What Went Down On Night Two Of The First Democratic Debates

Well, my No. 1 goal for Bernie was to go directly after Biden, and he hasn’t really done that. He has avoided going off on too many rants about the establishment, or picking unnecessary fights with other (non-Biden) candidates, which was a another one of my recommendations. Substantively, his answers have been fine, but he hasn’t connected to voters personal circumstances the way that some of the other candidates (especially Harris) has. So it’s sort of a meh performance so far. The good news for Bernie is that I’m not sure Biden has been much stronger, and maybe he can hope that Harris and Buttigieg, if they were to have a mini-surge, would take support from Biden before they would from him.

Among the lower-tier candidates, Gillibrand has had a couple good moments early on. Williamson seems divisive in the FiveThirtyEight newsroom as to whether she’s been effective, but I think she’s done fine in her responses and might be making a deeper appeal in a debate where the president has come up more than last night.

Biden is doing fine, but I don’t think he’s the one driving the conversation or commanding the stage. I think he’s done the best to remain affable and to tweak some of his policy ideas to fit 2019, though it’s mostly Obama administration stuff.