Democratic Debate Field Agrees on Impeachment but Diverges on Trade

But fault lines among the Democrats emerged quickly on matters of the economy, with two candidates — Sens. Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota and Bernie Sanders of Vermont — parting ways on the merits of Trump’s new trade deal with Mexico and Canada, which the House approved only hours earlier. And in the earliest stage of the debate, there were hints of friction over proposals by Sanders and Sen. Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts to create broad new college tuition benefits and to impose new taxes on the country’s largest private fortunes.

And in a pointed answer early in the evening, businessman Andrew Yang lamented the racial homogeneity of the rest of the debaters onstage. When a moderator noted that Yang was the only member of a minority group among the seven candidates, Yang described that distinction as “both an honor and disappointment.” He suggested that the economic distress of black and Latino voters made it harder for them to thrive in politics or to donate to political candidates.

“I miss Kamala, and I miss Cory, though I think Cory will be back,” Yang said, referring to Sen. Cory Booker of New Jersey, who failed to qualify for the debate, and Sen. Kamala Harris of California, who recently withdrew from the race.

Notably absent from the first hour of the debate was a discussion of health care, which has been the most divisive issue in the Democratic primary contest. In previous debates the topic had dominated the early stages, as the more progressive candidates championed their sweeping single-payer “Medicare for All” proposals and the more centrist candidates dismissed that approach, casting it as one that would deprive Americans of choice in their health care options. But Thursday, the issue was sidelined in favor of discussion of climate change, foreign policy and the economy.

If the candidates were united in heaping opprobrium on Trump a day after he was impeached by the House, which is controlled by Democrats, few offered fresh arguments in favor of impeachment. Prodded by a moderator to explain how they would persuade a larger share of the country to support removing the president from office, the leading candidates mainly pivoted to the themes of their stump speeches.

Former Vice President Joe Biden said it was high time to “restore the integrity of the presidency,” while Sanders castigated Trump for having “sold out the working families of this country” and Warren branded him “the most corrupt president in living history.” The candidates, explicitly or by implication, all suggested they would be best equipped to make that case against him next fall.

Klobuchar, a former district attorney, addressed the question more literally, explaining she would seek to move public opinion by challenging the president to let his top aides testify before the Senate. Democrats in both chambers have been seeking to obtain testimony from figures like Mick Mulvaney, the acting White House chief of staff, and John Bolton, the former national security adviser, so far to no avail.

In each case, however, the candidates seemed to anticipate a general election battle with Trump as a foregone conclusion, evincing little optimism that he could be removed from office in the impeachment process. Mayor Pete Buttigieg of South Bend, Indiana, nudged voters’ attention to the general election, arguing, “No matter what happens in the Senate, it is up to us in 2020.”

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Klobuchar referred to the Ukraine dealings that are at the center of the impeachment charges against the president as a “global Watergate.” “As we face this trial in the Senate,” she said, “if the president claims that he is so innocent, then why doesn’t he have all the president’s men testify?”

A lonely voice of skepticism came from Yang, the former tech executive mounting an underdog campaign, who described impeachment as a distraction from more important economic issues. Suggesting Trump’s acquittal in the Senate was a foregone conclusion, Yang likened it to “a ballgame where you know what the score is going to be.”

Democrats, he said, should focus instead on offering a “new positive vision for the country.”

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Economic and trade issues took on a more prominent role in the discussion. Just minutes into the debate, a question about trade highlighted tension.

Sanders said that he would not support the trade agreement that the House passed Thursday, calling it a “modest improvement over what we have right now” but arguing that it would not do enough to support workers and farmers. He also appeared to take an oblique swipe at Biden’s past support of measures like NAFTA.

Klobuchar, a moderate, immediately seized on a chance to draw a contrast with Sanders, saying she would support the new trade agreement, which she called a “much better deal” for “farmers in the Midwest” and others who have struggled under strained international trade relations.

They did not clash directly in the first minutes of the debate, but Warren and Buttigieg quickly sketched out two sharply divergent approaches to improving the economy and addressing inequality.

“Oh, they’re just wrong!” Warren bristled when asked about concerns regarding her tax plans, going on to defend her wealth tax proposal, which would affect the richest Americans to help pay for significantly expanding the social safety net.

Soon after, Buttigieg took a thinly veiled swipe at that approach, emphasizing the importance of “promises that we can keep without the kind of taxation that economists tell us could hurt the economy.”

“We’ve got to break out of the Washington mindset that measures the bigness of an idea by the trillions of dollars it adds to the budget or the boldness of an idea by how many Americans it can antagonize,” he said.

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In addition to impeachment, the debate Thursday also came a day after a federal appeals court in New Orleans struck down a component of the Affordable Care Act — its mandate that all Americans buy health insurance — but did not invalidate the rest of the law, sending the case back to a federal district judge in Texas. That thrust back into the headlines the possibility that the law could eventually be dismantled by conservative judges. The case in question might not be resolved until after the 2020 election, but even the intermediate ruling could raise the stakes for the debate over health care, which has been the dominant and most divisive issue in the primary race.

And the debate also intersected with a deepening conversation among Democrats about how to address the economy during the campaign, given the continuing strength of the job market and Trump’s claims of progress in trade negotiations with China, as well as with Canada and Mexico.

While there is broad agreement that Democrats need a robust message on pocketbook issues, the party is split over whether that should take the form of promising targeted new benefits for middle- and working-class voters, or a sweeping overhaul of the economic system to remedy yawning inequality.

As the penultimate televised debate before the Iowa caucuses, the forum Thursday had the makings of an important moment in the campaign.

In the run-up, candidates seemed to be girding themselves for a contentious encounter, with Warren and Buttigieg clashing repeatedly over matters of transparency and campaign finance, and Sanders’ campaign appearing to signal a more pugnacious attitude toward both Biden and Warren.

And allies of Klobuchar, a persistent underdog who may be on the rise in Iowa, viewed the debate as a particularly important opportunity for her to stand out among a smaller field of finalists. She is set to kick off a 27-county tour of Iowa, the leadoff caucus state, Friday.

As with every previous debate, Biden entered the evening as a steady front-runner in the Democratic race. More than any other candidate, he has tried to use the impeachment process as a way of impressing upon voters the political peril of the moment, hoping to shift their attention away from complex policy arguments and toward basic assessments of the candidates’ electability.

Biden’s camp hoped he would use the debate to emphasize his prospects in the general election and his readiness to serve as commander-in-chief, given the uproar over Trump’s dealings in Ukraine. On the campaign trail, Biden has not only been trumpeting his poll numbers against the president, but also claiming an ability to help Democratic candidates in House and Senate races next fall.

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National polls released Thursday — one by CNN, another by NBC and The Wall Street Journal — showed Biden in first place, ahead of Sanders by 6 or 7 percentage points. Warren was in third place, with Buttigieg well behind in the single digits.

Yet Biden, 77, has not come close to extinguishing resistance to his candidacy or allaying the party’s persistent concerns about both his ability to inspire more liberal voters and his political dexterity at an advanced age.

The two prominent populists in the race, Sanders and Warren, may represent the most daunting obstacle to Biden. They are closest to him in national polls, though Warren’s numbers have receded since the early fall; both have huge campaign war chests and extensive field operations in the early states.

Sanders and Warren have been relatively restrained in past debates, but both have grown more willing to challenge their rivals directly in recent weeks.

Warren has taken aim at Buttigieg in particular for his practice of raising money from wealthy people at private events, prompting him to open his fundraisers to the news media. Sanders on Wednesday released a television commercial in Iowa emphasizing his reliance on an army of small donors, and his campaign staff has been sharply critical of Biden’s support for the Iraq War and international trade deals.

Perhaps the most significant candidate not onstage made no attempt to participate: Michael Bloomberg, a billionaire and former New York City mayor who entered the race last month. He has used his personal fortune to fund a mammoth advertising campaign but has pledged not to take campaign contributions — effectively waiving the chance to debate, because the DNC has been requiring candidates to prove they have a sizable number of donors in order to qualify.

This article originally appeared in The New York Times .