On Wednesday, another 10 candidates will take the stage after their peers battled it out over health care policy, taxes and electability for nearly three hours on night one of the debates.
Here are three things to look out for:
The Biden/Harris/Booker dynamic
Sen. Kamala Harris’ (D-CA) shots at former Vice President Joe Biden over his stance on busing was the most memorable exchange of the first round of debates and gave her campaign at least a temporary boost. Sen. Cory Booker (D-NJ) quickly caught on, launching himself into the headlines by dredging up Biden’s old stances on race-based issues that align less well with the modern Democratic Party than that of his early career.
This time around, you can bet that the two of them will try to land more punches on Biden to achieve that elusive breakout moment from a packed debate stage.
Biden, for his part, has promised to be less “polite” in round two, and will almost certainly be better prepared than last time, when Harris caught him completely flat-footed.
The pit bulls
For Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand (D-NY), New York Mayor Bill de Blasio and former HUD Secretary Julián Castro, the name of the first debate was aggression, though they expressed it in different ways.
Gillibrand and de Blasio were interrupters. Banished to the flanks of the stage, they spoke up early and often to break into other candidates’ time, or to impose themselves with a followup response, even when it wasn’t their turn. They were clearly worried that their flailing campaigns would collapse altogether without a breakout moment during the night and were determined to snatch one, even if the moderators had a different plan.
And, as seen in former Rep. John Delaney’s (D-MD) performance on the first night of the debates this week, it’s not a bad strategy. Delaney got what felt like an inordinate amount of airtime, launching himself into multiple exchanges with top-tier candidates, all thanks to his own chutzpah.
Castro’s aggression, on the other hand, was directed at his peers — namely, former Rep. Beto O’Rourke (D-TX). O’Rourke made for a natural enemy as the two are Texans who want and need to own the immigration question. Castro accused O’Rourke of “not doing his homework,” a jab his brother reprised when O’Rourke spoke on the issue in the second round. We’ll watch where Castro aims his fire this time while deprived of a natural foil.
The feud?
Sen. Michael Bennet (D-CO) and tech entrepreneur Andrew Yang have infused the pre-debate atmosphere with some levity, taking to Twitter to tease each other with gif-heavy threats of a debate showdown.
Yang started the back and forth:
I would like to signal to the press that I will be attacking Michael Bennet at next week’s debate. Sorry @MichaelBennet but you know what you did.
— Andrew Yang (@AndrewYang) July 26, 2019
Bennet quickly responded:
Andrew, how did you know I got a C in precalculus in high school — on the retake. https://t.co/3ZdlC0PnLx
— Michael Bennet (@MichaelBennet) July 26, 2019
It literally snowballed from there:
Just confirmed with debate officials that @AndrewYang’s microphone will be muted during my rebuttal. https://t.co/YmR7HvkfRF pic.twitter.com/oT3Pe9shai
— Michael Bennet (@MichaelBennet) July 26, 2019
The tweets have been liked thousands of times, with some commenters thanking the two for bringing some laughter to a tense and competitive process.
Do the moderators actually allow anyone to answer a question with more than one or two words?
The key thing people are looking for is who can take on Trump. Harris won that hands down last time and she’ll need to recreate that again. She has an opportunity because neither Sanders nor Warren really focused on Trump much as they got bogged down on health care and in responding to poorly framed questions rather than turning the question around to address their vision.
Biden has an opportunity to re-center himself as the statesmen who knows that the priority is to take out Trump, not to implement ‘structural change’ or the ‘revolution’. The question is whether he has done his homework and whether he’s gonna get psyched out by Harris and Booker.
On the HC issue, Harris has a great opportunity to sell her well reviewed/received plan which does appear to bridge the gap in the party and provide a real answer for preserving and building on Obamacare to get to universal coverage. She’ll have to see it though. Outside of Tulsi, the rest of the supporting cast (Booker, Castro, Gillibrand, Bennet and even DeBlasio) are better than night 1’s supporting cast. It should be a better debate.
If Bennett and Yang want to do comedy, they should dress up as Franken and Paulsen.
Or maybe we can get Carl Reiner and Mel Brooks to come as Biden and Bernie.
Not just take him on, but beat him, and the Republican machine (which includes McConnell). We want (or need) someone who can make the unruly coalition of Democrats work well enough to counter the cheating and electoral advantages that are built in for Republicans. Losing is never fun, but it means so much more this time that it has in decades. The problem is that the prescription for winning isn’t necessarily obvious, and too often it is just presented as a way of selling a person’s preferred candidate.
Purely as a guess, I am going to predict that Biden will try to retain his nice guy image while also trying to fight back. I further predict that in trying to have it both ways, it won’t go particularly well, but may not be the problem he had last time. I also predict that I may be entirely wrong.
I would hope that, overall, it is a better debate, but we will have the same moderators, in style if not actually the same people.
Edit: Sadly, it appears that the moderators will be the same people.