their numbers improve against Trump as their name recognition increases.

Interesting! Bennet brings up how Vermont actually passed single-payer health care several years ago, but they gave up on implementing it because it was too unwieldy and expensive. I’ve been surprised at how that significant setback has barely gone mentioned at all in this Year Of Medicare For All.