January 2020 Democratic debate

Child and family policy got a brief moment in the sun Tuesday night during a CNN Democratic debate when moderator Brianne Pfannenstiel observed that child care is a “huge expense for many new families and a problem especially acute in rural Iowa.” Despite the expense, she said, “many families don’t have the option of quitting a job because that income is needed.”

Some Democrats in the race have plans that could deliver significant and much-needed help to young families. This should be fertile policy terrain for the party to reach out to voters it needs, but several of the candidates delivered slightly odd answers in the debate that narrowed the problem and sold their own policies short.

Foreign policy dominated the opening section of Tuesday night’s presidential debate, and it allowed the six candidates onstage in Iowa to put some serious daylight between them on issues of war and trade.

Among other things, they debated how many troops to keep in the Middle East and whether they support the US-Mexico-Canada trade deal (USMCA) President Donald Trump negotiated.

One of the most discussed moments at Tuesday’s seventh Democratic primary debate happened after it was over, when Sens. Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders met for a post-debate discussion.

Sanders appeared to extend his hand for a handshake as Warren walked over, but no handshake took place.

During Tuesday’s Democratic debate, Sen. Bernie Sanders pushed back on CNN reporter Abby Phillip when she asked why he said he “did not believe that a woman could win the election,” comments Sen. Elizabeth Warren says he made in a private conversation.

“How could anybody in a million years not believe that a woman could become president of the United States?” Sanders asked, while denying he ever made this statement.

The Iowa caucuses are in a little more than two weeks, and the Democrats who took part in the seventh Democratic primary debate worked hard to make their final pitches to voters Tuesday night. So did many candidates who failed to make the stage: Through tweeting, late-night TV, and even summits with former presidential candidates, they tried their best to claim a small portion of the political spotlight.

Former New York City Mayor Mike Bloomberg sought out another national stage in an interview on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert, and his campaign drew attention for its Twitter antics.

“So can a woman beat Donald Trump?” Elizabeth Warren asked about an hour into the seventh Democratic presidential debate on Tuesday evening. It’s an uncomfortable — and, frankly, depressing — question. And it’s one that’s on a lot of Americans’ minds.

But what happened next was uplifting: The two women onstage, Warren and her fellow senator, Amy Klobuchar, made a case that women can and do win in politics all the time. Their proof? Themselves, and plenty of other women like them.

At Tuesday’s seventh Democratic presidential primary debate, Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-MN) went directly at the two leading progressive candidates, Sens. Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren, to make the case for a more “practical” health care reform agenda rather than pursuing Medicare-for-all.

The exchanges were, in some ways, a repeat of what’s been said in many debates before. Sanders and Warren argued the risk is not doing enough, given that America spends more money on health care than other developed countries but has worse outcomes. The moderates on the stage argued that Medicare-for-all is too expensive and risks angering Americans by moving them to a new government insurance plan.