What Went Down On Night One Of The Second Democratic Debate

“This is not radical,” says Sanders in reference to his Medicare for All plan and Hickenlooper’s assertion that it can’t be passed in the next four years.

Hickenlooper mentioned Iowa, which is the second early-state mention tonight (O’Rourke tried to talk about someone in Nevada earlier but was cut off).

Bernie says that every poll he has seen has him beating Donald Trump. But that’s probably just because of name recognition. As we’ve written several times, general-election polls at this stage are pretty close to worthless.

This is a great exchange between Sanders and Hickenlooper.

Boy, the moderates will love this round too — a whole electability segment. But Democratic voters care about electability, so it’s a totally valid subject.

HELL YES MICAH ELECTABILITY RAWR!!!!

Are we getting an explicit electability segment? Nate, you must be over the moon.

In terms of policy, the health care section was incredibly substantive. I wish all of the debates were like that. The immigration and gun control discussions were more “meh” to me. There’s less disagreement among the Democrats and there seemed to be a little less willingness to really get into the details.

In terms of impact per word, I’d say Williamson’s last answer was quite an effective distillation of her message.

What I’ll say about this debate so far is that it doesn’t seem to be doing much clarifying among the four or so candidates leading the race at the moment. It seems to be doing more to show Democrats that there are moderates who aren’t Joe Biden.

I guess I think … Delaney and Bullock have had the best nights so far? But I think most of the other candidates have been pretty decent, including Sanders and Warren. Ryan and Hickenlooper are exceptions and have disappeared a lot. Maybe Beto, too. Klobuchar hasn’t been bad but maybe could have taken better advantage of her opportunities.

As tonight’s Bernie correspondent, I think he has done well so far. He was particularly forceful and confident on health care, an issue where he arguably set the pace with his 2016 campaign. He has also been unafraid to punch at other candidates (though not Warren!) as well as the moderators, which I think works for the kind of voter he wants to attract.

OK — what are your top takeaways from the first couple of questions of tonight’s debate? How did the candidate/candidates you’re watching do? Or what topic issue do you think was especially insightful?

Saying you want to reform the country with constitutional amendments is basically admitting you don’t have a plan because doing that is extremely unlikely. We only have 27 of them for a reason, and 10 came right at the start with the Bill of Rights.

I think what we’re seeing with gun control is, again, the importance of organized interests. Gun control groups have become more organized and powerful and are likely to be a sought-after group in the nomination.

I hope none of those candidates drank coffee before the start of this like I did, because that was a long hour.

Sarah, there will be a hell of a contrast in a general election debate over gun control if the Democratic nominee is slamming the NRA and Trump is saying he loves the NRA.

That’s a good point, Geoffrey. Democrats do mostly agree on the need for gun control reform. I’ve been surprised though by the amount of time the first two debates have focused on gun control. Do you think this is something that will play out more in a general election debate, too?

Williamson talks a lot about money in politics if you listen to her interviews. She is well versed in this.

Montana is a red state on some level. But it is also more populist. It has a Democratic senator. It is not polarized along racial lines. So Bullock can get stuff done in his state in part because it’s red but it’s not RED like Alabama.

I’m a big sucker for talk about structural changes, just like I’m a big sucker for evidence-driven arguments about electability, so gonna say that was one of Buttigieg’s better moments so far.

Buttigieg’s pivot to democratic reform served up a meaty hanging slider for Bullock’s background in campaign finance reform.

We’re about an hour in, and here’s the latest word count update. By the way, where’s Williamson tonight?

Sanders’ record on guns was a common target for Hillary Clinton in the 2016 Democratic primary debates, giving her a rare way to get to Sanders’ left.

Unlike health care and immigration, gun control is an area that produces fewer disagreements among Democrats, so this discussion is not providing much of a contrast.

“I’m a gun owner, I hunt,” Bullock said. He has really hit all of his talking points. Now he is talking about dark money, one of his big issues. Bullock has really made the most of his first debate. I’m impressed. Of the moderate white guys running on electability, he is doing way better than Ryan and Hickenlooper.

Bullock maneuvered away from gun control to talk about campaign finance reform, something he’s more comfortable talking about.

I think what’s interesting about Klobuchar’s style is that she does a lot of listing of bills/legislation that she’s been a part of but she’s not great at connecting that stuff (policy/legislation) to what it looks like in everyday American life. I guess it goes to Nate’s observation earlier about telling voters’ stories. You’ve got to create a narrative in a debate that sticks with people after the debate.

Micah, I think the lefties would say that this kind of debate moderation is how the media nudges the political conversation towards centrism.

It’s worth noting that the candidate who was running largely on gun control, Eric Swalwell, is not on stage. He was the only candidate to drop out after the last debate.

My immigration section thought is too meta, but here it is: I don’t know what I think about moderators assuming essentially the opposition’s position. It’s not new to these Democratic debates — the moderators did it in the 2016 GOP debates too. But is that the best way to foster a good debate?

I agree with Nathaniel. I’m not an expert on immigration policy, but one of the lesser-known implications of DACA is that there’s the letter of immigration law, and then there’s how the the law is actually enforced — including things like deportation priority. That’s a reasonably substantive topic for candidates to address.

My Upshot needle is moving toward in the direction of Buttigieg not being particularly effective tonight in trying to straddle the middle ground between the moderates and the liberals.

I don’t agree, Nathaniel! The Democrats are in a tough spot on immigration, and it shows. They all seem much more eager to criticize Trump than emphasize their own plan. I think viewers following this will have learned a lot less about the candidates’ stances on immigration than they did about health care.

Yes, Nathaniel, but they dedicated only about 10 minutes to the topic of immigration. Given the substantive disagreements that easily could have gone on for 20 minutes.

Immigration segment over; we’re moving on to guns. FWIW, I thought the immigration exchange had the same substantive liveliness as the health-care one.

Hickenlooper is touting a major gun control package he passed as Colorado governor in 2013. He won’t mention that that bill appeared to hurt his popularity and led to the recall of two state senators.

Yeah, I think it’s more important who the Senate majority leader is and whether there are any factions in the House holding up reform.

That was a strange moment from Klobuchar. We saw repeatedly under Obama how hard it is to get a legislative solution to immigration. And other candidates (like Harris, who’s not on stage tonight) have said they’ll use executive action to address key immigration issues because of how hard it is.

Presidents supportive of immigration reform have been in office from both parties prior to Trump — George W. Bush and Barack Obama. Both failed. So I’m skeptical that what Klobuchar said is true.

Klobuchar said that Congress is willing to move on immigration, all that’s needed is the right person in the White House. What do people think?

Sanders defends providing health care to undocumented immigrants as a “human right.” He said something similar when he defended letting even violent criminals vote — that it was an inalienable right for all people, good and bad.

I think smart for Bullock to take the *explicitly* moderate position given that decriminalizing illegal immigration and giving health care to undocumented immigrants aren’t all that popular even among Democrats.

Warren didn’t mention Trump at all during the first Democratic debate. Seems like she’s taking a different approach this time around.

Is Bullock going to be the Castro of this debate?

“You are playing into Donald Trump’s hands,” Bullock says of Warren. Wow. Bullock has come to play.

TBH, the FiveThirtyEight staff was divided on what to watch tonight.

I second Clare’s call for a health care-only debate