What to watch for in the November 2019 Democratic presidential candidates’ debate

On Wednes­day, the ten lead­ing Demo­c­ra­t­ic can­di­dates will meet in Atlanta, GA, for the fifth pres­i­den­tial pri­ma­ry debate of this elec­tion cycle.

The can­di­dates on stage will be as follows:

• For­mer Vice Pres­i­dent Joe Biden
• Sen­a­tor Eliz­a­beth War­ren of Massachusetts
• Sen­a­tor Bernie Sanders of Vermont
• May­or Pete Buttigieg of South Bend, Indiana
• Sen­a­tor Kamala Har­ris of California
• Sen­a­tor Cory Book­er of New Jersey
• Sen­a­tor Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota
• Rep­re­sen­ta­tive Tul­si Gab­bard of Hawaii
• Tech entre­pre­neur Andrew Yang
• Bil­lion­aire activist Tom Steyer

The stage will be back down to just ten podi­ums on one night as it was for the Sep­tem­ber debate. View­ers might miss a cou­ple of famil­iar faces, such as for­mer Rep­re­sen­ta­tive Beto O’Rourke (who dropped out of the race at the start of this month) and for­mer Hous­ing and Urban Devel­op­ment Sec­re­tary Julián Cas­tro, who failed to meet the cri­te­ria to qual­i­fy for the Novem­ber debate.

This round of the debates had the most rig­or­ous cri­te­ria yet for entry: can­di­dates had to earn 3% in four nation­al polls, or 5% in two ear­ly state polls, and their cam­paigns had to have at least 165,000 unique donors, six hun­dred of whom had to be from at least twen­ty states.

The debate will to some extent be over­shad­owed by the ongo­ing impeach­ment process in Wash­ing­ton D.C., espe­cial­ly with the House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives hav­ing began tele­vised hear­ings. As Mar­garet O’Mara – an Amer­i­can his­to­ry pro­fes­sor at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Wash­ing­ton – put it, there is now “an even big­ger tele­vi­sion event that’s over­shad­ow­ing them.” Although none of the can­di­dates are direct­ly involved in the impeach­ment process, five of them are sit­ting Sen­a­tors who may even­tu­al­ly have a say in whether Pres­i­dent Trump is removed from office.

The impeach­ment inquiry will also be an oppor­tu­ni­ty for all the can­di­dates to empha­size their uni­fied oppo­si­tion to Trump’s actions as the cur­rent occu­pant of the pres­i­den­cy, as they have done in pre­vi­ous debates.

Anoth­er issue that is guar­an­teed to come up in this debate is health­care, which has played a dom­i­nant role in the pre­vi­ous debates.

This time, how­ev­er, Eliz­a­beth War­ren could have an edge, hav­ing recent­ly released a com­pre­hen­sive, ful­ly-cost­ed plan for imple­ment­ing Medicare for All.

In October’s debate, War­ren’s weak­est moment came when Joe Biden and oth­er can­di­dates bat­tered her for evad­ing ques­tions about whether her plan will raise mid­dle-class tax­es; now she will be able to con­fi­dent­ly tell her oppo­nents that her ambi­tious pro­pos­al won’t raise mid­dle class tax­es by a dime, while rais­ing the stan­dard and fair­ness of health­care in the coun­try enormously.

It is hard to see how Biden and oth­er neolib­er­al Democ­rats will be able to counter this, beyond dredg­ing up the Repub­li­can-style talk­ing points that have already been debunked by Warren’s cam­paign and pro­gres­sive thinkers.

The issue of repro­duc­tive jus­tice is almost cer­tain to come up, espe­cial­ly since MSNBC and The Wash­ing­ton Post have cho­sen an all-female pan­el to mod­er­ate. How­ev­er, there is unlike­ly to be much sub­stan­tial debate over this issue, since all the can­di­dates’ posi­tions are more or less aligned.

This will be anoth­er oppor­tu­ni­ty for the Democ­rats to lam­bast the Trump regime over its oppo­si­tion to wom­xn’s repro­duc­tive freedoms.

Wednesday’s debate will be held in Atlanta, a hub of black cul­ture and activism, and ques­tions con­cern­ing racial, crim­i­nal and social jus­tice are bound to arise.

Joe Biden has the most to lose here; although he has strong sup­port among black vot­ers, his long and prob­lem­at­ic record on racial issues (he sup­port­ed “tough on crime” poli­cies that dec­i­mat­ed nlack com­mu­ni­ties, opposed deseg­re­ga­tion bus­ing, and boast­ed about his “civil­i­ty” towards open­ly racist seg­re­ga­tion­ist senators).

War­ren – who has had trou­ble mak­ing inroads with the black com­mu­ni­ty – will want to use the oppor­tu­ni­ty, but it is unclear what path she could take to do so.

Bernie Sanders has a strong base of sup­port among mil­len­ni­al African-Amer­i­cans, who tend to be far more left-lean­ing and activist than their elders and will prob­a­bly use ques­tions con­cern­ing race to cri­tique the broad inequal­i­ties plagu­ing America.

Beyond issues cen­ter­ing on racial jus­tice, the fact that the debate takes place in Geor­gia may prompt some ques­tions about the state’s polit­i­cal future.

While Geor­gia has been a reli­ably red state for a num­ber of years, Democ­rats have high hopes of flip­ping it to blue, espe­cial­ly since both of the state’s seats in the Unit­ed States Sen­ate are up for grabs next year.

Stacey Abrams’ pio­neer­ing guber­na­to­r­i­al can­di­da­cy showed that Democ­rats could be com­pet­i­tive in Geor­gia. Abrams lost a close race to Repub­li­can Bri­an Kemp, who used his pow­er as Sec­re­tary of State to put tens of thou­sands of African-Amer­i­cans’ vot­er reg­is­tra­tions on hold until his vic­to­ry. The issue of vot­er sup­pres­sion is a vital one in Geor­gia, and Demo­c­ra­t­ic pres­i­den­tial can­di­dates would be smart to come to the stage with ideas of how to fight back.

(Abrams will be in Seat­tle this Sun­day for a fundrais­ing brunch in sup­port of Jay Inslee, who is run­ning for a third term as Gov­er­nor of Wash­ing­ton State.)

Giv­en the tight­en­ing in the polls between the can­di­dates and the fact that the field is now in a head­long rush towards the Iowa cau­cus­es in Feb­ru­ary, view­ers should expect some fierce inter­per­son­al sparring.

War­ren and Biden are both the front-run­ners and rep­re­sen­ta­tives of the par­ty’s two major con­flict­ing wings, as well as hav­ing a long his­to­ry of per­son­al dis­like for one anoth­er. These two have already sparred fierce­ly in pre­vi­ous debates and there seems no rea­son to doubt that this will hap­pen again.

War­ren and Sanders have main­tained a semi-alliance so far in this pri­ma­ry, but there is increas­ing­ly anti-War­ren sen­ti­ment on the left.

Sanders’ posi­tion has recent­ly been strength­ened by a flood of endorse­ments from pro­gres­sive orga­ni­za­tions, and this may embold­en him.

May­or Buttigieg has so far had fair­ly qui­et and unre­mark­able debate per­for­mances, but he has been steadi­ly ris­ing in the polls. He is in such a strong posi­tion in Iowa there is now talk that he may win the cru­cial first-in-the-nation caucus.

The oth­er cam­paigns have noticed this, and he will have to pre­pare for more tar­get­ed scruti­ny and crit­i­cism than he has pre­vi­ous­ly had to deal with.

The debate will take place on Wednes­day Novem­ber 20th from 6 PM to 8 PM Pacif­ic. It will be broad­cast on MSNBC, and will be avail­able to stream on MSNBC.com as well as on The Wash­ing­ton Post’s web­site. You can also fol­low along with us here on The Cas­ca­dia Advo­cate dur­ing that same timeframe.