First debate showed candidates far more in consensus than at odds

Elizabeth Warren began Wednesday night’s opening debate of the 2020 Democratic primary campaign physically occupying center stage. And substantively, the Massachusetts senator held that ground.

From the very first question, Warren made the most of her standing. NBC’s Savannah Guthrie accepted the premise of her campaign — listing some of her “many plans” for the economy — but wondered whether they would go over well “when 71% of Americans say the economy is doing well, including 60% of Democrats.”

Warren did not back down. “Who is this economy really working for? It’s doing great for a thinner and thinner slice at the top . ... When you’ve got an economy that does great for those with money and isn’t doing great for everyone else, that is corruption, pure and simple. We need to call it out. We need to attack it head on.”

Yet Warren by no means dominated the evening, and while her voice stayed strong, it became, as the night went on, one among many. In truth, Democrats could feel good about this batch of candidates, the substance of the conversation, and the fact that — despite a lively divide on singlepayer health care — the party is far more in consensus than at odds.

Nearly every other candidate had at least one forceful moment. Both Rep. Tim Ryan (Ohio) and former HUD secretary Julián Castro assailed Trump’s policies on immigrant children with passion and clarity.

Castro brought down the house when he said that, when it came to migrants fleeing poverty and violence, it was wrong to “criminalize desperation.” And when he was specifically asked about his Latino background, he shrewdly pivoted to reach out to African Americans and spoke of his proposals to reform policing of minority communities.

Former Maryland congressman John Delaney, running as the practical, moderate businessman in the field, pushed back against Medicare-for-all because, he said, it would unnecessarily move people off private insurance and offered what could be the theme of his entire effort: “I think we should be the party that keeps what’s working and fixes what’s broken.”

Sen. Amy Klobuchar (Minn.), fighting for middle-ground voters, also opposed a single-payer system. But her best line was a pushback against mansplaining after several male candidates had expressed their views on abortion (which were not much different from her own). “There are three women up here,” she said, “who’ve fought pretty hard for women’s right to choose.”

As the conversation continued, Sen. Cory Booker (N.J.) assumed a steadily larger role on a broad range of issues, and took the strongest stand of all the candidates on gun control, rooting it in his experience of violence in his own Newark neighborhood.

New York Mayor Bill de Blasio cast himself as a down-theline progressive, pushing his way into the discussion and refusing to fade into second-tier status. Democrats, he said, “should stop acting like the party of elites and start looking like the party of working people.”

Rep. Tulsi Gabbard spoke of her experience as an Iraq War veteran, saying it allowed her to understand “the importance of our national security, as well as the terribly high cost of war.”

And Beto O’Rourke won the crowd when the former congressman from Texas endorsed impeachment.

Throughout, Trump loomed in a Voldemort way. Every answer had a subtext: I’m tough, I’m ready, and I can take on Trump. Washington Gov. Jay Inslee drew a raucous response — and spoke for nearly everyone in his party — when he declared: “The biggest threat to the security of the United States is Donald Trump.”