The first Democratic presidential debate: June 26-27, 2019

The second round of the first Democratic primary debates on June 27 included a revealing — and at times tense — discussion of race between several candidates. A defining moment was when Sen. Kamala Harris took former Vice President Joe Biden to task over his recent comments about segregationist senators, as well as his opposition to using federally mandated busing to racially integrate schools in the 1970s. She pointed directly to how busing affected her life as a young child.

“You also worked with [those segregationist senators] to oppose busing,” Harris said, speaking directly to Biden. “And there was a little girl in California who was part of the second class to integrate her public schools and she was bused to school every day. And that little girl was me.”

Sen. Kamala Harris had a few memorable moments during Thursday’s Democratic primary debate, from ending a shouting match with a quip to challenging Joe Biden on his record on busing. According to a new poll from Morning Consult, those moments seem to have had a highly positive impact on her candidacy — following the debate, she now places third among likely voters.

Harris now polls at 12 percent, up 6 points from the previous week. This puts her in third place alongside Sen. Elizabeth Warren, who also polled at 12 percent, a 1 percent dip compared the previous week (a change within Morning Consult’s margin of error). Warren and Harris are behind Sen. Bernie Sanders, whose support stands at 19 percent.

Sens. Bernie Sanders and Kamala Harris raised their hands at the second night of the first Democratic presidential debate when asked if they would abolish private health insurance, and the fraught politics of Medicare-for-all revealed themselves again.

It was a repeat of a question moderators asked the first night, when Sen. Elizabeth Warren and New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio said they wanted to end private coverage. Sanders and Harris said yes, which didn’t seem like a surprise: They are both sponsors of Sanders’s Medicare-for-all bill that would eliminate private insurance and move every American into a single national government insurance plan after a transition period.

The first two Democratic presidential debates for the 2020 election this week devoted more attention to climate change than in all the 2016 debates combined. But the climate crisis got just 15 minutes across four hours of airtime. And it wasn’t time particularly well spent: The questions were muddled, the discussion was shallow, and most viewers probably didn’t come away better informed.

All of this helps to make activists’ case for why the Democratic National Committee should hold a separate climate change debate. Groups like the Sunrise Movement and Greenpeace have been calling for one and were disappointed with this week’s performances.

There was one obvious loser in the first round of Democratic debates: foreign policy.

Night one eked out a few notable moments, but the bar somehow lowered on night two, when the 10 candidates on stage barely engaged with some of the most critical foreign and national security issues the US is facing right now.

Sen. Kamala Harris is the closest Democrats have to a potential consensus candidate. She doesn’t suffer from the enmity that Hillary Clinton voters have for Sen. Bernie Sanders, or that leftists hold for former Vice President Joe Biden, or that the Obama administration has for Elizabeth Warren. She’s not another white guy running to represent a diverse party. She’s got enough political experience to be a credible candidate, but not so much that she’s been on the wrong side of dozens of controversial issues.

But Harris wouldn’t be the first politician to look good on paper only to falter in the campaign. And so the question that has quietly suffused Democratic politics for the past few years has been: Can she do it? Can she perform under the lights?

Many candidates in this week’s Democratic debates talked about the future of abortion rights in America. But Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand was one of few to talk about the history.

The exchange started with a question to Sen. Bernie Sanders about how he would preserve abortion rights if the landmark Supreme Court decision Roe v. Wade were overturned before he became president. Sanders responded that his Medicare for All bill would cover abortion for anyone who wanted it.

The first Democratic debate of 2019, so big it had to be spread out over two nights, is finally over. We made it through! Take a moment to be proud of yourselves.

The entire two-night spectacle was chaotic, to be sure, but also substantive, with significant exchanges on issues ranging from race to health care to foreign policy.

There were 10 new candidates onstage during night two of the first Democratic presidential debate — 11, if you count President Donald Trump.

After hardly being mentioned during night one of the first Democratic presidential debate, Trump — and in particular his administration’s cruelty to unauthorized immigrants — was a major theme Thursday night.

It’s over. After two grueling nights, all the Democratic presidential candidates have had their say. (Well, not all — not Seth Moulton, not Joe Sestak, nor any of the three other candidates whom the Democratic National Committee deemed “not as important as Eric Swalwell.”)

But 20 candidates have said their piece, in the final event of its kind until [checks calendar] next month. And on night two, the two arguable frontrunners (Joe Biden and Bernie Sanders), two candidates who’ve been nipping at their heels (Kamala Harris, Pete Buttigieg), and two agents of chaos (Marianne Williamson, Andrew Yang) all came to play.

Just 20 minutes into the first Democratic presidential debate, NBC’s Lester Holt asked for a show of hands on the biggest question about Medicare-for-all, a top progressive policy goal: Would you abolish private insurance?

It’s a controversial question even though many of these candidates have spoken favorably about a plan to move America to single-payer health insurance.

Update: The lineup of candidates who will debate on each night of the two-night first debate has been announced.

Original story: The Democratic National Committee has determined who qualified for its first two-night Democratic presidential debate this: 20 candidates.