South Carolina Democratic debate: February 25, 2020

Former South Bend, Indiana, Mayor Pete Buttigieg is facing criticism for launching an attack on Sen. Bernie Sanders during Tuesday night’s 10th Democratic primary debate; his critics argue the attack was also a denouncement of the political struggle that has made Buttigieg’s candidacy possible.

During the debate, Sanders was asked to clarify his stance on past comments he has made praising some aspects of left-wing dictatorships, such as their literacy and health care programs.

Sen. Bernie Sanders and his Medicare-for-all proposal were again the targets of attacks at Tuesday’s Democratic debate in South Carolina, but the senator had a retort for opponents who doubt his single-payer plan would work: a brand-new study published in The Lancet.

The study, authored by a group of Yale researchers, came to two conclusions that Sanders touted during the debate. Under Medicare-for-all, the researchers found, the United States would spend $3 trillion on health care annually, or about $460 billion less than the country spent in 2017 under the current system, and universal coverage would save almost 69,000 lives in America every year.

The Democratic presidential debates, like all presidential debates, have mostly taken place in an alternative universe where the president’s powers are absolute, and so the argument revolves entirely around electability, differences between the proposed agendas of the candidates running to win the White House, and decades-old votes that supposedly reveal their true values.

But at Tuesday’s South Carolina debate, the reality of the situation the next president will face occasionally broke through, though never very clearly, nor for very long.

Candidates on the debate stage were markedly rowdier on Tuesday — and they weren’t the only ones. Throughout the night, the audience seemingly was, too.

In moment after moment, including when Sen. Bernie Sanders pressed former New York City Mayor Mike Bloomberg on the overwhelming support he receives from billionaires, the audience responded effusively with boos. Notably, in several instances, the reaction seemed to favor Bloomberg, who was once again confronted by multiple candidates over issues including “stop and frisk” and alleged sexist comments.

In a way, the only true winner of Tuesday night’s Democratic debate in Charleston, South Carolina, was chaos. The candidates talked over each other repeatedly, defied all attempts by moderators to impose order, and wasted plenty of time jockeying to be the next to get a word in. In the fleeting moments when only one person was talking, that person was probably unloading the harshest oppo research they could remember.

Sen. Elizabeth Warren went after former New York City Mayor Mike Bloomberg for allegedly telling a pregnant female employee to “kill it”; former Vice President Joe Biden connected Bernie Sanders’s past votes on gun control to the white supremacist attack on a Charleston church in 2015; even billionaire Tom Steyer got real criticism from Biden, so that he didn’t feel left out.

After Bernie Sanders’s decisive win in the Nevada caucuses, the Democratic candidates are gathering in the next primary state of South Carolina for Tuesday’s presidential debate.

The leading contenders for the Democratic Party’s 2020 presidential nomination will take the stage at the Gaillard Center in Charleston, South Carolina, on Tuesday, February 25. The debate will start at 8 pm Eastern and is expected to last about two hours.

Joe Biden has banked his presidential campaign on winning South Carolina — a bet that is looking less and less likely to pay off.

For one, the latest polls don’t bode well for the former vice president. While Biden once held a 20-point lead in South Carolina, he was up by just 5 points in a January Post and Courier poll. Similarly, the RealClearPolitics average has him less than 4 points ahead of Sen. Bernie Sanders, followed closely by billionaire activist Tom Steyer.

The third (yes, third) Democratic primary debate of the month will be held in Charleston, South Carolina, on Tuesday, February 25. It is co-hosted by CBS and the Congressional Black Caucus Institute, and will air from 8 pm to 10 pm ET on CBS, BET, and Twitter.

The debate is the last of a deluge scheduled for February, and it’s taking place just days before the South Carolina primary, which will happen on Saturday, February 29. Candidates’ performances onstage could play a critical role — in New Hampshire, many voters who made up their minds late in the race indicated that the debate right before the primary influenced their ultimate decisions.