Five takeaways from the Dems’ policy brawls
This week’s Democratic presidential debates showed that nobody will have an easy road to the nomination.
Progressives and moderates will brawl until the convention over the best way to deliver health care. Former Vice President Joe Biden tops the polls, but he’s going to have to defend decisions made over five decades in politics — including some that have not aged well. And the most diverse field of candidates in presidential history will ensure that issues long ignored will be discussed.
Here’s what we learned from five hours of primary debates in Detroit:
Health care is a make or break: Health care is the top issue for Democrats, and these debates presented a stark choice: Back Sens. Bernie Sanders of Vermont or Elizabeth War
ren of Massachusetts, who support a governmentrun system that excludes private insurance, or go for one of the many candidates who advocate hybrid versions.
If the party leans left on this one, the nominee will have to persuade 150 million Americans who have private health insurance that giving it up is the right call. If you listen closely, you can hear the Trump campaign’s attack ads being cut right now, aimed at voters who have health plans that they like.
Former Vice President Joe Biden and several others support allowing consumers to buy into a governmentrun plan. But even this is fraught for the Democrats. Nearly 2 in 3 voters support the idea of a governmentrun health insurance option, according to a July survey by the nonpartisan Kaiser Family Foundation, which is not associated with Kaiser Permanente. But 57% oppose such an option if it would lead to more government involvement in health care.
Most Americans just want to know if their health care costs will go down — something the candidates have avoided talking about with much specificity.
Progressives vs. moderates: Bring it on. Tuesday night’s debate in particular cleaved the field into two clear camps: the candidates who want to pursue bold ideas that would be a huge lift to enact, and those who want to take pragmatic approaches from the start.
Regardless of where they fell on the spectrum, they all seemed to welcome the debate on issues including health care, immigration, the economy and climate change.
“I don’t understand why anybody goes to all the trouble of running for president of the United States just to talk about what we really can’t do and shouldn’t fight for,” Warren said during a backandforth about the direction the party should take, as former Maryland Rep. John Delaney derided what he called “fairytale economics.”
But the moderates also stood their ground, going after Warren and the other frontrunner on the stage Tuesday night, Sanders. Delaney summed up their approach: “Why don’t we actually talk about things, big ideas that we can get done?”
Biden can’t escape his record: Biden both plays up his fourdecade record in the Senate and as Barack Obama’s vice president and is a prisoner of it. On Wednesday, nearly every rival took a swipe at that history.
California Sen. Kamala Harris asked him why he only recently disavowed a law banning federal funding for most abortions. Former Housing Secretary Julián Castro and New Jersey Sen. Cory Booker went after him for Obamaera deportations.
When Biden said he wouldn’t discuss whether he’d counseled Obama against deportations, Booker scolded him for trying to “have it both ways” — wrapping himself in the Obama legacy “when it’s convenient and then (dodging) it when it's not.”
Biden’s toughest explanation will be on criminal justice. In the mid1990s, he bragged that “every major crime bill since 1976 that’s come out of this Congress, every minor crime bill, has had the name of the Democratic senator from the state of Delaware: Joe Biden.”
Biden’s dilemma: If he stays stuck in the ’90s, he’s going to have trouble reaching young voters of color, who are key to the Democratic nomination. If he walks back his legacy, he’ll be dubbed a flipflopper.
Someone with rhetorical chops could finesse that evolution. That’s not Biden.
Harris has to play defense: By virtue of her star turn in the first Democratic debates, Harris found herself targeted by competitors far more often Wednesday night, forcing her to defend her record going back to her days as San Francisco district attorney.
Biden came prepared, hitting Harris with her failure to disclose the checkered pasts of some San Francisco police officers to defense attorneys.
But it was an attack from Hawaii Rep. Tulsi Gabbard that may have landed the hardest, diving into Harris’ prosecutorial record to criticize her credibility on criminal justice reform. In particular, Gabbard contrasted Harris’ recent joking about having smoked marijuana with her prosecution of cannabis crimes.
Harris also faced pressure for her evolving position on health care, forcing her to defend her version of Medicare for All that she unveiled Monday.
Questions about race out in the open: Much of the Democratic field’s diversity was on display Wednesday night, including all the candidates of color. The result was a significant amount of time spent on racial justice, as candidates sparred on issues including criminal justice reform and white privilege.
Booker said suppression of African American votes was the reason President Trump won in 2016, and Harris once again squared off with Biden over his 1970s opposition to desegregation busing.
Racial tensions have been a top issue in the Democratic campaign, a result not just of the diverse field but also the importance of voters of color in the primaries and Trump’s stoking of racial divisions.
It was true on the debate night without any candidates of color, too: Author Marianne Williamson scored one of her most memorable moments of the campaign in an answer about the water crisis in Flint, Mich., saying disadvantaged and communities of color suffer most in environmental calamities.
“If you think any of this wonkiness is going to deal with this dark psychic force of the collectivized hatred that this president is bringing up in this country, then I’m afraid that the Democrats are going to see some very dark days,” she said.