The first night of the Democratic debates has concluded, giving viewers their first chance to see many of the candidates sharing a stage and exchanging ideas. Here are the biggest takeaways from night one:
Battle of the Texans
If there was any doubt that the presidential hopefuls were acutely aware that this debate was being televised from Miami on Telemundo, the parrying between former Rep. Beto O’Rourke (D-TX) and former HUD Secretary Julian Castro put that to rest. Castro aggressively cut into O’Rourke’s answer on an immigration question, urging him to “do his homework.” Both candidates clearly realize that they need to take ownership on immigration, shoring up Latino support and highlighting the advantage of hailing from a red border state.
“As a member of congress I helped to introduce legislation that would ensure we don’t criminalize those seeking asylum,” O’Rourke said. “If you are fleeing desperation, I want to make sure you are treated with respect.”
Castro cut in: “I’m not talking about those seeking asylum, I’m talking about everyone else.”
“You are just looking at one small part of this,” O’Rourke retorted. “I’m talking about a comprehensive rewrite of our immigration laws.”
“That’s not true!” Castro said.
The two continued to talk over each other, with Castro sneaking in the “homework” jab before the moderators cut him off.
Castro spars with O’Rourke over immigration pic.twitter.com/Xg6KTPzgdH
— TPM Livewire (@TPMLiveWire) June 27, 2019
Everyone who speaks Spanish used it
O’Rourke, Castro and Sen. Corry Booker (D-NJ) all flipped to Spanish at different points in the night. It showed the candidates’ awareness of the critical Spanish-speaking voting contingent. Again, the debate was broadcast by Telemundo, NBC’s Spanish-speaking network.
Everyone who had Spanish used it pic.twitter.com/JdHpKbfhGq
— TPM Livewire (@TPMLiveWire) June 27, 2019
Booker’s face seen ’round the world
Booker gaped while O’Rourke answered his first question in Spanish, a reaction that quickly spread through the Twitter-verse. It’s not completely clear what emotion he was feeling, but he whipped out his own bilingual abilities later in the night.
… cory. booker's. face.#demdebate pic.twitter.com/1BjDumHyWh
— fake nick ramsey (@nick_ramsey) June 27, 2019
Warren started the night with a huge procedural advantage – though it subsided as the night went on
To the chagrin of the candidates on the flanks, Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) received a whopping four questions while the majority of the field had gotten only one at the start of the debate. That mattered less as candidates started disregarding the moderates’ orders, and the second half of the night saw more evenly spread questioning.
Rep. Tulsi Gabbard’s sister thought the moderators were favoring Warren early on:
It's clear who MSNBC wants to be president: Elizabeth Warren. They're giving her more time than all the other candidates combined. They aren't giving any time to Tulsi at all. -V (Tulsi's sister)
— Tulsi Gabbard (@TulsiGabbard) June 27, 2019
By the Washington Post’s count, she was only the third most talkative (9.3 minutes) after Booker (10.9) and O’Rourke (10.3) in total despite the early abundance of questions.
Aggression gets you everywhere
In that same vein, candidates like New York Mayor Bill de Blasio got more airtime than they would have otherwise by shamelessly talking over other candidates and the moderators. As much as moderators always promise ruthlessness in enforcing the time limits, there’s only so much they can do.
Joe Biden was nowhere to be found
In a surprising twist given the recent controversies, neither the moderates nor the candidates invoked the former Vice President tonight. “Civility” didn’t come up at all, and Booker let sleeping dogs lie after going after Biden pretty aggressively last week.
It was not a great night for NBC tech-wise
In an uncomfortable moment, there were issues switching the audio feeds from the first round of moderators to the second. When MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow and “Meet the Press” moderator Chuck Todd came onstage, the threw it to a commercial break to sort things out. President Trump couldn’t help but use the moment to needle the network.
NBC had an audio issue and the moderators threw it to commercial pic.twitter.com/hiVkDQot0u
— TPM Livewire (@TPMLiveWire) June 27, 2019
The autopsy on MSNBC was why wasn’t there any comparisons to Trump? I welcomed a Trump free debate.
Learned that Tulsi’s Sister is a fucked up as Tulsi.
Reality:
Perhaps the biggest takeaway of the first Democratic debate is that everyone is talking about it. Try to think of another time when an incumbent President was being challenged and everyone was excited about the first debate between the people vying to challenge that incumbent.
People are tuning in rather early for this, and I think we all know why.
Came in on the last half. Quick thoughts, based only on the last half,
Warren hardly spoke a word or was questioned in the last half.
DeBlasio was throwing bombs.
Beto, of previous interest to me, sounded very canned, unreal, distant.
Gabbard spent most of her time touting her military creds, and ignoring her early-life prejudices as youngster stuff, y’know?
Who is this Ohio Rep Tim Ryan? Is he Repub plant? He started bashing Dem “elites” from the coasts. WTF?
Todd still sucks.
a few observations –
Mikes should be turned off 5 seconds after the first warning. And if a candidate goes 60 seconds over in aggregate, or interrupts someone more than once, they should be disqualified from the next debate and/or asked to leave the stage.
The only “non leader” who did themselves much good is Castro. Three viable candidates come out of this debate, Castro, Booker and Warren.
The rest of the “minor” candidates failed to do what they had to do which was get enough people to contribute cash to run a viable campaign. There were two ways they could have done this – go after Biden, or go after Pelosi.
They would have, of course, resulted in lots and lots of criticism, but taking on the Party establishment will always attract lots of attention, and enough money to remain a viable candidate.