What Went Down On Night Two Of The Second Democratic Debate

Booker is presenting himself as the uniter of Democrats, the happy warrior. Everyone is playing their assigned part!

One thing we’ve learned from these past 2 nights is that it’s hard to defend a middle-ground position when there are 10 candidates on stage and CNN wants conflict and contrast. Buttigieg struggled with that last night, for instance. And I think Harris is struggling with it in trying to defend a middle-ground position on health care between the public option and unadulterated M4A.

I said at the start of this that I would be interested to see how Harris tried to position herself if the framing is progressives vs. moderates, because she seems to try to have it both ways. Given the impassioned arguments to her left and right from Gillibrand and Biden, respectively, I think the difficulty of her positioning is showing.