Democratic Leaders Take Hits From All Sides in NH Debate

(Bloomberg) -- The Democratic presidential candidates piled onto the surging Bernie Sanders and Pete Buttigieg Friday in the first debate since voting for the 2020 nomination began, saying Sanders’ approach to governing was unrealistic and Buttigieg was unprepared for the job.

The candidates met for the first time since the Iowa results shook up the Democratic field, making Buttigieg and Sanders the top targets as Joe Biden and Elizabeth Warren struggled for momentum.

Biden, who came in fourth in Iowa, warned that Sanders’ left-leaning positions could cede the general election to President Donald Trump.

“The president wants very much to stick a label on every candidate,” Biden said. “Bernie’s labeled himself, not me, a democratic socialist.”

Biden also criticized Sanders for laughing off questions about he’ll pay for his plans. “How much is it going to cost? Who’s going to pay for it?” he asked.

Amy Klobuchar zinged Buttigieg on his lack of experience and disdain for Washington, saying his attacks were politically expedient but ignored the important work she and her fellow senators had done during the impeachment trial in which Trump was acquitted.

“You said it was exhausting to watch and you wanted to turn the channel and watch cartoons. It is easy to go after Washington because it is a popular to do,” she said. “It is much harder to lead and take those difficult positions.”

Buttigieg earned a top-place finish in the caucus in Iowa, where results were tallied four days late because of a counting debacle. Sanders is less than one-tenth of a percentage point behind in the delegate total, but appears to have won the popular vote. Both are claiming victory in a race too close to call.

An emboldened Buttigieg went after his rival Sanders, too.

“The biggest mistake we could make against a new challenge is to fall back upon the familiar or have a nominee that is dividing with a politics that says my way or the highway,” Buttigieg said early in the debate.

Asked if he was referring to Sanders, Buttigieg said he was.

Sanders insisted that his is a unifying message. “The way you bring people together is by presenting an agenda that works for the working people in this country, not for the billionaire class,” he said.

Tom Steyer also piled on Buttigieg for his lack of experience.

“You need to be able to go toe-to-toe with this guy and take him down on the debate stage or we’re going to lose,” Steyer said of Buttigieg’s ability to face Trump.

Buttigieg defended his age and experience, speaking dismissively of the possibility that Democrats would choose a Washington insider as their nominee.

When Biden said that “the politics of the past, I think, were not that bad,” Buttigieg retorted, “This moment is different.”

“The perspective I’m bringing is that of somebody whose life has been shaped by the decisions that are made in those big, white buildings in Washington, D.C., somebody who has guided a community written off as dying just a decade ago through a historic transformation, somebody who knows what it means to be sent to war on orders that come out of the Situation Room,” Buttigieg said.

Race took center stage about halfway through the three-hour debate.

The moderators pressed Buttigieg on why arrests for marijuana possession increased in South Bend during his tenure as mayor. Buttigieg, who has struggled for support among non-white voters, muddled through the answer, and when Warren was asked whether it was a substantive response, she simply responded, “No.”

“You have to own up to the facts,” she said, as she discussed how “race permeates the criminal justice system.”

Amid the rancor, there were moments of unity. When a moderator asked Klobuchar about comments made by 2016 nominee Hillary Clinton that “nobody likes Bernie,” Biden walked over and put his arm around Sanders’ shoulder.

And Klobuchar chimed in, “I like Bernie just fine.”

When asked if Trump’s targeting of Hunter Biden, the former vice president’s son, for work he did in Ukraine would be a liability for the Democrats if Biden were nominated, Buttigieg defended the two men.

“To be the kind of president, to be the kind of human being who would seek to turn someone against his own son, who would seek to weaponize a son against his own father, is an unbelievably dishonorable thing,” Buttigieg said.

In an attempt to unite the crowd watching the ABC News debate at St. Anselm College in Manchester, New Hampshire, Biden exhorted the audience to “stand up and clap” in support of Lieutenant Colonel Alexander Vindman, who was fired from his White House job on Friday after testifying against Trump during the House’s impeachment proceedings.

Even though Michael Bloomberg has not yet qualified for a debate stage, he was the target over the role of billionaires in the 2020 presidential race. The candidates who responded all defended their own fundraising practices while questioning the other’s.

“Everyone on this stage, except for Amy and me, is either a billionaire or receiving help from PACs that can receive unlimited help,” Warren said in a hit not only on Bloomberg and Steyer, but on Biden and Buttigieg.

Since he was not on the stage, Bloomberg tweeted a defense of his decision to fund his own campaign and has said he doesn’t want to be bought by contributors or special interests.

“I am a doer and a problem solver - not a talker,” Bloomberg tweeted. “I’ll put my record of accomplishment up against anyone.”

Warren had largely held back on attacks on Sanders throughout the debate, but this line hit him too, since he has the support of Our Revolution, a nonprofit political organization that can raise unlimited amounts of money without disclosing its donors.

“I don’t think anybody ought to be able to buy their way into a nomination or to be president of the United States,” Warren said.

Sanders ignored Warren’s jab and instead stressed his powerful grassroots fundraising machine. “When you change America you’re not going to do it by electing people who are going to rich peoples’ homes begging for money,” he said, taking his own shot at Buttigieg who has a prodigious fundraising record in Silicon Valley and New York.

“I don’t have 40 billionaires, Pete, contributing to my campaign,” Sanders said.

But Buttigieg defended himself. “We’re going into the fight of our lives,” he said, mentioning Trump’s massive fundraising apparatus. “We need to go into that fight with everything that we’ve got.”

Steyer, the only billionaire on stage, stayed out of the conversation.

The New Hampshire debate will be the last under Democratic National Committee rules that required candidates to raise money from tens of thousands of supporters to qualify for a spot on stage.

Beginning with the Nevada debate on Feb. 19, candidates with 10% support in four approved polls, or 12% in two polls, will be invited to the stage. Candidates can also qualify by earning at least one pledged delegate to the Democratic National Convention, a long-planned change.

The new eligibility thresholds could allow Bloomberg to qualify for the debates, even though he’s self-funding his presidential campaign.

(Bloomberg is the founder and majority owner of Bloomberg LP, which is the parent company of Bloomberg News.)

But the changes could also mean the end of the line for Steyer, Yang and Tulsi Gabbard unless they have surprising finishes in New Hampshire.

--With assistance from Mark Niquette.

To contact the reporters on this story: Jennifer Epstein in Manchester, New Hampshire at jepstein32@bloomberg.net;Tyler Pager in Manchester, New Hampshire at tpager1@bloomberg.net

To contact the editors responsible for this story: Wendy Benjaminson at wbenjaminson@bloomberg.net, Magan Crane

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