How did the leading Democratic presidential candidates fare in the third 2020 debate?

The Sep­tem­ber 12th debate in Hous­ton was the first debate of the Demo­c­ra­t­ic pri­ma­ry so far to be lim­it­ed to a sin­gle night with only ten can­di­dates on stage. This was the first time that all of the top–tier can­di­dates were on stage togeth­er and, cru­cial­ly, the first time that front-run­ner Joe Biden and surg­ing rival Eliz­a­beth War­ren faced each oth­er on the same stage.

Most ana­lysts (includ­ing me) expect­ed a high­ly com­bat­ive debate.

All the ingre­di­ents were there:

War­ren and Biden’s decades-long dis­like for each oth­er could have led to sparks fly­ing; Kamala Har­ris’ poor per­for­mance in the polls could have encour­aged her to strike out at Biden again; Cas­tro and O’Rourke stand­ing next to each oth­er could have led to anoth­er Span­ish-lan­guage scrap like in the June debate.

Yet, the debate was remark­ably well-man­nered, sub­stan­tive, even cordial.

The ABC mod­er­a­tors cov­ered an admirably wide vari­ety of sub­jects – and (unlike CNN) avoid­ed con­sis­tent­ly fram­ing the issues using a Repub­li­can lens.

The Hous­ton debate was every­thing that vot­ers claim to want to see in a debate.

In spite (or per­haps because) of that, pun­dits are argu­ing that the take­away from the third debate will be that it ulti­mate­ly was not impactful.

The Guardian’s Baskar Sunkara described the debate as “bor­ing,” and what’s more, the rules of the Octo­ber debate mean that none of the can­di­dates on stage were fight­ing for the chance to make a big impres­sion or stay in the race.

Here’s how the three lead­ing can­di­dates did in the debate.

Joe Biden

In the words of Jacobin Mag­a­zine, for­mer-Vice Pres­i­dent Biden’s per­for­mance “cleared a very low bar” in the debate. As the front-run­ner, he was at the cen­ter of both the stage and the mod­er­a­tors’ atten­tion, and he spoke more than any oth­er can­di­date. How­ev­er, he cer­tain­ly didn’t dom­i­nate the stage in the way that a front-run­ner with his lead in the polling usu­al­ly does.

Biden per­formed strong­ly in the open­ing act of the debate, which focused on health­care and main­ly involved a back-and-forth between him and Sen­a­tors War­ren and Sanders, who stood at lecterns on either side of him. His best line of the night came ear­ly; refer­ring to the dif­fer­ence between Oba­macare and Medicare for All, he quipped, “Sen­a­tor War­ren is with Bernie, well I’m with Barack!”

Though most expect­ed a fierce clash between Biden, Sanders and War­ren, this didn’t real­ly mate­ri­al­ize; Biden’s strongest oppo­nents were – quite unex­pect­ed­ly – his for­mer col­league in the Oba­ma admin­is­tra­tion, Julián Cas­tro, and the ABC mod­er­a­tors. Mod­er­a­tors Jorge Ramos and Lin­sey Davis both grilled Biden over his con­tro­ver­sial past record when it came to issues of race and immigration.

Unsur­pris­ing­ly, though, Biden’s worst ene­my in the debate was himself.

In the health­care por­tion of the debate, Biden’s response to Bernie Sanders’ argu­ment that Amer­i­cans pay more for health­care than any oth­er coun­try was a mum­bled, “This is Amer­i­ca.” Whether he was iron­i­cal­ly quot­ing Don­ald Glover, or mis­tak­en­ly giv­ing a shout-out to any Repub­li­can plants in the Demo­c­ra­t­ic crowd, that inter­rup­tion sound­ed down­right ridiculous.

Worse was to come from Biden’s mouth.

As the can­di­dates dis­cussed the issue of racial injus­tice and edu­ca­tion, Biden’s con­tri­bu­tion mean­dered from sug­gest­ing that black fam­i­lies need super­vi­sion when rais­ing their chil­dren, to hav­ing “the record play­er on at night,” to the fact that he has met – of all peo­ple – Venezuela’s Pres­i­dent Maduro.

How­ev­er, it could have been much worse for Biden.

For the most part, he man­aged to avoid get­ting bogged down defend­ing his own past like he did in the June debate, when he clashed with Har­ris. Instead, he steered his answers towards the future – a much safer propo­si­tion for a can­di­date whose past views are dan­ger­ous­ly at odds with cur­rent Demo­c­ra­t­ic voters’.

The debate end­ed with a ques­tion from the mod­er­a­tors about per­son­al set­backs, and this is where Biden won back the audience.

The Vice Pres­i­dent recalled los­ing fam­i­ly mem­bers to tragedy and find­ing pur­pose in his work. His answer was raw and emo­tion­al, but it also exposed (bet­ter than any polit­i­cal argu­ment he could make) Biden’s core strength in the face of per­son­al and emo­tion­al pres­sure – a great asset to any President.

Eliz­a­beth Warren

Eliz­a­beth War­ren has done well in the debates so far, and the third was no dif­fer­ent. She has a dis­tinc­tive style of debat­ing that is per­son­able yet very details-ori­ent­ed (although as John Delaney can tell you, she can sting when she wish­es to), and it was well suit­ed to the coop­er­a­tive atmos­phere in Houston.

Though some expect­ed the debate to be dom­i­nat­ed by a Biden-War­ren grudge match, this nev­er emerged; the clos­est that came to hap­pen­ing was dur­ing the debate over health­care. While War­ren held her own in that por­tion of the debate, many of the strongest argu­ments were made by Bernie Sanders.

War­ren avoid­ed a direct­ly com­bat­ive approach for the whole of the debate, by avoid­ing an explic­it pro­gres­sive ver­sus neolib­er­al or left ver­sus right mind­set, fram­ing the issues in insight­ful ways.

On health­care, for exam­ple, instead of direct­ly tak­ing on Biden’s asser­tions that peo­ple don’t want to change to a pub­lic plan, she point­ed out — with gus­to — that nobody actu­al­ly likes their health­care insur­ance com­pa­ny (i.e. Unit­ed Health­care), fram­ing her posi­tion as a “cut out the mid­dle­men” approach.

On for­eign pol­i­cy, War­ren argued for with­draw­al from Afghanistan while simul­ta­ne­ous­ly prais­ing (and play­ing up her fam­i­ly con­nec­tions to) America’s armed ser­vices: “They will do any­thing we ask them to. But we can­not ask them to solve prob­lems that they alone can­not solve.”

In this debate, War­ren man­aged to posi­tion her­self as the most pro­gres­sive can­di­date in the field – which must have sur­prised Bernie Sanders’ team.

War­ren led the field on address­ing cli­mate jus­tice, cre­at­ing pro­gres­sive trade poli­cies, and call­ing out big mon­ey in pol­i­tics. This was less to do with clever maneu­ver­ing by War­ren and more to do with Sanders not being giv­en oppor­tu­ni­ties, but Warren’s team will cer­tain­ly be pleased with the result.

When asked about per­son­al set­backs, War­ren recalled los­ing her dream job as a pub­lic school teacher when she became pregnant.

Her sto­ry of over­com­ing that obsta­cle, going to law school, and becom­ing a pro­fes­sor was an effec­tive way to dis­man­tle the cri­tiques por­tray­ing War­ren as an ivory–tower elit­ist. Not only that, but Warren’s sto­ry will like­ly res­onate with a lot of white, mid­dle income women – a key demo­graph­ic for Democ­rats in 2020.

Bernie Sanders

Bernie Sanders’ per­for­mance was large­ly con­sis­tent with his ear­li­er per­for­mances, going back to 2016, but more and more it seems that the oth­er can­di­dates have got the hang of how to deal with the social­ist firebrand’s rhetoric.

The sev­en­ty-eight year-old sen­a­tor had a rough start to the debate, with his voice sound­ing painful­ly hoarse, but he warmed up as the night went on.

How­ev­er, that may have been because he spoke less; despite being cen­tral to the health­care debate, over­all Sanders spoke the third least of any candidate.

Sanders was strongest in his defense of Medicare for All, argu­ing fierce­ly with Joe Biden and effec­tive­ly lay­ing out the many prob­lems with the Amer­i­can health­care sys­tem. How­ev­er, Sanders was less effec­tive in com­mu­ni­cat­ing his oth­er big ideas; the short dis­cus­sion of cli­mate action was led by Eliz­a­beth War­ren, despite the fact that Sanders’ plan is arguably the most far-reach­ing of any candidate’s.

There was also a sur­pris­ing moment when Sanders passed up an oppor­tu­ni­ty to con­demn the fil­i­buster, the Senate’s ridicu­lous prac­tice of allow­ing the few to over­ride the many, while oth­er can­di­dates such as War­ren favored elim­i­nat­ing it.

Unsur­pris­ing­ly for a social­ist on Amer­i­can tele­vi­sion, Sanders was sub­ject­ed to unfair com­par­isons by the ABC mod­er­a­tors (that the oth­er can­di­dates were spared from). In this case, Jorge Ramos asked Sanders how his brand of demo­c­ra­t­ic social­ism is dif­fer­ent from the tyran­ni­cal poli­cies of Venezuela’s Nicolás Maduro.

(As if to demon­strate the ridicu­lous fram­ing of this issue, the Repub­li­cans aired a polit­i­cal ad dur­ing the debate that com­pared Alexan­dria Oca­sio-Cortez to the geno­ci­dal Khmer Rouge of Cam­bo­dia). At first, Sanders laughed out loud, then to his cred­it he denounced Maduro’s dic­ta­tor­ship and patient­ly explained how his pol­i­tics can be bet­ter com­pared to those of Cana­da and North­ern Europe.

Sanders often strug­gles to make him­self a sym­pa­thet­ic fig­ure, and his answer to the ABC ques­tion about per­son­al set­backs illus­trates that.

He start­ed by briefly men­tion­ing his child­hood in a rent-con­trolled New York apart­ment, but quick­ly went to talk­ing about his ear­ly days as a social­ist polit­i­cal can­di­date – days when he lost elec­tions by gigan­tic margins.

Sanders’ recita­tion of his come­back sto­ry prob­a­bly thrilled his sup­port­ers. But he left out the part about falling short in his last pres­i­den­tial bid to Hillary Clin­ton in 2016. Sanders’ cam­paign was a lot more suc­cess­ful than many pun­dits antic­i­pat­ed it would be, and it had a huge impact on Demo­c­ra­t­ic politics.

But it didn’t get Sanders the nomination.

Although Sanders is again seek­ing the Demo­c­ra­t­ic Party’s pres­i­den­tial nom­i­na­tion, he still iden­ti­fies as an inde­pen­dent, as a well as a social­ist. With so many oth­er can­di­dates to choose from, will Demo­c­ra­t­ic vot­ers look­ing for a change agent who can defeat Don­ald Trump turn to Sanders in next year’s primaries?