Debates among the 2020 Democratic candidates for most of the primary season were relatively genteel affairs marked by at most a fleeting jab toward a rival that quickly reverted to agreement on the bulk of issues.
That all changed Wednesday night in Las Vegas, Nevada. Six candidates fighting for the right to challenge President Trump pulled no punches at the final debate before Saturday’s Nevada caucuses. Anger, outrage, and indignation coursed through the two-hour affair — spurred in part by the first debate appearance by former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg, whom rivals accuse of trying to buy the election with his wealth.
Bloomberg was the evening’s main combatant, sparring with Bernie Sanders over the merits of capitalism versus what the Vermont senator calls democratic socialism. Bloomberg, 78, accused Sanders of hypocrisy for championing the poor and downtrodden while owning three homes, one in Washington and two in Vermont.
Bloomberg received plenty of opprobrium himself, including a first-round verbal punch by Elizabeth Warren.
“I’d like to talk about who we’re running against: a billionaire who calls women ‘fat broads’ and ‘horse-faced lesbians.’ And no, I’m not talking about Donald Trump. I’m talking about Mayor Bloomberg,” said the Massachusetts senator in her opening remarks.
Warren, 70, and the other female candidate on the debate stage, Minnesota Sen. Amy Klobuchar, had the most to lose from the event. Warren, once a front-runner, is heading into the Nevada caucuses and the Feb. 29 South Carolina primary reeling from a third-place finish in Iowa and fourth-place showing in New Hampshire.
Klobuchar, 59, has more momentum, having finished with a surprisingly strong third place in New Hampshire. But she lags behind Sanders and former South Bend, Indiana, Mayor Pete Buttigieg in fundraising.
Klobuchar, for her part, dropped the “Minnesota nice” shtick she often uses, defined by a smiling visage and joking manner. She refused a handshake from centrist rival Buttigieg, 38, at debate’s end, capping hostility toward him on display throughout the evening.
“I wish everyone were as perfect as you, Pete,” Klobuchar said mockingly at one point in the debate about the multilingual Harvard graduate, Rhodes Scholar, former McKinsey consultant, and Afghanistan veteran.
The tense evening marked a break from past Democratic debates, when candidates generally trained their fire on Trump rather than interparty rivals with whom they agree on most issues. Wednesday’s debate was the most negative since the first Democratic face-off, in Miami in June 2019, when California Sen. Kamala Harris scorched former Vice President Joe Biden for decades ago opposing busing (designed to end racial segregation in schools), declaring that she had been a victim at age 6, saying “I was that little girl.”
