Democrats’ Split Personality Debate: Candidates Target Trump, Then Turn On Mayor Pete

Ted Johnson

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During a break after the first hour of the Democratic debate in Los Angeles, CNN’s Dana Bash noted that the field of seven candidates had yet to engage in the kind of verbal fireworks that had pervaded previous events.

The Democratic electorate, she said, wants “to make a decision. They don’t want to see them fight.”

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She spoke too soon.

By the time the candidates returned to the stage, they were in a different mood, ready to go after not just President Donald Trump, but one another.

The chief intra-party target this time around was 37-year-old South Bend Mayor Pete Buttigieg, this presidential cycle’s wunderkind who now has a real shot at winning the Iowa caucuses. Among his rivals, there has been a simmering resentment, whether it be that he is insufficiently progressive or that he just hasn’t paid his dues.

Elizabeth Warren hit Buttigieg for having a private dinner earlier this week with high-dollar donors in a Napa Valley “wine cave,” which conjures up all sorts of images that are like catnip for a populist campaign focused on anti-corruption. It’s also a repeat of 2016, when Bernie Sanders seized on Hillary Clinton’s high-dollar fundraising, including a high-profile event at the home of George Clooney.

Buttigieg, though, had a quick comeback.

“Senator, your net worth is 100 times mine,” he said.

Amy Klobuchar chimed in, too, as she tried to break up the bickering by pointing out that the divisions only help Donald Trump. Yet just as she called for unity, she also got in her own swipes at Buttigieg, dinging him for his lack of statewide electoral success. “You lost by 20 points in Indiana,” she said, a reference to a failed campaign for state treasurer.

As the debate started to wind down, Joe Biden and Bernie Sanders got into their own sparring match, this time over the details of Medicare for All. And again, it was Klobuchar who stepped in as they both waved their arms in the air and talked over each other. “Whoa, guys, hey…”

The candidates went after each other in a number of the previous debates. What is different is that the sparring is largely by their own design, not triggered by the questions of the debate moderators.

The debate hosts, PBS and Politico (with CNN simulcasting), selected a group of moderators, Judy Woodruff, Yamiche Alcindor, Amna Nawaz and Tim Alberta, who came with a smart set of questions. That started with the first query on impeachment, framed in a way that is relevant to something that should be of concern to their campaigns — why aren’t more Americans supportive of the president’s removal?

The event was the first and perhaps only debate that will be held in Los Angeles this cycle, and it drew a fair share of donors, bundlers, and party activists, along with celebrity figures. In the audience for the debate were a number of entertainment figures, including Sophia Bush, Alyssa Milano, Miranda Kerr and Beverly Johnson.

The event also came at an unusual moment in the campaign — one day after an historic impeachment vote, a week before the holidays, and a month and a half before the Iowa caucus. It’s dawning on many that there are not too many more chances for this slimmed down field of candidates to break through. Certainly some of the friction between the candidates was due to strategy, more than anything else.

That said, this debate turned out to be the best so far for Biden, who has been at or near the top of the polls throughout, and needed a night free of verbal gaffes or halting delivery.

He capitalized on his role as Trump’s target in the Ukraine scandal, while defending his call for working with the other side.

“If anyone has reason to be angry with the Republicans and not want to cooperate, it’s me, the way they’ve attacked my son, my family,” Biden said. “But the fact is we have to be able to get things done, and when we can’t convince them, we go out and beat them.”

The Biden campaign believes that he’s benefited from moments when he has mounted a spirited pushback of him and his family, as he did a few weeks ago when he sparred with an Iowa voter several weeks ago by calling him a “damn liar.”

Biden also offered answers that sounded more coherent than his past debate performances, finishing with the most important question on the minds of the most active Democratic voters: “Who has the best chance, the most likely chance, of beating Donald Trump?”

He soon after got a chance to show how he will respond to the Trump camp’s caustic tweets. This one came from Sarah Sanders, the former White House Press Secretary, who seemed to be making fun of him when he recounted his struggle with stuttering. “I I I I I I I I I hhave absolutely no idea what Biden is talking about,” she wrote.

“I’ve worked my whole life to overcome a stutter,” Biden wrote back. “And it’s my great honor to mentor kids who have experienced the same. It’s called empathy. Look it up.”

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