The October Democratic Debate: A Twelve Person Stage with Four Outstanding Performances

A new installment of the Democratic debates, headed towards the 2020 presidential election, was hosted by CNN and The New York Times on Oct. 15, 2019, outside of Columbus, Ohio, at Otterbein University. Like the September debate, there was only one night of the debate, and the candidates shared only one stage.

Twelve candidates qualified to participate in the October debates, which introduced a new candidate to the stage, billionaire Tom Steyer, and showed another candidate, Representative Tulsi Gabbard, who had not been on stage since the July debates. The debate lasted three hours, from 8-11 p.m. on Tuesday night. Frontrunners Former Vice President Joe Biden and Senator Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts were positioned at the center of the twelve candidates. Next to Senator Warren followed South Bend, Indiana Mayor Pete Buttigieg, businessman Andrew Yang, former Texas Representative Beto O’Rourke, Senator Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota, and former Secretary of Housing and Urban Development Julián Castro. On the left, next to former Vice President Biden, stood Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont, Senator Kamala Harris of California, Senator Cory Booker of New Jersey, billionaire Tom Steyer, and Representative Tulsi Gabbard of Hawaii. 

To qualify for the October debate, candidates must have reached above 2% in at least four qualifying (national, or Democratic National Committee recognized) polls, and must have received donations from 130,000 unique donors, which includes at least 400 donors in at least 20 states. 

With Elizabeth Warren taking Joe Biden’s place as the frontrunner, she was called out by many of her rivals during the three-hour long debate. Bernie Sanders was asked about how he can assure voters his health would not get in the way of his campaign or ability to run a country following his heart attack, which happened just two weeks prior to the fourth debate.  With Biden no longer first in the race for the Oval Office, he failed to make much of any statement on the stage, except when questioned about his son Hunter Biden’s affiliation with Ukraine. 

Senator Warren received quite a lot of fire as her rivals attempted to make stand out comments against her considering her seat as the frontrunner. This included Mayor Pete calling out her health care plan and her apparent “distrust” of the American people and their ability to choose between sticking to private health insurance plans or joining a public one. In the same vein, Vice President Biden denounced Warren’s health care plans as “vague,” and accused her of never getting anything worthwhile done while serving in the Senate. Minnesota Senator Klobuchar, who has failed to make much of an impact on the debate stage at all, made an overarching statement of Warren’s plans as President, calling them a “pipe dream.” Senator Harris also attacked Warren on her choice not to join in Harris’s call on Twitter to delete President Trump’s pages from the platform.

Elizabeth Warren has risen in the polls, due in part to her policy and specifics when marketing herself for the White House. However, what got her to first place in the polls was not evident on the debate stage. In fact, she was relatively quiet about whether her health care plans would raise taxes for the middle class. 

Joe Biden was only asked about his son, Hunter and his work in Ukraine once, and as the other contenders on stage failed to push him on the issue, it quickly vanished to the background. Other than the questions from moderators, Biden was not presented as the candidate to beat Tuesday night. His strongest moment was against Elizabeth Warren, but even his strongest moment showed he did not compare to his female counterpart.

Following Bernie’s heart attack, supporters were concerned that he would not present the same way he always had at the October debate. Nonetheless, their concerns quickly ceased when he acted the same he always had when he pitched his health care plans and restated his popular line from a previous debate, “I wrote the damn bill.” Bernie was the same  Vermont Senator that had been on the stage so many times before, and even shared a humorous moment with New Jersey Senator Cory Booker, who joked that he supported medical marijuana, to which Bernie responded, “I’m not on it tonight.”

As another contender on the debate stage, Mayor Pete proved to be quite the aggressor. For all the previous debates, Buttigieg had made his own campaign points when they fit into the dialogue, rather than interrupted or made pointed statements at his rivals. Tuesday night presented a different side of Buttigieg though, as he argued with former Representative O’Rourke on whether a gun buyback program should be mandatory or voluntary and feuded with Representative Tulsi Gabbard on foreign policy. Still, his most outstanding moment came when he sparred with Warren on her “Medicare for all” policy, which she had been relatively silent about the entire three hours. He said, “your signature, senator, is to have a plan for everything. Except this.”

For many, the stage appeared to narrow from a 12-person debate to a four person, between Warren, Sanders, Biden, and Buttigieg. With middle-achieving candidates like Senators Booker and Harris, staying out of the gunfire being exchanged from the center-most candidates on stage, there were no super remarkable moments for many of the candidates on the debate stage, especially those who qualified for the debate by the smallest of stretches. 

Eight of the twelve candidates on stage have already qualified for the fifth democratic debate in November, and it is likely this upcoming debate will be the smallest one yet. The other four candidates on the October debate stage have reached the donor requirement to qualify for the fifth debate, but have yet to reach that 2% threshold in four DNC-recognized polls. 

The next Democratic debate will be hosted by MSNBC and The Washington Post near Atlanta, Georgia. The first night will be November 20, with an unlikely following date set for November 21 if enough candidates qualify.