How did each candidate fare in night one of the Democratic debate in Detroit?

Any­one watch­ing the first night of the Demo­c­ra­t­ic debate in Detroit’s his­toric Fox The­atre could see there was a clear divide between the neolib­er­al can­di­dates in the field and the pro­gres­sive can­di­dates in the field. 

CNN’s mod­er­a­tors encour­aged the low-polling neolib­er­al can­di­dates on stage to attack the two most pro­gres­sive – and most pop­u­lar – can­di­dates on the stage: Bernie Sanders and Eliz­a­beth War­ren. How­ev­er, War­ren and Sanders worked effec­tive­ly as a team, swat­ting away attacks and call­ing out the Repub­li­can-style fram­ing used by both their fel­low Democ­rats and the CNN mod­er­a­tors.  

Here’s a look at how each can­di­date per­formed: 

Montana’s Gov­er­nor Steve Bul­lock: Bul­lock stood out among the low­er-polling can­di­dates, giv­ing the strongest and most con­vinc­ing argu­ments for poli­cies that research sug­gests vot­ers in red states find enticing. 

He repeat­ed­ly (and jus­ti­fi­ably) point­ed to the fact that he, a Demo­c­rat, won in Mon­tana in 2016, when the state vot­ed for Trump by more than twen­ty points. He joined in the cri­tique of Medicare for All, and employed right wing pop­ulist rhetoric when address­ing the top­ic of immi­gra­tion. How­ev­er, per­haps his most notice­able moment hurt his chances; he became embroiled in an argu­ment with Eliz­a­beth War­ren over the USA’s nuclear first-strike policy.

War­ren argued that the Unit­ed States should not use nuclear weapons unless it was attacked first; Bul­lock want­ed to keep all options – includ­ed an unpro­voked nuclear strike – on the table. Inci­den­tal­ly, this posi­tion is so moral­ly rep­re­hen­si­ble that not even the total­i­tar­i­an Sovi­et Union adopt­ed it. Giv­en that vot­ers in gen­er­al are anti-war, it was strange for Bul­lock to fight over this issue.   

South Bend May­or Pete Buttigieg: Buttigieg leaned heav­i­ly on his rel­a­tive youth­ful­ness, paint­ing a dark pic­ture of the future as he con­demned the destruc­tive poli­cies of Don­ald Trump’s presidency. 

Buttigieg tried to rise above the sim­plis­tic left ver­sus cen­ter left dichoto­my that has been preva­lent in con­ven­tion­al analy­sis of the Demo­c­ra­t­ic field by big media, empha­siz­ing his own pol­i­cy direc­tions and argu­ing that the Repub­li­cans will call the Democ­rats “a bunch of crazy social­ists” no mat­ter what. 

But he often looked side­lined, rather than above the fray. 

One of his rehearsed lines also bombed spec­tac­u­lar­ly; when asked about racial issues in his own city, he said, “the racial divide lives in me.”

How­ev­er, he fin­ished the night strong­ly, with a fierce admo­ni­tion of Repub­li­can law­mak­ers who sup­port­ed Don­ald Trump. 

For­mer-Mary­land Con­gress­man John Delaney: Delaney led the charge of neolib­er­al can­di­dates against Bernie Sanders and Eliz­a­beth War­ren, decry­ing “bad poli­cies” and “free every­thing” in his open­ing state­ment and imme­di­ate­ly attack­ing the pro­gres­sive Medicare for All plan. 

His attacks did not win him many points with the Detroit audi­ence, who greet­ed his rehearsed “zinger” lines with stony silence. Worse for him, as Delaney’s Celtic Irish ances­tors could tell you, the guy who leads the charge is the most like­ly to get hurt. Delaney was tag teamed by War­ren and Sanders. 

On health­care, Bernie Sanders all but direct­ly accused Delaney of prof­it­ing from the sta­tus quo. Eliz­a­beth War­ren ques­tioned why some­body like him would even “go to all the trou­ble of run­ning for Pres­i­dent… just to talk about what we real­ly can’t do and shouldn’t fight for!” Delaney argued that Warren’s wealth-tax was “arguably uncon­sti­tu­tion­al,” but the CNN mod­er­a­tors were keen to point out that he him­self would be a tar­get of the tax. 

Delaney seemed to be pre­sent­ing him­self as a lib­er­al Repub­li­can in this debate – it is unlike­ly that he accom­plished any­thing except for help­ing out War­ren and Sanders by serv­ing as a neolib­er­al foil for them. 

Colorado’s For­mer-Gov­er­nor John Hick­en­loop­er: Hick­en­loop­er repeat­ed­ly made two points: the need for polit­i­cal prag­ma­tism, and the high­lights of his own record as Col­orado gov­er­nor. He was among the bicon­cep­tu­als con­fronting Seators Sanders and War­ren, but was a less stri­dent per­former than either Delaney or Bul­lock. Often, his respons­es seemed tum­bling and ill-prepared. 

For exam­ple, his plan on immi­gra­tion seemed to be, to quote him direct­ly, “how hard can that be?” His lines attack­ing Sanders seemed espe­cial­ly inef­fec­tive; when he said “you can’t just spring a plan on the world and expect it to suc­ceed,” Sanders ripost­ed with the fifty-year suc­cess of Medicare. 

He also came dan­ger­ous­ly close to a Biden-esque stum­ble over race in Amer­i­ca. When asked about racial inequal­i­ty, he offered to del­e­gate an “urban agen­da,” a phrase that has a long asso­ci­a­tion with deroga­to­ry racial stereo­types. Hick­en­loop­er also expressed a will­ing­ness to keep U.S. troops in Afghanistan, dif­fer­ing with almost all the oth­er can­di­dates on stage. 

Minnesota’s Sen­a­tor Amy Klobuchar: Any­one sus­pect­ing that Sen­a­tor Klobuchar might be hop­ing to be picked for the vice pres­i­den­tial nom­i­na­tion could have found jus­ti­fi­ca­tion for har­bor­ing that belief after watch­ing the debate.

Though she sided with the neolib­er­als in the night’s dom­i­nat­ing ide­o­log­i­cal clash, she did­n’t come to the stage look­ing to pick fights with Sanders and War­ren. She repeat­ed­ly empha­sized to her elec­toral suc­cess in the Mid­west, remind­ing every­one that Democ­rats need to win back the region from Republicans. 

She hit a lot of sweet spots for Demo­c­ra­t­ic vot­ers with answers about tak­ing on the NRA, address­ing the Flint water cri­sis, and reform­ing the coun­try’s bro­ken immi­gra­tion sys­tem – with­out get­ting into fights with her colleagues. 

She voiced mild dis­agree­ments with oth­er can­di­dates who were on the stage over edu­ca­tion and for­eign pol­i­cy issues, but man­aged to look more com­posed and con­cil­ia­to­ry than the likes of Delaney. 

Texas’ Beto O’Rourke: Through­out the debate, Beto O’Rourke tried to present him­self as an Oba­ma-esque can­di­date, with lofty rhetoric and aspi­ra­tional themes. He wise­ly com­bined this with a firm grasp of the pol­i­cy issues. 

How­ev­er, his per­for­mance wasn’t par­tic­u­lar­ly strong, part­ly because – like May­or Buttigieg – he kept to the side­lines as the stri­dent neolib­er­als bat­tled the pro­gres­sives. He made the argu­ment that he could be the Demo­c­ra­t­ic can­di­date to “flip Texas” – despite hav­ing proved in 2018 that he actu­al­ly couldn’t win the Lone Star State. O’Rourke made a strong argu­ment on race in Amer­i­ca, call­ing out Don­ald Trump’s racism and lay­ing out a detailed plan. 

He was the first on the stage to call for slav­ery repa­ra­tions. His plat­form calls for two years of tuition free col­lege, instead of four; pulling out of Afghanistan, (but not right away), and a health­care plan dubbed “Medicare for Amer­i­ca,” which is not Medicare For All, but would expand Medicare. 

Ohio’s Con­gress­man Tim Ryan: Ryan advo­cat­ed a pop­ulist eco­nom­ic mes­sage that at times seemed wor­ry­ing­ly close to Trump­ism. His oft-repeat­ed mes­sage was, “not left or right, but new and bet­ter.” He con­ced­ed that he thought the Pres­i­dent “was onto some­thing” when it came to trade tar­iffs on China. 

He took a swipe at Bernie Sanders, claim­ing the Sen­a­tor didn’t know what he was talk­ing about; this elicit­ed one of Sanders’ best lines from the night (“I do know what I’m talk­ing about, I wrote the damn bill!”) 

He stood firm­ly against decrim­i­nal­iz­ing the act of cross­ing the bor­der, stray­ing into anti-immi­grant rhetoric about the risk to Amer­i­can work­ers’ jobs. 

His strongest issue was undoubt­ed­ly eco­nom­ic secu­ri­ty; as he is an Ohioan rep­re­sent­ing a work­ing-class com­mu­ni­ty dom­i­nat­ed by the auto­mo­tive indus­try, he has a large-scale plan for the Unit­ed States to lead the world on renew­able ener­gy and elec­tric cars. He also point­ed out that he has includ­ed the agri­cul­ture indus­try in his clean ener­gy plan. No oth­er can­di­date brought up agriculture.

Vermont’s U.S. Sen­a­tor Bernie Sanders: Sanders was in famil­iar ter­ri­to­ry the whole night, fero­cious­ly defend­ing his plat­form against attacks from those to the right of him. He quick­ly teamed up with Eliz­a­beth War­ren and the two proved an invin­ci­ble team, espe­cial­ly as their indi­vid­ual styles com­ple­ment­ed one another.

A pop­ulist at heart, Sanders wasn’t afraid to go for the jugu­lar, most notably when he accused John Delaney of being a health­care prof­i­teer, com­pared to his own belief that health­care is a human right. Sanders has clear­ly learned from his 2016 cam­paign, as he laid out strong plans on gun reg­u­la­tion and immi­gra­tion, while defend­ing his sig­na­ture Medicare for All policy. 

How­ev­er, the sep­tu­a­ge­nar­i­an sen­a­tor had a habit of mean­der­ing into his favourite stump speech­es rather than direct­ly answer­ing ques­tions, con­trast­ing with Eliz­a­beth War­ren. At one point, he became so annoyed with Delaney’s neolib­er­al­ism that he launched into an attack, talk­ing over his ally. 

How­ev­er, that pro­duced an endear­ing moment for the pair, as Sanders bash­ful­ly said, “Oh! I’m sor­ry!”, get­ting a laugh from the crowd. 

Mass­a­chu­setts’ U.S. Sen­a­tor Eliz­a­beth War­ren: War­ren once again came out her debate as the strongest can­di­date of the night. She stood at the cen­ter of the health­care fray, sweep­ing aside the third-rate can­di­dates who tried to tan­gle with her poli­cies. Her favorite slo­gan, “I have a plan for that,” nev­er passed her lips dur­ing the debate (though Sanders did bor­row it), but it was clear that she had one of the most com­pre­hen­sive, well-thought-out plat­forms of the debate.

Her most-used line of the debate sound­ed like it had been coined by her social­ist col­league – “the insur­ance com­pa­nies do not have a God-giv­en right to make $23 bil­lion in prof­its and suck it out of our health­care system!” 

She dom­i­nat­ed her rivals when­ev­er she got into one-on-one argu­ments: with John Delaney over trade; with Steve Bul­lock over nuclear pro­lif­er­a­tion; and with John Hick­en­loop­er over her cli­mate action plan. 

Tex­an Author and Activist Mar­i­anne Williamson: In her sec­ond debate, Mar­i­anne Williamson got to speak a lot more than in her first; by FiveThirtyEight’s count, she increased her word-count by over 60%. Her tac­tic appeared to be to per­son­i­fy the beat­ing heart of the Amer­i­can Left. She came across as well versed in the issues that ener­gize pro­gres­sives. She showed she under­stood that the prob­lems the coun­try faces are inter­twined and systemic. 

How­ev­er, she notice­ably lacked any answers to the sys­temic prob­lems. More than that, she didn’t sketch out a sin­gle pol­i­cy or plan dur­ing the entire debate. The clos­est she got was call­ing for a con­sti­tu­tion­al amend­ment to remove the influ­ence of pri­vate mon­ey from pol­i­tics. She sug­gest­ed the nation need­ed a vague­ly defined social move­ment – that she, of course, should lead – to sweep “con­ven­tion­al pol­i­tics” out of pow­er in the Unit­ed States.