.
.
.
Looking for the battles that matter? Here’s what you might expect.
Random assignment to conditions is a funny thing: it often doesn’t end up looking random. Take the two Democratic debates up this week, on CNN, tonight (March 30) and tomorrow. While the rules required an equal number of women and of front-runners on each night, they don’t look random in other respects. But both look damned interesting.
Night 1 ended up having an all-white roster, in which the two most leftward of the serious contenders — Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren — will take fire from a bunch of mostly moderates who want to make their name by landing a blow against them.
Night 2 ended up having a roster that’s half-white and half racial minority, in which the two more centrist of the four current leaders — Joe Biden and Kamala Harris — will take questions from rivals who tend to be more liberal. And Biden in particular can expect a lot of challenges about race. (Harris can expect a lot of challenges about consistency.)
I’ve put together a chart that spitballs some of the most likely and ferocious likely attacks (in red) along with some milder ones we might see (in gold). Ones with arrows on both ends of the arc will go bilateral; in others, only the receiving side gets an arrow. I tried to include at least one attack from everyone — although who really knows what, say, Marianne Williamson is going to do. (If someone receives an attack, then of course they might counterattack.)
Night 1
Expect most of the fire to come in towards Sanders and Warren. (Their campaigns say that the two of them won’t fight among themselves; I think that we might see a little gentle comparing going on, especially as moderators and rivals try to goad them into it.) I don’t expect them to have plans to lay into anyone else in particular, but both are capable of a good counterattack. (The Sanders campaign took on Harris today for her sorta screwy sort of sorta Medicare for sorta all sorta a decade from now plan. But she’s on Night 2.)
The most fierce attacks on the leading duo will likely come from the most conservative members — Tim Ryan, John Hickenlooper, and John Delaney — all of whom want to be known as liberal giant- killers on substantive grounds and who also need to take on the biggest targets to pump air into their leaky tires. Barring the unexpected, this will be their last time in the spotlight unless they can do something really dramatic.
More measured attacks on the leading duo will probably come from the three hear most likely to pick up Biden’s baton if he stumbles — Amy Klobuchar, Pete Buttigieg, and Beto O’Rourke. They each have a chance at the nomination and, while they may get in a sharp jab if they can, they aren’t likely to throw desperate roundhouse punches. I don’t see newcomer Steve Bullock (replacing Eric Swallwell) or Williamson going after them; they need to pass the people in front of them, rather than have their attacks get lost in the barrage of others on their way.
One thing that’s clear is that the debates this year really do seem to matter. And what matters right now is not only the top spots, but the 5-through-10 spots, which will make it into the fall debates. (And we have to keep in mind that mega-rich Tom Steyer is likely to use his money and impeachment fervor to snag one of those.) On this night, Klobuchar, Buttigieg, and O’Rourke will be trying to fend off rivals who want to steal their lunch.
I see three fights as most likely to break out on the wings. The first is obvious: Beto and Buttigieg are the smart young blarney-vendors who are trying to cover the same territory. Beto is Irish pretending to be Mexican; Buttigieg is Maltese, but Mayor of the home of the Fighting Irish. There’s only enough room for one of them in this race (although both are fair bets to make it through to the fall.)
The others are longer shots. With Bullock in the race, he needs to define himself as the only Governor who won a race in a state, Montana, that Trump won. (Hey, as talking points go, it’s not too bad.) The best way for him to do so might be to take on the other (former) western governor in the race, whom he has to pass: ripe target Hickenlooper. So I see the two of them getting into a brawl that might get them some airtime.
On the other side, Klobuchar needs to define herself — and she just might want to do it by focusing an attack grounded in her experience against a soft-in-all-senses target: Williamson, who probably doesn’t expect to take any fire from anyone. Alternatively, if Williamson needs a target, crusty centrist Klobuchar, right on the other side of Tim Ryan, might do nicely. The name of the game is to get camera time, and they could well serve as each others’ foils.
Expect Ryan and Delaney (and maybe Hickenlooper), who won’t get much love from the moderators, to interrupt a lot; expect Williamson and Flobuchar to make them look bad for doing so. Bullock will get a question or two out of his novelty value.
Night 2
Biden would prefer to be standing in between any other two people out of the other 19 than Harris and Cory Booker, who are competing for similar voters and who each would love to get more “quality time” with Joe. If he’s the nominee — and he’s still the most likely centrist to get it — he’s really going to be toughened up well from these bouts. Biden can expect the sharpest punches from Harris and Kirsten Gillibrand — who desperately needs some good moments — and lesser attacks from Michael Bennet, Jay Inslee, and Interrupter Supreme Bill DeBlasio on the wings. (They’ll each need to make their own airtime by aggressiveness; moderators won’t focus on them except maybe another climate change question to Inslee.
Harris can expect strong attacks from Biden (who owes her one) and Tulsi Gabbard, who has already shown that she’s gunning for the other woman of color in the race by saying that Harris isn’t qualified to be President because she hasn’t served in the military. This has led many of us to write Gabbard off as being led by desperation into distastefulness, by basically calling everyone in the race except herself unqualified. I expect Harris to have a strong comeback to her.
I expect Booker to leave Biden alone because he’s fighting for position against the rival on his other side, Julian Castro, who we know from the first debates knows how to stick in a shiv. I expect that Inslee and DeBlasio might mix it up at some point in a bid for airtime. The biggest cipher is Andrew Yang, who barely registered in the first debate. He’s there to pitch a Guaranteed Annual Income as the fix to job loss due to animation — and his best draw would have been to be with Sanders or Warren so he could ask them to address his idea. Without either there, his best bet is to try to take on Biden, but that’s still not great television. Booker or Castro might be good targets for him, as both might be likely to bite. (If he’s sneaky, he’ll say that he’s not directing the question at Biden due to his age, and instead address it to one of the others — which might draw Biden into responding on his own volition. But he doesn’t seem that deft.)
The expectation at this point for winnowing for the fall debagtes would be something like Sanders, Warren, Biden, and Harris in the top tier, joined by Buttigieg, Booker, Castro and Klobuchar in the next tier, with O’Rourke and Yang on the bubble (with Bullock possibly making a good first showing tonight and Steyer looking to knock one of them off.) Delaney has the money to stay in the race even without debates and is egotistical enough to do it. The others — including once potential standouts like Gillibrand and Gabbard — are possibly looking at an early exit. It will be a fun couple of nights.
Thought last at halftime; debates usually only get so good. This is a solid B on that curve. Jake Tapper in particular really loves conservative framing of issues, though, which screws up the discussion.
Really good debate. Had no idea it would be 3 hours.
I was very impressed with both Sanders and Warren — though Bernie needs to learn not to preface his remarks in a debate with so little time on the clock, while Warren is completely over the Eliot Spitzer lack-of-seeming-human problem that she had years ago — but I was also surprisingly impressed with Buttigieg, whom I think becomes the leading VP contender for Warren. (And he himself could still win, if Biden falters and the lefties get picked off by the media and party leaders (even though he sounded more leftie than moderate today.) He’s right that him vs. Pence the Pharisee in the VP debate would be extremely fun.)
I thought the Williamson did well enough that maybe she’s the person who should run for U.S. Senate from Texas rather than Beto, whom I thought was pretty bad. Among those whose positions I don’t agree with, Ryan looked pretty decent in a debate that didn’t deal with reproductive rights issues (where his credibility is weak.) I imagine that, for the more conservative Dem audience, Delaney was the most effective of the relative conservatives, then Ryan, then Bullock — and Hickenlooper might as well pack his bags now. Klobuchar passed up her shot at the Dynamic Duo, and it will haunt her.
The moderators (and moderates still do not understand the whole theory of the case behind Bernie’s and Warren’s strategy, which is that an activated coalition of the young, poor, minorities, and displaced workers can really have the same sort of mass impact that the Tea Party and the Trumpians have had in recent years. The danger is as great (or to my mind greater) than a Biden or a Klobuchar would simply be considered dreary and demoralizing by the voters, leading to a Trump win, than that Sanders or Warren would alienate them.
The answer to “Oh no, we’ll implement socialism!” (meaning a Canadian-Style social democratic program less ambitious than Social Security) is that if it’s not popular enough it ain’t going to happen and that there will have to be compromises made — a skill at which both Bernie and Warren happen to excel — but that that compromise will be less drastic than it would be if our initial ask is much more modest and that we don’t have people out of the streets howling for it and scaring the hell out of Republicans.
I would say that I don’t understand why people don’t understand this theory — but I suspect that the answer is mostly along the lines of the old chestnut that “it’s because they’re paid well to.”
The Trumpster is so afraid of a Biden/Harris ticket that he had to go on C-SPAN and do an interview….about how reasonable and kind he was to everyone. How totally conscious he was of other people’s feelings. Brutal.
Right now these so called Dem Debates are like watching Snail Races or Weener Dog Racing. We need to get it down to the top four finishers and go from there!
I think that a lot of people would like that — but there are rules established, and it’s a good thing for them to be followed. The September and October debates will be whittled down some.
*As all our teachers told us in school…..”You need to budget your time!”. There are a million things to hit the Trumpster on……but don’t you need a protagonists and antagonist…….to make a discussion that matters? Just asking!
*The recent gun play in Dayton and El Paso are going to impact the next Dem Debates. So far Beto and the Mayor Buttigieg…..are the only ones making any points. We will see who steps up to say: Mandatory Drug Testing in the Auditorium first!