What happened in Vegas? Who won, who lost and takeaways from the Democratic debate
LAS VEGAS — It took less than five minutes for Elizabeth Warren to set the tone for Wednesday’s debate.
She lept into the middle of a Bernie Sanders-MikeBloomberg tiff over electability to denounce Bloomberg’s treatment of women, stirring waves of applause in the debate hall — and setting off a rollicking two hours when the Democratic presidential candidates finally said what they really think about each other.
Bloomberg took the brunt of the fire after spending his way onto the debate stage for the first time, but everyone had to take their turn playing offense and defense. Warren critiqued every other candidate’s health care plan in a single answer, injecting a rush of energy into her campaign. Pete Buttigieg and Amy Klobuchar continued a running battle that has built over several debates, while Biden lit into Bloomberg over Obamacare and Sanders faced questions about his policy disagreements with a powerful Nevada labor union.
What did we learn in the debate? We asked four POLITICO campaign reporters — Christopher Cadelago, Holly Otterbein, Elena Schneider and Alex Thompson — for their takeaways from the Nevada debate.
Who had the best night? Who had the worst night?
Otterbein: Warren dominated the night. Progressive activists said this was the Warren they knew and loved and have missed recently this primary. The question is, is it too late for that to matter? It might not be: Amy Klobuchar’s strong debate performance before New Hampshire’s primary helped earn her an unexpected third-place finish there.
Meanwhile, Bloomberg had a devastating night, and post-debate polls will show whether his support is as soft as his rivals believe it is. Many voters likely learned for the first time tonight that he endorsed former President George W. Bush for reelection, made offensive comments about women, used nondisclosure agreements to keep allegations of sexual harassment at his company quiet, and on and on.
Thompson: Warren clearly had a good night — but I think Sanders probably had the best night, given that he went on stage as the frontrunner and seemed to leave the stage as the frontrunner. Other rivals, realizing he is on a path to winning the nomination, lobbed more attacks than ever, but Sanders largely deflected them.
As for the worst night, Bloomberg learned that running for president is harder than it looks. The other candidates have been campaigning for the better part of a year and had participated in eight other debates before. Bloomberg hadn’t — and it showed. He did seem to get more comfortable after the first hour, so perhaps the next debate will be better.
Cadelago: Warren brought the fight and showed that she isn’t ready to go down quietly. Her almost prosecutorial exchanges with Bloomberg over his wealth and his company’s nondisclosure agreements with women will be replayed in debate highlights for years. Warren’s challenge will be how to carry forward her momentum and stay in the hunt until Super Tuesday — essentially, avoid being this year’s Chris Christie, whose big debate performance in 2016 is remembered for bringing down Marco Rubio more than it boosted him. Warren will have to coalesce some voters that are gravitating to Sanders.
As for Bloomberg, he’ll have to hope that what happened in Vegas stays in Vegas.
Schneider: Heartily agree with Chris here. Warren took on nearly every person on that stage, and she displayed the fight she’s talked about on the stump — but held in reserve, up until now, against her fellow Democrats.
But strikingly, though, Warren barely took direct aim at Sanders, who is the Democratic frontrunner in Nevada as well as the latest national polls.
What surprised you most during this debate?
Schneider: I didn’t expect a Democratic candidate to defend the use of nondisclosure agreements in the era of #MeToo and in the middle of Harvey Weinstein’s trial in New York. Bloomberg declined to put a number on the nondisclosure agreements his company has actually signed, after he was pressed repeatedly by Warren. Lines from the former mayor like, “They wanted to keep it quiet for everybody’s interest,” seem strikingly discordant with this moment in the Democratic Party.
Cadelago: Warren, Biden and, to a lesser degree, Klobuchar did a good job of hammering Bloomberg, whose quick rise in polls poses a mortal threat to their campaigns. But only Buttigieg consistently set himself up against Sanders, the actual frontrunner in the race. If Biden falters in Nevada and South Carolina, Buttigieg could be the one who inherits his support.
Otterbein: NBC’s Chuck Todd asked if the person with the most delegates should be the nominee, even if they don’t have a majority. Only Sanders said a candidate leading the delegate race but without a majority heading into the convention should get the nomination, while everyone else said the process of a contested convention should play out.
That signals the Democratic field thinks there’s a good chance Sanders will end up with a plurality of delegates — and it means a contested convention might not just be the idle daydream of campaign pundits this year. Sanders’ team is going to try to get all the mileage it can out of that moment, saying that his rivals are OK with superdelegates deciding the Democratic nomination. But there’s a counterattack his rivals can use on that front: Sanders’ campaign went into the end of the 2016 primary season behind Hillary Clinton in the delegate race but still claiming he could win at the convention.
Thompson: I was surprised that Warren changed up her strategy. In past debates, she has stayed steady, almost never deviating from the strategy of staying above the fray and not criticizing opponents. But with her candidacy in deep trouble, she changed it up and embraced the tougher approach that made her a left-wing hero earlier this decade. After a year of sticking doggedly to the plan, I was surprised her campaign tried something new — but it worked.
Did we learn something new about the candidates?
Otterbein: They can actually debate! More seriously, I was struck by Sanders’ response to Bloomberg’s attack that he is a millionaire who owns three homes: The Vermont senator listed his homes and called one a summer camp. It wasn’t a strong response — and it’s a sign that the son of the working class is not comfortable with his newfound wealth and hasn’t come up with a good way to talk about it. Months ago when Sanders released his tax returns, he told a reporter, “If you write a bestselling book you can be a millionaire, too.” Awkward.
Thompson: We learned how much they all hate Bloomberg and resent the unprecedented hundreds of millions of dollars he has spent in ten weeks, which has put him right in the middle of the delegate race on Super Tuesday — and put him on that debate stage Wednesday night.
Cadelago: Klobuchar’s streak of successful debates came to an end tonight. She’ll need a big finish this weekend to keep herself in the game.
Schneider: However, we did learn from Klobuchar that Post-it notes were invented in Minnesota.
How will this debate change the Nevada caucuses — and the South Carolina primary and Super Tuesday?
Thompson: It looks like we are about to see a pretty brutal fight begin after a mostly cordial year-plus of the primary race so far.
Sanders is in the lead, but he hasn’t completely broken out yet, and we saw strong performances from several of the candidates who don’t seem like they are going anywhere. In other words, I think this debate makes it more likely we could see a protracted, lengthy battle for the nomination instead of Democrats largely wrapping it up by Super Tuesday.
Schneider: Could the debate set off a Warren surge in Nevada, like Klobuchar had in New Hampshire after her strong debate? Her strong performance certainly could give her some momentum, and Warren undoubtedly has the campaign machinery on the ground in Nevada to try to capitalize it. Maybe the biggest thing standing between her and a surge of important momentum is Nevada Democrats’ early voting system. A huge chunk of Democrats in Nevada caucused before the debate took place, so she may not benefit from the same kind of leap that propelled Klobuchar.
Cadelago: There’s been huge early voting in Nevada. And, Warren may have missed some of that wave. But, she could make up for it in droves if the folks from Super Tuesday states with early voting liked her performance tonight enough to give her their votes. In addition, she may raise enough money off this debate to make a difference in the sprawling Super Tuesday landscape, where only Sanders and the two billionaire candidates, Bloomberg and Tom Steyer, have had the resources to air big TV ad campaigns so far, though Warren has done some spending in Maine.
Otterbein: We’ll see when the results from the caucuses come in! But it’s notable that in Nevada, where Sanders is the frontrunner, he got off relatively easily — at least compared to Bloomberg. Sure, Sanders was attacked by Warren over his health care plan, by Bloomberg for having three homes, by Biden and Klobuchar for his immigration record. It was more incoming than usual. But it was far less than what Bloomberg sustained, and Sanders sustained it better than Bloomberg.
