It was certainly a livelier engagement.
Part two of the first Democratic presidential debate Thursday night featured the two top-polling candidates, Joe Biden and Bernie Sanders, as well as rising star Kamala Harris and singular upstart Pete Buttigieg, all determined to plant their flags on the high ground of the party’s nomination summit.
Compared with Wednesday’s relatively placid affair in Miami, it was a far more engaging faceoff.
(See the top ten moments from last night’s debate here.)
“The sharpest exchange of the debate centered on race,” reports the Washington Post, “when Harris, the only black candidate on the stage, called out Biden for his comments at a recent fundraiser where he bragged about his relationship with segregationist senators early in his career” and his opposition to busing public school students bring races together.
Harris made it clear that for her, it was deeply personal, since she herself had been among the first children bused to schools outside her own California neighborhood.
“It was hurtful,” she said, while adding that she doesn’t believe the former vice president is racist.
Biden called her accusation “a mischaracterization of my position across the board, I did not praise racists.”
The ten Democratic candidates appearing on the debate on NBC included Biden; Sen. Michael Bennet (CO); South Bend IN Mayor Pete Buttigieg; Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand (NY); Sen. Kamala Harris (CA); former Colorado Gov. John Hickenlooper; Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT); Rep. Eric Swalwell (CA); author Marianne Williamson, and businessman Andrew Yang.
Unlike Wednesday night, there was lots of crosstalk and a bit of shouting, as the moderators struggled to keep the focus on their questions.
Gillibrand, in particular, strove mightily to draw attention with frequent interruptions of others; Williamson and Yang rarely spoke up unless questioned directly.
Sanders promoted his notion of “Medicare for All” to solve the health care crisis, which conflicts with Biden’s insistence on keeping, reforming and improving Obamacare.
“One of the early clarifying moments came when the candidates were asked, as they were last night, to raise their hand if they would ‘abolish’ private health insurers. While Mr. Sanders, Ms. Gillibrand and Ms. Harris all support Mr. Sanders’s bill only Ms. Harris and Mr. Sanders raised their hands,” says the New York Times.
Most observers found Buttigieg — who, if elected, would be the youngest president in U.S. history — to be engaging and sharply focused on the issues of the day. (He was also the only candidate to venture a phrase in Spanish.)
Asked about Sanders’ proposal to eliminate all student debt and offer free tuition to public colleges, Buttigieg said: “I just don’t believe it makes sense to ask working class families to subsidize even the children of billionaires,” noting that he himself has a six-figure student debt. “I think the children of the wealthiest Americans can pay at least a little of tuition.”
But in the end, as on Wednesday night, all the candidates agreed that the first priority is beating Trump.
“Donald Trump has put us in a horrible situation” in regards to “income inequality” and that he would seek take aim to “eliminating Donald Trump’s tax cuts for the wealthy,” said Biden, to cheers from the studio crowd.
Sanders followed by calling Trump a “pathological liar” and a “racist.”
“That’s how we beat Trump, we expose him for the fraud he is,” Sanders said.