Top Dems set for debate stage
Two Dems arrive at forum tonight with contrasting styles, policies
He tends to meander and misspeak. She once won a college debate scholarship. He is a relative centrist who is seen by Democrats in early polls as the strongest candidate against President Donald Trump. She is a self-styled progressive fighter whose ability to appeal to the broad electorate in a general election still worries some voters and party officials.
He rarely delves deep into policy on the campaign trail, preferring to discuss American values and the dangers of a second Trump administration. She gleefully ticks through her long list of detailed plans.
In style, substance and strategies for winning the White House, former Vice President Joe Biden and Sen. Elizabeth Warren present two starkly different options for Democratic voters, and in many ways they embody competing theories about what the Democratic Party should stand for.
Those tensions will be laid bare Thursday night in Houston, when the two candidates meet onstage at a debate for the first time in the presidential race.
It’s a highly anticipated matchup between the early front-runner, Biden, and a liberal standard-bearer, Warren, who has steadily climbed in the polls to challenge him. Biden is eager to stress his experience. And his advisers and allies suggested in interviews that, whether obliquely or overtly, he is prepared to seize on one of Warren’s perceived strengths — her extensive and boldly progressive policy plans — and use that to accentuate his own record of liberal achievements despite the sometimes-challenging political realities in Washington.
“You have to have plans, but you have to be able to execute those plans,” he said at a fundraiser last week in Manhattan, a message he is expected to reiterate.
Warren is unlikely to pursue the kind of personal, premeditated broadside that Sen. Kamala Harris launched against Biden in the first debate. But she has emerged onstage as a skilled advocate for her message of “big, structural change,” and has shown that she is capable of crisply defending her far-reaching proposals.
“We start with a plan, and then we get out there and fight for it,” she told reporters in Austin, Texas, on Tuesday when she was asked about Biden’s focus on what progressive proposals are achievable. “To me, that’s what being president is all about. It’s about laying those plans out and showing the direction for this country, and then getting in the fight, leading
the fight and bringing people along.”
At Thursday’s debate, Warren will have another opportunity to stress the urgency of fixing what she views as an economic and political system that caters to the rich and powerful at the expense of working people. Biden, a Beltway veteran, is expected to preach pragmatism, with a focus on how to achieve Democratic priorities in a divided political moment.
One risk for Biden is that, while he connects well with voters in one-on-one interactions, he is prone to uneven and sometimes faltering performances onstage. And the debate arrives as he has faced scrutiny for a series of gaffes and misstatements.
“Vice President Biden has not proven to be really great on his feet,” said Steve Drahozal, chairman of the Dubuque County Democratic Party in Iowa. “I know he does not think that his gaffes are a big deal, but he is going up against a very keen, intelligent, articulate candidate who is able to frame issues very well.”
A strong night for Warren could further propel her already-accelerating campaign both nationally and especially in Iowa, the state that begins the presidential primary process, where Biden already faces challenges.
“She’s been the one who’s been gaining the most,” Drahozal said. “With Biden being in the front-runner position, I don’t think he has a lot to gain. He has a lot to lose.”
Biden’s team has no illusions about Warren’s skill as a debater and her rise in the polls, advisers and others close to the campaign acknowledge, though they insist that they are not focusing on her alone.
His team is convinced that the Democratic electorate is far more moderate than some activists suggest, and welcomes a debate over issues like health care — Biden supports a public option but opposes eliminating private insurance, something Warren supports under “Medicare for All” — and which social programs should be offered for free. And allies are eager to deepen an argument Biden has been previewing: that it is not enough to have ambitious plans if those proposals cannot survive the political realities of Washington.
Warren did not face significant scrutiny from other leading contenders in the first two debates. Biden’s allies are privately hopeful that she will be pressed on the details and practicalities of her proposals by several of the candidates onstage, as her formidable standing in the race now makes her a bigger target for attacks.
Still, veteran Democrats caution that for all of the momentum she has enjoyed lately, Warren still has work to do in assuaging concerns about whether her unapologetically progressive candidacy would resonate in general election battlegrounds.
TODAY ON TV
◆ Tonight’s Democratic debate will air at 7 p.m. on ABC and Univision.