We begin today’s roundup with Aaron Blake’s analysis at The Washington Post on the top winner from last night’s Democratic debate and thinks Elizabeth Warren bested the other candidates:
The Democratic Party: Given this was the first time the cream of the Democratic crop was all on the same debate stage, it took on added significance. And the field was better than it has been. The absence of bomb-throwers who were at 1 percent in the polls helped keep things focused. But even beyond that, the candidates including former vice president Joe Biden (though he still had his poor moments) and Kamala D. Harris (who somewhat fell apart in her closing statement) were generally sharper than they have been. [...]
Elizabeth Warren: She was not dominant, she had the best performance and, more importantly, the fewest tough moments. Warren seems to come into these debates with a clear game-plan, lots of ideas and — somewhat inexplicably — seems almost impossible for her opponents to attack. If that continues to be the case, she reaps the rewards from Biden and Bernie Sanders taking hits. She’s also the only candidate with sustained upward momentum in this race. It’s difficult to see how that doesn’t continue after this.
Timothy Egan at The New York Times thinks Biden held his own and is still the frontrunner:
Waiting for Uncle Joe to collapse is not a winning strategy. Most of the other candidates in Thursday’s debate seemed to get that. O’Rourke had his best night. This is the rare politician who’s not afraid to let it rip, the b.s. valve turned off. Kamala Harris is brilliant, and would crush Trump in a debate. “You can go back to watching Fox News,” was her line that should be on bumper stickers soon. And on the shootings, she said of Trump: “He didn’t pull the trigger but he’s certainly been tweeting out the ammunition.”
For the two of them, though, it may too late: both Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump led at this stage in the polls four years ago.
Emma Green at The Atlantic praises Beto O’Rouke’s focus on gun safety:
His impassioned arguments for gun control, born from his lived experience of leaving the campaign trail to sit with the victims of gun violence and their families, may set the Democratic conversation around guns, not least because O’Rourke’s competitors seem eager to hand him the mic and listen. [...]
O’Rourke’s experience in El Paso may have permanently shifted his presidential bid, and perhaps his political career. When he speaks about this issue, he appears to speak from the heart. The Democratic presidential candidates agree that they have to do something about how guns are bought and sold in America. In the end, O’Rourke may not make it to the White House, but on this issue, he may lead the way.
Russel Berman focuses on Elizabeth Warren’s choice of framing on her health insurance plan:
The word taxes appeared nowhere in her answers, and that’s a clue that yes, taxes for the middle class may be going up under Warren’s plan, which she has adopted from Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont. What she’s arguing is that any increase in taxes will be more than offset by the reduction in costs that people will have to pay for health care under a government-run system. Premiums will be much lower; deductibles will be much lower; the price of medication will be lower. So what, Warren is suggesting, if middle-class families have to pay a bit more up front if their overall financial burden is going down? But for now, she’s shying away from outlining the trade-off explicitly.
Gabriel Debenedetti at New York magazine analyzes Bernie Sanders and his debate strategy:
And it’s clear he believes that means attacking Biden, specifically, not any of his other rivals — at one point he pointed out he was the only person on stage to vote against all of Trump’s military budgets, but that only implicitly hit his fellow senators Warren, Harris, and Amy Klobuchar. He never used their names. “Biden is the front-runner, I think he’s kinda a weak front-runner at this time. But there’s still a number of working class voters who are supporting Joe Biden,” said Jeff Weaver, a senior Sanders advisor for years, pointing out this was the first time all the top candidates were on stage together, and potentially the last time for a few more months, since October’s debate will likely be split into two stages again. To one former Sanders aide who worked closely with him on debate prep in 2016, the candidate now appeared to be far more comfortable drawing these contrasts than he had early in the last cycle.
But, as always with Sanders, the question is whether the attacks — so classic in their content, and therefore so unlikely to surprise many viewers (who already know both he and Biden well) — will shift the political ground. “Did it change anything?,” the former aide asked, genuinely unsure.
Meanwhile, Mimi Swartz welcomed the spotlight on Texas:
All I can say is that if you are like me, and you remember those years when national Democratic Party leaders treated Texas like it had a near fatal case of cooties — from Michael Dukakis and Bill Clinton to Hillary Clinton’s attempts in 2008 and 2016 and all those off-year elections in between — tonight’s debate gave me a serious case of whiplash.
My once reviled home state is suddenly finding itself embraced in a bear hug as big as, well, Texas.
Why would this be happening? Because Texas could maybe shift from the Republican column to the Democratic one, that’s why. Suddenly everyone is crazy about us. Like they haven’t been since, oh, 1976, when Texas went for Jimmy Carter and most residents of the state probably regret it to this day.
While Democrats were listening to a robust, detailed debate on policy from a stage filled with capable, talented candidates, Republicans listening to a “rambling” Trump speech at the same time heard this:
While the Democrats were debating health care, gun control, and making March of the Penguins wise-cracks, President Trump was also having quite a night.
Speaking at the House Republican's retreat in Baltimore on Thursday, Trump told House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Ca.) that he was "just like a cow ... just smaller." Which, well, isn't exactly flattering, but Trump softened the blow by adding that McCarthy has a "beautiful political face."
It wasn't the only odd comment to slip past the president's lips. America's commander-in-chief also blasted "expensive" energy efficient light bulbs for making him "look orange" and joked about what would happen if America relied on wind energy. "'Charlie, what the hell happened to this debate?'" Trump asked in a fake-nagging-wife voice, pretending the TV had gone out. "He says, 'Darling, the wind isn't blowing, the godda-- windmill stopped.'"
On a final note, looking forward, Chris Truax argues at USA Today that Sharpiegate was just the beginning of increasingly erratic behavior leading up to the 2020 election:
Trump’s willingness to politicize everything from the Justice Department to the National Weather Service is going to be an increasingly serious problem as we head into the 2020 election. Exposing the details of his efforts to influence NOAA to some congressional sunshine will send a message: There will be accountability, so mind what you do. Congress may not be able to stop Trump from lying. But maybe it can help ordinary federal employees stand up for the truth.
