On Wednesday and Thursday nights, the twenty qualifying Democratic Presidential candidates stood side by side by side by side (and so on) onstage at the Adrienne Arsht Center for the Performing Arts, in Miami, to take part in the primary season’s first debates. The horde of candidates had been split into two groups of ten, one group for each night, to make the format slightly less unwieldy, although the host, NBC News, added five moderators to the mix, which made for a lot of voices in the course of each debate’s two hours.
Although the race has been under way for months, this week marked the moment, as Benjamin Wallace-Wells noted, when the “campaign has begun to operate on a national scale.” It was the first time many Americans heard from lesser-known candidates in the race, and watched the front-runners, including Joe Biden and Bernie Sanders, engage one another directly.
The President, after declaring the first night’s debate “BORING!” on Twitter, fell silent, until he mocked the NBC News production for technical difficulties. Yet if Trump had been attuned to the first night’s substance, he might have seen what John Cassidy identified as a “serious discussion” on a wide range of issues, including the economy, health care, antitrust policy, gun control, dealing with the humanitarian crisis at the southern border, and the war in Afghanistan. Several other New Yorker writers pointed just how fully the progressive agendas of Sanders and Elizabeth Warren have come to set the terms of discussion for the Democrats heading into 2020.
No one could accuse the second night of being boring. In what Eric Lach described as the “first turning point of the Democratic Presidential election,” Senator Kamala Harris, of California, challenged Biden directly on his recent comments about working with segregationist colleagues, and his history, in the nineteen-seventies, of opposing school busing. Harris, the only African-American on the stage on Thursday, combined prosecutorial zeal and her own personal narrative to characterize Biden as out of touch on racial issues, before adding that busing policies had changed the lives of countless young students, including her own. In a widely shared sentiment, Wallace-Wells declared that she had “won the night.”
Below is The New Yorker’s complete coverage of the Democratic debates in Miami, and how they have set the stage for the race going forward.
The Second Debate, June 27th
The California senator’s remarks to Joe Biden on school integration marked a turning point in the Presidential race.
Kamala Harris Is the Best Storyteller on the Democratic Stage
Her narrative instinct enabled her to frame the most powerful moment of the debate.
Kamala Harris Interrupts a “Food Fight”
The second Democratic debate was much more dynamic than the first.
Kamala Harris: “I Would Like to Speak on the Issue of Race”
Harris directly addressed Biden’s recent comments about segregationists he once served with in the Senate, and his record on school busing.
Democratic Debate 2019: Andrew Yang’s Bold Lack of a Tie
An open collar? What do you think this is, a town-hall meeting? An outdoorsy photo op?
The First Debate, June 26th
The First Democratic Debate Shuns Donald Trump in Favor of Substance
After two and a half years of Trump, it was strangely refreshing to see a group of career politicians, many of whom have spent significant time studying policy issues, having a serious discussion.
The Opportunities and Chaos of the Democratic Debates
There are usually a few recognized roles for a candidate to take in an election: agent of change, steady hand, moderate, radical. A contest among two dozen has no fixed roles at all.
Elizabeth Warren’s Caution on Guns
Normally so direct and outspoken, the senator sidestepped a question about what to do about the hundreds of millions of firearms in America.
Elizabeth Warren’s Reformism Versus Trump’s Moral Crisis
The question for the Democratic Party now isn’t how far left it has moved. It is whether the problem is the swelling imbalance between rich and poor, or Donald Trump.
Moderate Democrats’ Surprising Embrace of Elizabeth Warren
There was a time, only six or seven years ago, when one might have expected a debate-viewing party at the Aspen Ideas Festival to be a difficult crowd for the progressive Massachusetts senator. But a lifetime and a half in politics has passed since then.
Mitch McConnell Looms Larger Than Donald Trump
The Senate Majority Leader was frustrating the Democratic Party’s agenda long before Trump won the Presidency, and he may continue to do so if and when Trump is gone.
Beto O’Rourke’s Spanish Moment
“Necesitamos incluir cada persona en nuestra democracia,” the former congressman from Texas said. We need to include everyone in our democracy.
