Winners of the Third Democratic Debate By Tyler O’Neil
https://pjmedia.com/news-and-politics/winners-and-losers-of-the-third-democratic-debate/
The top ten Democrats faced off for the first time Thursday in the third Democratic debate. Frontrunner and former Vice President Joe Biden faced off with his two closest challengers, Sens. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) and Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.). Sen. Kamala Harris (D-Calif.) and South Bend Mayor Pete Buttigieg fought to hold on to their second-tier status, as five other candidates attempted to edge in.
Winner: Joe Biden.
The former vice president decided to go on offense Thursday night, and it worked well. He attacked Sanders and Warren on health care, pointing out the extremely high cost of Medicare for All and the fact that a fully single-payer overhaul would cause Americans to lose their health insurance.
Winner: Elizabeth Warren.
Liz Warren played it safe in this debate. She didn’t go after Biden and she mostly played to her strengths: mentioning her complicated policy plans, pushing for environmentalists and human rights activists to be at the table in trade talks with China, and reminding Americans that she was a schoolteacher.Warren has become a driving force of energy in the Democratic field in recent weeks, but that energy seemed muted this evening. Even so, her policy-heavy campaign seems well-tailored for success, especially if Biden and Bernie falter. She did not advance much tonight, but she didn’t falter, either.
Winner: Beto O’Rourke.
The third Democratic debate took place in Houston, Texas, Beto O’Rourke’s home turf. Debate moderators and candidates mentioned the shooting in El Paso, turning to pay homage to him as the local.
O’Rourke received loud applause for his line about gun confiscation: “Hell yes, we’re gonna take your AR-15, your AK-47!” he declared. Many liberals and journalists suggested this line defeated the argument for the Second Amendment and gun ownership.
Winner: Andrew Yang.
Yang received the lowest amount of time during the debate, but he used his time very well. He made news by announcing that he would give $1,000 per month away to ten families for one year to illustrate his central promise, the “Freedom Dividend,” a Universal Basic Income (UBI) strategy to replace many forms of welfare.
Winner: Cory Booker.
Booker proved well-spoken and surprisingly balanced on a few issues.
At one point, Castro attacked charter schools, declaring, “It is a myth that charter schools are better than public schools. They’re not.” Booker responded by insisting that in Newark he closed poor-performing charter schools but he supported charter schools that did well. (By the way, an exhaustive review of the data on charter schools found that charter elementary schools outperform traditional public schools in reading and math, while the superiority of charter high schools is less certain.)
Winner: Amy Klobuchar.
Klobuchar mostly had a forgettable debate performance, but she enjoyed a standout moment when discussing Bernie’s Medicare for All bill. “While Bernie wrote the bill, I read the bill, and on page 8, on page 8 of the bill, it says that we will no longer have private insurance as we know it. … I don’t think that’s a bold idea. I think it it’s a bad idea,” she declared.
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