The tenth 2020 Democratic presidential primary debate was chaotic and messy

On Tues­day night, sev­en Demo­c­ra­t­ic can­di­dates met in Charleston, South Car­oli­na, for the tenth 2020 Demo­c­ra­t­ic pres­i­den­tial debate, host­ed by CBS News.

With only a few days until the South Car­oli­na pri­ma­ry, the debate was an oppor­tu­ni­ty for view­ers to look for clues to answers to sev­er­al ques­tions, chiefly:

• How would Sen­a­tor Bernie Sanders engage with the oth­er can­di­dates, giv­en his new sta­tus as the undis­put­ed frontrunner?
• Would Joe Biden demon­strate that he has cachet with black vot­ers in the first South­ern state to vote?
• Would the oth­er can­di­dates be able to put a dent in the lead Sanders holds nation­al­ly, or the lead Biden holds in South Carolina?

Unfor­tu­nate­ly, the debate turned into a scrap.

The losers of the night were undoubt­ed­ly the CBS News mod­er­a­tors – led by Norah O’Donnell and Gayle King – who total­ly failed to keep the can­di­dates on-track, main­tain any sort of order among the crowd, or stop the can­di­dates talk­ing over each oth­er. At one point in the debate, Pete Buttigieg and Bernie Sanders talked over one anoth­er for almost a full minute before the mod­er­a­tors inter­vened. At anoth­er point, Gayle King had to cor­rect Norah O’Donnell’s claim that the debate was end­ing (they were in fact going to an ad break).

From the start of the night, Bernie Sanders was at the cen­ter of the debate, defend­ing him­self and his cam­paign against attacks from all the oth­er can­di­dates and – pre­dictably – the mod­er­a­tors, who act­ed like Repub­li­can oper­a­tives and con­front­ed Sanders with Repub­­li­­can-style “how do you pay for it” questions.

Sanders’ per­for­mance was effec­tive, but not pol­ished, and he stuck to his tried-and-true debate method of stub­born­ly grind­ing through uti­liz­ing well honed argu­ments with all the finesse of a bulldozer.

Out­side of pre­sent­ing his tried and test­ed argu­ments, his respons­es were more mixed. He prompt­ly returned fire when Michael Bloomberg took a cheap shot at him by claim­ing that the Rus­sians were sup­port­ing his cam­paign. Sanders declared he would take a tough stance against Putin as Pres­i­dent, then high­lighred Bloomberg’s inabil­i­ty to crit­i­cize China’s dic­ta­tor Xi Jin­ping.

On the oth­er hand, Sanders did allow Pete Buttigieg to get under his skin.

Buttigieg was anoth­er can­di­date who stuck to his pre­vi­ous debate strategy.

He made prodi­gious use of “soar­ing rhetoric” (as The New York Times’ Nicholas Kristof put it) – offer­ing lofty dec­la­ra­tions devoid of specificity.

The mean oppor­tunism that was on dis­play in the Neva­da debate also came out, as he con­sis­tent­ly inter­rupt­ed and talked over oth­er candidates.

He man­aged to rile up Sanders in a debate over Cuba (using sim­i­lar rhetor­i­cal tac­tics to those he has used in his appar­ent blood-feud with Amy Klobuchar).

War­ren also had a strong debate per­for­mance, large­ly by indulging her very obvi­ous dis­like of Michael Bloomberg. She ham­mered him once again for his non-dis­­­clo­­sure agree­ments in harass­ment cas­es and his fail­ure to release his tax returns, but the blows did not pack the same punch as in the Las Vegas debate.

War­ren also took a few swipes at Bernie Sanders, say­ing that she agreed with many of his poli­cies, but stat­ing that she believes she would make a bet­ter pres­i­dent due to her record of achieve­ments (a mantra sim­i­lar to Hillary Clin­ton’s “I’m a pro­gres­sive that likes to get stuff done” in 2016).

Joe Biden had a strong debate per­for­mance, one of his best so far.

He man­aged to large­ly avoid any slip-ups, and also man­aged to stand out from the oth­er can­di­dates more than he did in Neva­da. His per­for­mance was espe­cial­ly impres­sive for the fact that he often launched into pas­sion­ate tirades, yet nev­er devolved into the kind of gib­ber­ish such speech­es often seem to lead him into.

He was also helped out by Gai­ilard Cen­ter audi­ence that seemed both enthu­si­as­tic about him and hos­tile to his more pro­gres­sive rivals.

Biden was one of the can­di­dates to lev­el at Bernie Sanders, but he also took on an unusu­al tar­get: Tom Stey­er. Stey­er has per­formed well in polls in South Car­oli­na (with some recent excep­tions), and has invest­ed heav­i­ly in attract­ing black sup­port­ers – he could poten­tial­ly drain votes away from Biden on Saturday.

The for­mer Vice Pres­i­dent slammed Stey­er for his invest­ments in pri­vate pris­ons, and when Stey­er argued that he had sold his stock when abus­es were uncov­ered, Biden snapped back, “where I come from, that’s called Tom­my come lately!”

Stey­er tried to steer the con­ver­sa­tion towards a dis­cus­sion of the dis­as­trous 1994 crime bill – which Biden helped to write – but was shout­ed over by the oth­er can­di­dates and was unable to fin­ish his point.

Steyer’s inabil­i­ty to fin­ish his argu­ment was sym­bol­ic of the debate as a whole, and the inco­her­ence and mis­man­age­ment of the event prompt­ed a fresh round of Repub­li­can gloat­ing on social media. How­ev­er, it is unlike­ly that the debate will have much of an impact on the race. It was a sil­ly spec­ta­cle, to be sure, but nine tele­vised testy exchanges among these same can­di­dates had already aired before, and none of the lead­ing can­di­dates com­mit­ted any major gaffes in this one, so it is like­ly to be for­got­ten about fair­ly quickly.

The South Car­oli­na Demo­c­ra­t­ic pri­ma­ry and Super Tues­day are just ahead. Those nom­i­nat­ing events ought to help win­now the field and allow Democ­rats to move clos­er to their goals of even­tu­al­ly uni­fy­ing their party.