Everything You Need to Know About the Fourth Democratic Presidential Debate

How many Democrats can cram onto one stage and answer questions for three solid hours? At least a solid dozen, all in the house for last night’s Democratic debate in Ohio: Senator Kamala Harris (D-California); Senator Bernie Sanders (I-Vermont); Former Vice President Joe Biden; Senator Elizabeth Warren (D-Massachusetts); South Bend, Indiana, Mayor Pete Buttigieg; Andrew Yang; Beto O’Rourke; former HUD secretary Julian Castro; Senator Amy Klobuchar (D-Minnesota); and two who weren’t here last time, Representative Tulsi Gabbard (Hawaii), who didn’t qualify for the previous debate, and self-made billionaire Tom Steyer, a debate virgin.

Aware of the daunting task of hearing from this number of speakers, the moderators dispense with opening statements—no loss—and dive right into the subject on everyone’s mind these days: impeachment. The candidates are pretty much of one mind on this: Warren says she read the whole Mueller Report and that was enough for her, Sanders calls Trump the most corrupt president ever, and Biden says that he agrees with Bernie. Harris quotes Maya Angelou, who “told us years ago, listen to somebody when they tell you who they are the first time.” Steyer reminds us that he was among the first on the impeachment bandwagon, having started the Need to Impeach movement two years ago, “because I knew there was something desperately wrong at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, that we did have the most corrupt president in the country, and that only the voice and the will of the American people would drag Washington to see it as a matter of right and wrong, not of political expediency.”

Next Biden is asked about his son—“If it’s not okay for a president’s family to be involved in foreign businesses, why was it okay for your son when you were vice president?”—and he refuses to confront the issue, hardly the first time tonight that someone will slither away from a direct answer. Instead tells us he would beat Trump like a drum, one of the former VP’s stock lines, which at this point he has beaten into the ground.

Next up is the quagmire of health care. Warren absolutely refuses to admit that her plan might raise taxes—more slithering—but says she really has her finger on America’s pulse, having taken an estimated 70,000 selfies of the campaign trail. Buttigieg attacks Warren for being vague and pushes his idea of “Medicare for all who want it.” Sanders, whose voice is a little weak but whose fervor is undaunted, says that with his Medicare-for-all bill, “premiums are gone. Co-payments are gone. Deductibles are gone. All out-of-pocket expenses are gone,” and then concedes, “At the end of the day, the overwhelming majority of people will save money on their health care bills. But I do think it is appropriate to acknowledge that taxes will go up.”

Believe it or not, it is only 8:24.

Next on the agenda is jobs, with Sanders saying we can have full employment and that the Green New Deal will create up to 20 million jobs. Then Booker, who is apparently miffed that he hasn’t had sufficient screen time thus far, says he is having déjà vu all over again, and echoes Harris, who has already raised the issue of reproductive rights tonight, declaring that “women are people and people deserve to control their own bodies.” Warren says she has a plan to add $200 to every Social Security check, which is a lot less than Yang’s signature proposal, to give everyone in America $1000 a month for life. Gabbard says she agrees with Yang on the need for a universal basic income. Sanders alleges that there are three people in the country with more wealth than the bottom half of the entire population and calls this “a moral and economic outrage.” Steyer, the lone billionaire on the stage, says Sanders is right.

The president’s recent decision to pull troops from Northern Syria and abandon our allies the Kurds is raised, and Biden gets fiery, saying, “It has been the most shameful thing that any president has done in modern history in terms of foreign policy.” Then everyone starts attacking one another. Gabbard dares Warren to agree with her on what she calls “regime change wars.” Warren responds by attacking Trump. Buttigieg goes after Gabbard; Castro muses about “how absurd it is that this president is caging kids on the border and effectively letting ISIS prisoners run free.” Booker says the president is turning the moral leadership of this country into a dumpster fire. Biden declares that he is “the only person who spent extensive time alone with Putin, as well as with Erdogan,” and that we have “an erratic, crazy president who knows not a damn thing about foreign policy and operates out of fear for his own re-election.” Harris tallies a long list of Trump’s alleged crimes and misdemeanors, summing it up with her current cringeworthy tag-line—“Dude gotta go.”

The topics just keep on coming, ranging from freezing Putin’s bank account (everyone who is asked says yes, sure) to gun violence, with O’Rourke and Buttigieg getting into some kind of spitting match about the best way to get AK-47s off the street. Castro reminds the audience that police violence is also gun violence. Castro wants to put big pharma execs in prison; Yang is asked about breaking up big tech companies and says there’s a reason no one is using Bing today, and that we must insist that our data is our property. Steyer thinks we have to talk about prosperity; Klobuchar indulges in an imaginary debate with Trump on reproductive rights. CNN’s Erin Burnett asks the three oldest people on the podium if they think they are too old to serve—they all say no, we are fine! She asks Gabbard, who is 38, if she is too young, and Gabbard says she is not. Biden claims he is “the only one on this stage who has gotten anything really big done,” and Sanders claps back, “But you know what you also got done? … You got the disastrous war in Iraq done. You got a bankruptcy bill, which is hurting middle-class families all over this country. You got trade agreements like NAFTA and PNTR with China done, which have cost us 4 million jobs.”

And now, finally, it is time for the last question, from Anderson Cooper, who must be even more exhausted at this point than we are. “Ellen DeGeneres was criticized after she and former President George W. Bush were seen laughing together at a football game,” he tells the panel. “Ellen defended their friendship, saying, ‘We’re all different, and I think that we’ve forgotten that that’s okay that we’re all different.’ So in that spirit, we’d like you to tell us about a friendship that you’ve had that would surprise us and what impact it’s had on you and your beliefs.”

This query elicits a wide range of responses. Castro says you can take people to task for the dastardly things they’ve done and still be nice: “Just as we should be kind, we shouldn’t be made to feel shameful about holding people accountable for what they’ve done.” (Anyone who has tried this in real life knows it’s an insanely tricky proposition.) Three candidates name-check the late John McCain; Warren says still loves her Republican siblings. Yang tells us he made friends with Fred, a truck driver who was a Trump guy, and now Fred is switching his vote to Yang; O’Rourke says he shared a long car ride with a Republican—they live-streamed their chatter and found out they had lots of stuff in common. Harris admits she has a soft spot for Rand Paul, and Booker has eaten at least once with Ted Cruz: “Finding a dinner at a restaurant, agreeing on one with Ted Cruz was a very difficult thing. I’m a vegan, and he’s a meat-eating Texan.” But wait, what’s this? Gabbard actually confesses that she hangs with Trey Gowdy, the notorious attack dog Trump just tried to hire to run his anti-impeachment strategy. It’s enough to make you want to reach through the TV screen, grab Gabbard by the shoulders and yell, “Really, Tulsi? Trey Gowdy? Dude gotta go.”

Originally Appeared on Vogue