Twelve Democratic presidential candidates. Three hours. Three moderators. Yes, it’s time for another debate, and those are the numbers we do know. Among the numbers we don’t know: the number of inane questions the candidates will face. The number of questions based on outright Republican talking points the candidates will face. The number of attacks candidates will wage on each other as those in the lower tier see their do-or-die moment approaching fast. The candidates: former Vice President Joe Biden; Sens. Cory Booker, Kamala Harris, Amy Klobuchar, Bernie Sanders, and Elizabeth Warren; Mayor Pete Buttigieg; former Housing and Urban Development Secretary Julián Castro; Rep. Tulsi Gabbard; former Rep. Beto O’Rourke; Tom Steyer; and Andrew Yang.
Biden and Sanders have both shown signs that they’re ready to take on the ever-rising Warren. But both men will also face significant questions on their own issues: Sanders because he will be making his first major appearance since having a heart attack and getting stents, and Biden because of Donald Trump’s efforts to pressure Ukraine to come up with dirt on him.
Similarly, Buttigieg and O’Rourke have been taking some shots at each other in campaign appearances, so it will be interesting to see if they’ll continue that as they share the same stage. Gabbard and Steyer, meanwhile, are making their move to the big stage after missing the last debate (and, in Steyer’s case, all previous debates), but Gabbard first teased the possibility that she would boycott because the process is supposedly rigged blah blah blah. Too bad for her she has now given viewers the mental image of a stage with a mere 11 candidates and then snatched it away.
Basically every candidate outside the top three of Biden, Warren, and Sanders will be trying for a breakthrough moment or at least a good enough performance to justify their continuing presence in the race—but that’s what they’ve all been trying for all along. Some, like Buttigieg and Harris, have had moments when they seemed to be in or poised to enter the top tier, but have faded. Others have never quite gotten there, and still others have been clinging desperately to the bottom edges of debate qualification. It’s hard to see how a single debate performance could alter things much, but … stranger things have happened in U.S. politics in the last few years, to say the least.
The debate, sponsored by CNN and The New York Times, will begin at 8 PM ET and last three hours. It will be moderated by CNN’s Erin Burnett and Anderson Cooper and Times national editor Marc Lacey. It “will air exclusively on CNN, CNN International and CNN en Español, and will stream on CNN.com's homepage and NYTimes.com's homepage. The debate will also stream live on the following Facebook Pages: CNN, CNN International, CNN Politics, CNN Replay, AC360 and Erin Burnett OutFront.”