It was the best of Warren. It was the worst of Warren.
If you had any question before Tuesday night’s debate about which Democratic presidential candidate is effectively the frontrunner, the first half-hour answered it.
Pete Buttigieg went after Elizabeth Warren, wondering why she was so intent on abolishing private health insurance.
Amy Klobuchar went after Warren, describing her “Medicare for All” plan as one big fat Republican talking point.
Bernie Sanders went after her — well, sort of — by correctly noting her repeated refusal to admit what he already had, that Medicare for All would require a tax increase not just for affluent Americans but also for the middle class.
All of it was a great compliment to Warren. Her priorities set the terms of the discussion, and she was the candidate to whom the debate’s moderators kept returning so that she could respond to her rivals.
And she stayed cool and confident under fire, sounding more grateful for the spotlight than fearful of the microscope.
But she was also, at first, exasperating. She kept saying, as if it were a tic, that with Medicare for All “costs will go down” for middle-class families, meaning taxes might go up but families would ultimately be economically ahead.
If there’s nothing to hide from, why hide from it? Warren has campaigned as a truth teller but came across, in this instance, as evasive. Smart politics, perhaps, but not great leadership.
I loved this debate, for several reasons. One is that Warren’s rivals jousted with her more than before — on health care, on her “wealth tax” and on the way she speaks about corporations and the richest Americans. It gave her a better chance than the previous, gentler debates did to show what she’s made of.
And once she got past that vague start, she was fierce and charming, most memorably after Joe Biden patronized her, taking some of the credit for the federal Consumer Financial Protection Bureau that she more than anyone made happen.
“I got you votes,” he said.
“I am deeply grateful,” she responded, “to President Obama.”
When asked whether voters should be concerned about her age, she said, “I will outwork, out-organize and outlast anyone, and that includes Donald Trump, Mike Pence or whoever the Republicans get stuck with.”
This debate also vividly framed the line separating Warren and Sanders, for example, from Biden, Buttigieg and Klobuchar, among others who traffic in a safer agenda with which to do battle against Trump.
“We cannot wait for purity tests,” Buttigieg said, specifically explaining why he wasn’t signing on to Beto O’Rourke’s push for the confiscation of assault weapons but also articulating a general philosophy beyond that. “We have to just get something done.”
Warren flatly rejected the idea that, in her words, “some vague campaign that nibbles around the edges of big problems” is a winning formula for Democrats. “If all Democrats can promise is that after Donald Trump it will be business as usual, then we will lose,” she said.
This debate also perfectly underscored the most prominent candidates’ rationales for running, but as the most crowded televised presidential debate ever, with 12 candidates, I’d need the column equivalent of “War and Peace” to appraise all of them. Still I’d feel remiss if I didn’t note that Sanders, who recently suffered a heart attack, seemed no less vigorous than he had before.
But Warren, not Sanders, was carrying the progressive mantle Tuesday night, when her less liberal competitors sought with a new assertiveness to trip her up. They didn’t quite succeed.