Most lost in the shuffle

As a pared field gathered Thursday night in Houston for the third Democratic presidential debate, a three-hour marathon on ABC, it seemed there were four leading characters.

Joe Biden was getting on in years and given to boneheaded statements. To be fair, he had been as capable of those in his youthful prime. And it happens that he lost two Democratic presidential bids in his youthful prime.

So he came in as an imperfect candidate. His poll-leading support seemed soft. It stemmed only from his association with Barack Obama and self-perpetuating polls showing Democrats that he is their best bet to achieve their imperative, which is to beat Donald Trump.

Elizabeth Warren was on fire, filled with more detailed proposals than even Bill Clinton ever thought about, including, most lately, one to extend Social Security taxes to incomes in excess of $250,000 and use the proceeds to begin counting some part of household work as income and give every Social Security recipient an across-the-board increase of $200 a month.

But she’s widely viewed as a general election risk on the basis that she is better at policy inundation than warming to swing voters. Joe Scarborough said Thursday on

Morning Joe that the great Democratic nightmare is that Biden blows up and Warren is nominated and loses to Trump.

Kamala Harris had been on the rise for a while, especially after she embarrassed Biden in the first debate by mentioning his longago opposition to court-ordered busing to achieve school desegregation. It was a strong play to take him on for the black vote, which he hoards and which she covets. But then she appeared mean and angry in the second debate when she overplayed that hand and lost momentum.

Bernie Sanders was just there— always semi-socialist, always semi-shouting—doing Biden the favor of splitting the progressive vote with

Warren. If Bernie hangs in there, Joe is the real winner. If Bernie fades against Warren, she could consolidate the populist left and become the nominee.

That assumes that Sanders, being well-known, is at a ceiling and that Warren has room to grow.

So the storyline for Thursday night’s debate was whether any of that would change for those four main characters.

Would Joe hold on? Would Elizabeth stay on fire? Would Kamala recover? Would Bernie hang in there?

So, after three hours, here were the answers:

Joe did hold on and went one better. He engaged more vigorously and sharply than in two previous debates, even as Julian Castro, a third-tier candidate probably now fourth-tier, ridiculed him as demented by over-eagerly accusing him of forgetting what he’d just said about something or other. Biden was right enough on health care in resisting the total elimination of private health insurance advocated by Warren and Sanders. Amy Klobuchar, a talented candidate lost in the shuffle, resisted more effectively. But Biden got the job done.

The point is that Medicare needs to be an option, not a mandate, and Warren will need to slide on that issue if she is nominated, a prospect mildly less robust after Joe’s creditable performance.

Warren held her own but did not stand out in the way she had stood out against weaker draws in two previous debates.

She is so message-disciplined that she can sometimes become something of a one-note, making everything about corporate and political corruption.

Maybe everything is about that, but surely there are other contexts for answering an occasional query.

Harris did not rally. She ran ably in place on a night when several of her competitors ran ably in place. She stayed lost in the shuffle of too many candidates, just as other talented Democrats with something to offer and sound points to make—Klobuchar, Pete Buttigieg, Beto O’Rourke, Cory Booker—stay lost in the shuffle.

Biden’s name-identification advantage takes oxygen from several candidates who otherwise would be solid front-runner options to Warren and Sanders—principally Klobuchar and Booker now that Buttigieg seems to be slipping.

Sanders remains what Sanders is, meaning an impractical champion of positions that need to be championed but not to prevail beyond incrementally.

Sanders needs to hover around 18-20 percent in the Democratic race, enough to command respect but not to win.

Finally, and more broadly, the Democratic field came to Thursday’s event as Donald Trump’s best hope for re-election.

He’s upside-down in the polls; his behavior is widely offensive, and the economy is possibly slowing. Only Democratic ineptitude was holding firm for him.

Trump banks on a binary choice next year against a weak Democratic candidate. This Democratic field lined up Thursday night after months of seeming to oblige him with that weakness.

But if Biden can get through three hours of live debate ably—not smashingly, but ably—and if Warren can hold to her populist momentum and moderate later on wiping out private health insurance, this Democratic field might become something other than Trump’s firewall.