Heading into Friday night’s Democratic debate, the media had effectively declared that the Democratic primary was down to only two viable candidates: Mayor Pete Buttigieg, of South Bend, Indiana, and Senator Bernie Sanders, of Vermont. Monday’s Iowa caucuses had ended with the two candidates effectively tied after disastrous and seemingly systemic incompetence drew out the reporting process for days. The debate in New Hampshire was pitched as a contest between them, a bid to see which would prevail – the moderate, big money-backed Buttigieg, or the grassroots financing juggernaught of the progressive Sanders. Prognoses pitched the debate as a battle between the party’s ideological factions, and speculated at how the two men would attack each other, and which would prevail.
But the five other candidates onstage had other plans. Senator Amy Klobuchar, of Minnesota, attacked Buttigieg fiercely and repeatedly. The moderate Senator is competing with the mayor for the Democratic party’s right flank, and it made strategic sense for her to go after the man stealing away what she sees as her most likely voters. But there was also what seemed like a degree of sincere personal contempt in Klobuchar’s remarks toward Buttigieg. She has remarked before that his youth and inexperience would not be overlooked so easily in a woman candidate, and her comments on his inconsistent positions and lack of national experience carried with them a sting of anger at his arrogance and easy rise to the top of the polls. The exchanges highlighted Klobuchar’s refreshing authenticity, coming as they did on a stage full of people who are very practiced in saying things they do not mean. This combined with a ready sense of humor made Klobuchar a more charismatic figure on stage than many of her competitors, even as her policy positions continue to tend toward the unimaginative, uninspired, and unambitious, and threaten to reproduce ongoing cruelties.
Klobuchar was not alone in attacking Buttigieg, as his competitors for the moderate wing of the party seemed to have determined that he poses the greatest risk to their own success. The billionaire Tom Steyer attacked his inexperience and said that he was afraid that the mayor couldn’t beat Trump. And former Vice President Joe Biden, though often incomprehensible, seemed to make a similar case implying that the mayor would not be able to effectively reach across the aisle. Even Massachusetts Senator Elizabeth Warren pointed out that only her campaign and Klobuchar’s were being supported neither through their personal wealth nor through opaque 501(c) 4 organizations, a comment that named no names but implicitly cast aspersions on Buttegeig’s robust fundraising operation, which relies heavily on wealthy individuals and organizations that are not required to disclose their donors.
If attacking Buttigieg was popular, the mayor himself did little to convince viewers that he did not deserve it. He responded to questions and volleyed attacks with his accustomed air of rehearsed imprecision, never deviating from his robotic affect and never giving a straight answer. The only time he ever seemed to answer a direct “yes” or “no” question was once, early in the evening, when he responded in the affirmative to confirm that he was indeed trying to attack Sanders.
Buttigieg dodged questions on his healthcare plan and he dodged a question on a troubling history of police racism during his tenure as the Mayor of South Bend. He was heavy on niceties, light on specifics. He made lots of calls for unity, specifically in his attacks on the Senators to his left, but he did not have much to say about what Americans should unify around, or how to persuade them do so. His answers sounded more like marketing copy for a nefarious tech start up than like statements of political principle. He looked, more than anything, like a man who has not relaxed since he was a child.
Through his cloud of consultant-speak and imprecision, it became clear that Buttigieg was trying to attack Sanders, and specifically, trying to emphasize that the Vermont Senator was divisive. He wasn’t alone in this project. Biden in particular attacked Sanders, pointing out, correctly, that Sanders has not released a financing plan for his signature Medicare for All plan, and speculated, incorrectly, that the plan would double the federal budget and wildly increase, if not outright double, taxes for working people.
For his part, Sanders parried most of these attacks with uncharacteristic patience, and he was at his best when he was making the plain moral case for his progressive positions, as when he called for diverting funds that have been spent on disastrous foreign wars to help fight climate change instead. Still, at times Sanders seemed a bit daunted by the attacks. At one point, he had to walk back and disavow comments made by his own campaign co-chair, Nina Turner. He did not give a concrete answer to a question about his past pro-gun stances. At another point, he answered a question on foreign policy, an area where his competence has improved tremendously since 2016, in a rambling and distracted manner, failing to make the plain humanitarian case for his own noninterventionist position.
It’s clear that Sanders is not used to receiving these kinds of attacks from his competitors: this is the first time that they are attacking him in a sustained manner, and that is probably because this is the first time that they have taken his candidacy seriously. Withstanding these aggressions is a skill he will have to hone if he is to face Trump in a general election as the party’s nominee.
Unexpectedly little was heard from Senator Elizabeth Warren, of Massachusetts, who has been largely absent from media narratives about the race in the days since the Iowa caucuses. Despite conventional wisdom that the primary grants “three tickets out of Iowa,” her better-than-expected third place finish has been overlooked in favor of a myopic focus by the pundit class on the emerging rivalry between Buttigieg and Sanders.
On the debate stage, Warren tried to use this to her advantage: while her rivals attacked one another and everyone else, she avoided making direct criticisms of other candidates and instead used every answer to make a broad moral case for her own position, tying everything back to her recurring anti-corruption message. At times, this involved some impressive verbal contortions: a question about gun control became an answer about gun control, gun suicides, domestic violence, and the political bribery power of the NRA. She stayed out of the sectarian fights that erupted around her, and depicted herself as a dedicated anticorruption advocate who could rise above the fray. The strategy seemed to be to show herself being the thing that the other candidates kept loudly declaring themselves to be: the unity candidate.
Andrew Yang was also present.
But a shadow hung over the debate: Mike Bloomberg, the billionaire who entered the presidential race in November. Bloomberg is effectively sitting out the first several contests of the primary cycle, and as a self-funded candidate, he does not qualify for the televised debates. But the super-billionaire is buying huge amounts of airtime in Super Tuesday states to run commercials for his bid; his stiffly smiling face appears whenever you flip on a television. Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren both went out of their way to say that it was not acceptable for someone so wealthy to try to effectively purchase themselves political office. “A billionaire shouldn’t be able to buy their way into this race,” Warren said. He shouldn’t be able to. But its very possible that he can.
Moira Donegan is a Guardian US columnist
