A night like all the others

Things were different, but little has changed.

Beto O’Rourke is out. Deval Patrick is in. Michael R. Bloomberg lurks in the wings.

And yet once again, as Democrats gathered beneath the bright lights Wednesday night in Atlanta, Joe Biden and Elizabeth Warren were at center stage and a bevy of also-rans scuffled to stay relevant in the nominating fight.

Less than 100 days before the first votes are cast, there is no more clarity to the contest than there was more than 100 days ago, when the debate series began.

Pete Buttigieg has become an unexpectedly strong contestant. Bernie Sanders seems to have mended well from his heart attack. Biden will never convince anyone of his verbal dexterity.

None of the previous debates did much to lastingly change the race, which has become a scrum among Biden, Buttigieg, Sanders and Warren. It remains to be seen whether much changes after this fifth, largely desultory debate.

Until then, here are five takeaways:

Buttigieg’s turn in barrel

He doesn’t back term limits. He comes from a podunk town. He lacks support among African Americans.

Buttigieg, the boy mayor of South Bend, Ind., started the campaign as a charming curiosity, with his Howdy Doody grin, all-access media strategy and enchanting capacity to speak seven languages.

Then the 37-year-old political wunderkind surged into contention in Iowa and New Hampshire, the early voting states that will cull the unwieldy field.

Now he’s a target, although things could’ve been rougher; Warren faced much more flak after she rose toward the top in polls.

Indeed, Buttigieg deftly parlayed knocks on South Bend, population roughly 100,000, into a chance to make his outsider argument for change.

“I get that it’s not traditional, establishment Washington experience,” he said of his thin government resume. But Washington doesn’t look so great these days, Buttigieg went on. “Where we live,” he said, it’s the constant political infighting that “looks small.”

The jabs should be taken as a sign of respect. Candidates rarely stoop to confront a rival of no consequence.

Happy birthday, Joe!

It took nearly 10 minutes before Biden got a question.

He used it to deliver the familiar assertion that he is the candidate President Trump least wants to face in 2020, citing the Ukrainian dirt-for-dollars allegations at the heart of the ongoing impeachment inquiry.

Biden turned 77 on Wednesday and looked every bit his age, with the verbal lapses and sometimes vacant look that have become a signature of his underwhelming debate performances. Many doubt Biden’s durability; it’s a big reason ex-Massachusetts Gov. Patrick jumped into the race and Bloomberg, the ex-New York City mayor, is weighing a late entry.

But the rise of Warren and Buttigieg meant less focus on the shaky national front-runner — a good thing as he stumbled several times, including once again wrapping himself a bit too tightly in Obama’s mantle.

“I came out of the black community,” he said, to audience laughs, before clarifying he was referring to his strong support among African Americans.

Many happy returns, indeed.

Warren targeted, again

Massachusetts Sen. Warren didn’t enter the race burning with desire to overhaul the nation’s healthcare system.

Her passion is taking on Wall Street and fighting the income inequality that has driven a growing wedge between America’s upper crust and its shrinking middle class.

But she embraced “Medicare for all” — a fetish of the Democratic left — and has cast about since, sidestepping questions about the cost, releasing an expensive plan that opened her to assault from more centrist candidates, then shifting to say she would slow-walk enactment if elected.

On Wednesday night, she leaned into more popular aspects of her vision, saying she would act immediately to cut prescription drug costs and vowing to “defend the Affordable Care Act from the sabotage of the Trump administration.”

She soft-pedaled Medicare for all, which would force millions off private insurance, by saying she would move in that direction only after people “have had a chance to feel it and taste it and live with it.”

That sort of split-thedifference approach, unusual for the bold-stroke candidate, could alienate voters on both sides of the issue.

Barack Obama lives on

Obama recently gave a speech chiding candidates for their obsession with Twitter’s left-leaning echo chamber and attempts to outdo one another with the bigness and brashness of their plans.

It seemed to poke at Warren and Sanders and, at the least, nod encouragingly toward those like Biden who prescribe more modest change.

Sanders responded by praising Obama and then immediately said he would scrap his signature Affordable Care Act in favor of a Medicare-for-all plan, which, the Vermont senator pointedly stated, would be introduced his first week in the Oval Office.

Biden and Buttigieg tag-teamed in defense of Obama, his former vice president saying he would build on the 2010 healthcare bill and the mayor echoing Obama’s call for more unity and less raw partisanship.

Democrats can enact gun control and comprehensive immigration reform, Buttigieg said, “if we can galvanize, not polarize, that majority.”

Where Republicans tend to worship their ex-presidents — witness the iconography surrounding Ronald Reagan — Democrats are less enamored. Jimmy Carter goes scarcely mentioned and the impeached Bill Clinton was treated as a pariah when his vice president, Al Gore, ran in 2000.

While any Democrat would surely welcome an Obama endorsement, it remains to be seen whether he’ll be treated by his party’s nominee as more hero or political foil.

Harris Agonistes

California Sen. Kamala Harris has become the incredible shrinking candidate. But she turned in one of her strongest debate performances.

She launched her candidacy in January with a virtuoso rally at Oakland City Hall and has steadily faded from contention, save for a short time after a rock ’em, sock ’em performance in June’s first debate.

Although she disappeared for long stretches, a result of being shunted from center stage, Harris had one of the most powerful moments when she challenged fellow Democrats to do more than just show up at black churches as they seek the African American vote.

Citing the grim statistics surrounding gun violence and the mortality rates of black women giving birth, Harris said passionately, “The question has to be where you been and what are you going to do?”

Harris’ star has fallen to a point where most of the talk around her campaign centers on whether she’ll quit before Iowa begins the balloting Feb. 3, sparing herself a load of debt and the potential embarrassment of belly flopping in her home state a month later.

It will take more than a single stirring moment to vault her back into serious contention. But it’s a tiny step.