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Moderates Are In Desperate Need of a Messenger

Moderates Are In Desperate Need of a Messenger

(Bloomberg Businessweek) -- Tuesday night’s Democratic debate appeared to have been designed to spark a fight between the two leading liberals in the presidential primary race, Senators Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren. That didn’t happen. Warren and Sanders teamed up instead, and the debate quickly shaped up into a fight between the liberals and the rest of the moderates—which the liberals won by a mile. 

The evening as a whole was a referendum on the big, bold ideas that have shaped the primary race so far: Medicare for All, a Green New Deal, and a restructuring of immigration policy that would affect millions. With the chief proponents of those policies, Warren and Sanders, standing center stage, the moderate candidates took turns assailing their grand liberal ambitions as “wish-list economics” (Montana Gov. Steve Bullock), “massive government expansions” (former Colorado Gov. John Hickenlooper), and “bad policies … and impossible promises that will turn off independent voters and get Trump re-elected” (former Rep. John Delaney). 

In theory, there’s a compelling case to be made against the sharp Democratic turn to the left that Warren and Sanders are driving. Polls consistently show that most voters view their ambitious policies with trepidation. Take the recent NPR/Marist poll: it found that only 41% of voters support a Medicare for All plan that does away with private health insurance, as Warren and Sanders would like to do. Only 27% favor decriminalizing migrant borders crossings, with 66% opposed. And while a Green New Deal was popular in the abstract (63% support), provisions within the plan were deeply unpopular, with only 26% supporting its guarantee of a taxpayer-funded universal basic income.

But to win a heavyweight fight, you need a heavyweight fighter who can carry the message, and none of the moderate contenders looked like they belonged in the ring with Warren and Sanders. As I argue in my current Bloomberg Businessweek cover story on Warren, the Massachusetts senator has proved herself the best communicator in the Democratic field. An enlivened Sanders was also more feisty—and far more effective—in Detroit than he had been at first Democratic debate in Miami. 

That presented moderates with two problems they couldn’t solve. First, in a debate that revolved around aspirational Democratic goals, the moderate challengers framed their arguments chiefly in terms of what Democrats couldn’t do—a weakness Warren exploited to devastating effect when she rebutted Delaney’s attack by saying, “I don’t understand why anybody goes to all the trouble of running to be the president of the United States to talk about what we really can’t do and shouldn’t fight for.” Delaney’s crestfallen expression made clear he and his allies currently have no answer.

Second, Warren and Sanders made a consistently strong, proactive pitch for why the scope of their ambition wasn’t unrealistic—a pitch that post-debate focus groups on CNN found almost universally persuasive. Sanders delivered the night’s viral moment when another moderate, Ohio Rep. Tim Ryan, insisted that Medicare for All wouldn’t be “better” for union workers than their current coverage. As Sanders listed the benefits of his plan, Ryan pressed, “You don’t know that, Bernie.” Sanders shot back, “I do know that. I wrote the damn bill. As Jeff Weaver, a senior Sanders adviser, put it afterward concerning the moderate challengers: “I think he dispatched them all quite handily.” 

Those hoping that the Democratic Party will steer back toward the center did come away with a sliver of hope. “We certainly got more airtime [tonight] than in the past,” Hickenlooper told me. He added, “I thought John Delaney made some great points.” But if the moderate message is being driven by no-hope candidates like Hickenlooper and Delaney, it’s hard to see how Warren and Sanders will be slowed. 

That leaves Joe Biden as the great moderate hope who still has a pulse in the national polls. He’s also better positioned than anyone else in the field to make the positive case for Democratic centrism as the natural extension of Barack Obama’s achievements: vastly expanded healthcare coverage, a decade of job growth, and progress in the face of unremitting Republican recalcitrance. 

But Biden has instead signaled that he’s going to plunge into the thicket of racial politics kicked up by Sen. Kamala Harris and others in the last debate who highlighted his record on busing and criminal justice. If he does indeed get himself tangled up in those issues, the moderate case for the Democratic nomination is likely to be drowned out again for the same reason it was on Tuesday night: the lack of a compelling messenger.

To contact the editor responsible for this story: Jillian Goodman at jgoodman74@bloomberg.net

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