6 things to watch in Friday night’s Democratic debate in New Hampshire
The Democratic presidential race is clouded in uncertainty, with every leading candidate facing questions that cast doubt on their readiness to become their party’s standard-bearer.
Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont hasn’t yet produced the explosion in voter turnout that he forecast. Former South Bend, Indiana, Mayor Pete Buttigieg faces a steep climb with nonwhite voters. Sen. Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts has fallen behind them both. Former Vice President Joe Biden’s dismal Iowa showing raised new doubts about his organizing and fundraising capabilities.
And, with 100% of the precincts reporting, Buttigieg holds a narrow lead — one-tenth of a percentage point — over Sanders.
Seven of the leading Democratic candidates will get one more chance to win over a national audience ahead of Tuesday’s New Hampshire primary when they meet Friday night for a debate in Manchester hosted by ABC News, Apple News and WMUR-TV.
Here are six things to watch in the debate:
How will the candidates handle Iowa’s uncertainty?
The Iowa caucuses have — over the last few days — devolved into chaos, with problems reporting the results and mistakes after they were published leaving candidates to claim victory, obscure losses and air their grievances with the entire nominating process.
How the candidates handle this debacle at Friday night’s debate will be telling.
And how will the two candidates at the top handle being on the stage together?
Despite the lack of clarity from Iowa, the Democratic primary has moved on — with candidates all now stumping in New Hampshire.
“We are absolutely electrified by the energy that we are coming here with,” Buttigieg said on Thursday. “I’m also mindful and humbled by the fact that New Hampshire is New Hampshire, and New Hampshire is not the kind of place to let Iowa or anybody else tell you what to do.”
Sanders looked to tout his performance at a news conference on the same day: “This difference, no matter who inches ahead in the end, is meaningless. Because we are both likely to receive the same number of national delegates to the Democratic National Convention in Milwaukee.”
Can Warren’s promise of unity break through?
Warren, in the run-up to Iowa, pitched voters on a message of unity — the kind that, she argued, only her campaign could deliver.
On Friday night, she will have a unique — and unexpected — opportunity to press that case amid the protracted and increasingly contentious fight over Iowa.
The state party’s fumbling of the caucuses has essentially forced both of the leaders there, Buttigieg and Sanders, to wage a messaging war over who won.
But the unease coming out of Iowa extends beyond Sanders’ and Buttigieg’s jockeying. Democrats scarred by the 2016 contest are desperate to crown a nominee with a minimum of drama. For those voters, and there are a lot of them, Warren’s appeal for unity could be more appetizing than it was even a week ago.
Add to that her new digital ad, which features former President Barack Obama — the most popular figure in Democratic politics by miles — touting her work in establishing the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau and it’s a good bet Warren will double down on her appeal to undecided voters looking for a candidate who can reasonably argue she is the party’s best bet to bring its ideological factions together in November.
Can Biden recover?
The former vice president admitted Iowa had been a “gut punch.” There are signs — from poll numbers to demographics — that he’s on track to suffer another blow in New Hampshire.
So how does Biden get back on track?
For months, he took a front-runner’s above-it-all approach — ignoring his intra-party rivals and trying to demonstrate he was ready to take on President Donald Trump. But in recent days, Biden has shown a new willingness to attack other Democrats, previewing an approach that’s likely to carry over onto the debate stage Friday night.
He told a crowd in Somersworth this week that Sanders is too liberal to win a general election. “He calls himself a democratic socialist. Well, we’re already seeing what Donald Trump is going to do with that,” Biden said.
Then he took aim at a rival for the party’s more moderate lane, Buttigieg.
“I do believe it’s a risk, to be just straight up with you, for this party to nominate someone who’s never held an office higher than mayor of a town of 100,000 people in Indiana,” Biden said. “I do believe it’s a risk.”
That, though, is a tricky argument to make, since all Buttigieg has to do is point to the results in Iowa.
“Well, if that argument is about electability and the ability to win, we just had the first election of the 2020 process. And I think that’s my answer,” Buttigieg said on ABC’s “The View” when asked about Biden’s comment.
What’s most important for Biden is to survive the first two states with his advantage among nonwhite voters intact — which would help him turn in better performances in Nevada and must-win South Carolina and then rack up delegates through congressional districts with sizable black and Latino populations on Super Tuesday.
If that edge erodes, though, Biden’s candidacy would be doomed.
Sanders has a lot to prove in New Hampshire
The big question facing Sanders as he heads into the Manchester debate is how much the first-in-the-nation caucuses influence talk about the first-in-the-nation primary.
With the jury still out in Iowa, and no timeline for its return, the senator from Vermont has a lot on the line in New Hampshire.
That should be good news for Sanders, who won the state in a two-horse race by more than 20 percentage points in 2016. He’s carved out a solid lead in most recent polling of the state. With independents allowed to vote in the primary, he remains a solid bet to meet those expectations — and, in a bonus, take the focus off his solid but not decisive performance in Iowa.
As important as it is to grab every delegate possible, now and throughout the process, the early states offer a lot more.
The indecision in Iowa denied Sanders and Buttigieg a chance to stand onstage and declare absolute victory as they have their messages beamed out to primary voters around the country. Pragmatically, that also means losing an opportunity to raise big bucks — because fundraising fortunes favor winners — ahead of Super Tuesday, when every penny will be in play.
For Sanders, a loss here would be plainly devastating, while a clear victory would both push Iowa into the rearview and color perceptions about electability, while stoking his volunteer army, heading into Nevada. Expect him to make a nod to his lead in Iowa’s raw vote totals and then get back to his time-tested message.
The easy part for Buttigieg is behind him
Pete Buttigieg performed well in Iowa — but that was the easy part for the former mayor.
Buttigieg had invested heavily in the Hawkeye State, hoping that a strong performance would propel him to success in New Hampshire, Nevada, South Carolina and beyond. It’s not yet clear — particularly with the Iowa results muddled — how much that has translated into momentum.
Monmouth University released a poll of New Hampshire that found Sanders, at 24%, ahead of Buttigieg at 20%. Biden was trailing at 17%, followed by Warren at 13% and Klobuchar at 9%.
Buttigieg has a smaller operation in New Hampshire — and then faces a much stiffer challenge when the race moves beyond the Granite State next week. He has struggled for months to garner any support from Latino and black voters, both of whom will be critical in the upcoming Nevada caucuses and South Carolina primary.
He’ll need to ramp up rapidly from there. His campaign has a small operation focused on Super Tuesday states, but it pales in comparison with those of other campaigns, including former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg, whose campaign announced this week that it now has more than 2,000 people on staff.
The 38-year-old Buttigieg needs a performance in New Hampshire that will build enough momentum — and knock enough rivals down — to carry him down the tougher road ahead.
End-of-the-line candidates
The top four are joined onstage by three contenders with much longer odds of winning the Democratic nomination: Minnesota’s Sen. Amy Klobuchar, entrepreneur Andrew Yang and businessman Tom Steyer.
Klobuchar, in particular, could be a threat.
She’s shown in previous debates that she’s willing to attack, drawing a contrast with Buttigieg on experience (she’s a former prosecutor and veteran senator; he was a small-city mayor) and electability (she’s won big in a swing state; Buttigieg lost his only statewide bid for office).
New Hampshire is a do-or-die state for Klobuchar. Her campaign strategy requires her to gain altitude in the first two states. The still-unofficial results show her close enough to fourth place to scare Biden. But polls show her with an even more acute version of the problem Buttigieg faces: next to no nonwhite support, raising real doubt about where she goes from here. Those factors likely make Friday Klobuchar’s last, best chance to vault into the top tier.
Yang has been a cheery presence onstage, advocating his signature proposal for a universal basic income. And Steyer, too, has occasionally praised his foes.
But both showed who they think they need to knock down in the CNN town halls this week, taking direct shots at Buttigieg — with Yang knocking his call to abolish the Electoral College, and Steyer, who is polling in double digits in South Carolina, pointing out Buttigieg’s lack of nonwhite support.
“I can put together the kind of diverse coalition that we need to have to beat Trump,” Steyer argued during his town hall. “And that’s something, if you look at the people who are running for president, there are people who are struggling to do that, like Pete Buttigieg.”
