2020 Democrats Set to Unleash a Fight in Second Debate Round
2020 Democrats Set to Unleash a Fight in Second Debate Round
(Bloomberg) -- Joe Biden is ready to rumble, Cory Booker is girding for a fight and Beto O’Rourke could benefit from a scrap as the Democratic White House candidates look ahead to this week’s presidential debates.
Just weeks after the first 2020 debates saw California Senator Kamala Harris win attention by taking on front-runner Biden over school desegregation, the dynamic is swerving toward confrontation. Most in the field of nearly two dozen contenders are expected to move away from measured tones and let the sparks fly Tuesday and Wednesday in Detroit.
They really don’t have a choice, with the stakes unusually high so early in a nominating contest, Democratic strategists say. Biden in particular must triumph in Round Two after he seemed to wither under Harris’s assault, they say. And many lower-tier candidates need to garner some attention or get knocked out of the next debates in September -- and maybe knocked out of the race -- if they can’t meet rigid fundraising and voter-support requirements.
“If you’re not in the fall debates, you’re irrelevant,” said Robert Shrum, a former Democratic consultant who helped Democratic nominees Al Gore and John Kerry prepare for their debates.
Twenty contenders qualified for this round, and the two nights of candidate forums split the leading candidates for some intriguing matchups.
On Tuesday, the two leading progressives in the race, Senators Bernie Sanders of Vermont and Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts appear on the same debate stage for the first time. They’re joined by South Bend, Indiana, Mayor Pete Buttigieg, who led fundraising among contenders in the second quarter of 2019. The seven other lower-polling candidates include Senator Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota and O’Rourke, a former representative from Texas, each needing critical traction.
On Wednesday, Biden faces off against the two leading black candidates, Harris and Booker, a New Jersey senator and former mayor of Newark, New Jersey. Biden’s sure to be put on the defensive over his past positions on race issues, while also taking slings from all the contenders as he continues to hold a strong lead in national polls.
Biden told reporters that he’s planning to take a more aggressive tone. On Wednesday he called the single-payer “Medicare for All” health plan championed by Sanders a deficit-busting “fantasy land.” He also said Booker will have to defend his track record on criminal justice, citing the Obama Justice Department’s settlement with Newark after a probe showed police there were conducting illegal stops and searches of residents, mostly minorities.
Booker’s “police department was stopping and frisking people, mostly African American men,” Biden told reporters at an NAACP convention in Detroit.
Booker signaled his own willingness to engage, telling reporters at the same event that Biden is the “architect of mass incarceration” with a 1994 crime bill he helped write as a senator.
Biden’s Balance
In Wednesday’s debate, Biden has to balance his need to engage bluntly with both Booker and Harris while not coming off as an angry old white man attacking two black candidates, said Brian Fallon, who was national press secretary for Hillary Clinton’s 2016 campaign and now runs the advocacy group Demand Justice.
“He can’t be passive, but there’s really no good way to be aggressive in that type of situation where you’re an older white male and you’re being challenged on racial inequities and you’re trying to lecture or get the high ground against the two leading candidates of color,” Fallon said. “It’s the ultimate high wire act for Biden.”
If he isn’t tough enough, Biden could lose with voters who are looking for the candidate best able to beat Trump in a campaign that no doubt will be full of name-calling and bullying attempts, Shrum said.
“If he has another performance like his last performance, people will start to question whether he’s able to take on Trump,” Shrum said.
Harris can probably expect tough questions about her support for “Medicare for All,” while also insisting she doesn’t want to get rid of private insurance.
Fallon advises Harris to just let Biden and Booker duke it out for awhile.
“I would hang back and let it devolve into a back and forth and have a few ideas at the ready to wade into it, but then transcend it,” Fallon said. “She needs to create a moment after letting them spar first.”
Sanders and Warren
In contrast with the expected fireworks at that event, the Tuesday debate featuring Sanders and Warren will likely have the two bolstering each other on issues they largely agree upon, strategists and progressive groups aligned with them say. The two agree on numerous issues, including “Medicare for All,” free tuition at public colleges and universities, and canceling student debt.
“We expect Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders to be a one-two punch advancing bold transformational ideas and to maybe battle more conservative debaters on the stage,” said Adam Green, co-founder of the Progressive Change Campaign Committee, which has endorsed Warren. He said the friction on Tuesday night will be between those two candidates, who want to take on corporate America, and two who lean most toward the party’s pro-business wing, former Colorado Governor John Hickenlooper and former Representative John Delaney.
Shrum said Sanders shouldn’t ignore a chance to argue why he’s better suited than Warren to consolidate progressive energy behind the ultimate fight against Trump. She’s been gaining in recent polls, in part by pulling some of his backing, he said.
“If the dynamic stays the same, he could keep losing support to her until he’s down into his hard-core base,” he said. Sanders could increasingly find himself as a third- or fourth-place candidate after initially having a solid hold on the No. 2 spot after Biden’s late April entry into the race.
Pushing Back
Sanders has been pushing back more on Biden, who favors keeping Obamacare with a public option, by accusing Biden of spreading falsehoods about Medicare for All. Sanders and Biden are competing for non-college educated white voters and Sanders probably wants to mix it up with him even though they debate on different nights, Fallon said.
“He could take the approach of launching a volley across the two nights,” he said.
Buttigieg, meanwhile, may want to continue his strategy in the first debates of keeping it positive, analysts said.
“He may want to continue to be the aspirational turn-the-page kind of guy and not go on the attack at all,” Fallon said.
Meanwhile, lower-polling candidates including Klobuchar, O‘Rourke, Booker and former Secretary of Housing and Urban Development Julian Castro have what could be their last chance to gain some ground.
“The imperative to have a breakout for them is high,” Fallon said. They probably are in the category of those who have to either get going or reconsider things.”
Another such candidate, entrepreneur Andrew Yang, couldn’t resist weighing in Friday by tweet: “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.”
--With assistance from Misyrlena Egkolfopoulou and Jennifer Epstein.
To contact the reporter on this story: Laura Litvan in Washington at llitvan@bloomberg.net
To contact the editors responsible for this story: Joe Sobczyk at jsobczyk@bloomberg.net, Wendy Benjaminson
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