What Went Down On Night Two Of The Second Democratic Debate

As Erin Doherty mentioned on the live blog last night, a recent Kaiser Family Foundation poll found support for a national Medicare-for-all plan has actually dipped from 56 percent in April to 51 percent in July. More Democrats and Democratic leaners say we should build on the Affordable Care Act (55 percent) rather than replace it with Medicare-for-all (39 percent).

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.