Presidential Debates

Someone may yet emerge who can successfully challenge Sanders, who is now the undisputed front-runner, but it hasn’t happened yet.

The way that the former New York mayor has barged into the race, knocking candidates with far fewer resources out of the spotlight, harkens back to what Donald Trump did in the 2016 Republican primary.

Now that the Democratic field has winnowed to half a dozen candidates, everyone at the debate site—candidates, staff, reporters—seemed to be quietly waiting for the voting to finally start.

Tuesday’s Presidential debate suggested that the Democrats may no longer set the agenda in the 2020 race.

The G.O.P. elephant settles in to watch the Democratic donkey prizefight.

When the candidates in Thursday’s Democratic Presidential debate were asked how they would persuade the country to support Trump’s impeachment, most of them either dodged or changed the subject.

No one on the stage was against impeachment, but the candidates varied in their sense of where the process might lead.

Warren aims to hitch the Democrats to an agenda of sweeping economic transformation. Tuesday’s debate suggested that the Party has not yet fully embraced that path.

Tuesday’s primary debate began with an expansive conversation about impeachment, and unity and resolve were the themes of the night.

Last week’s debate was largely about how radical, or just how ambitious, the Party and its candidates are prepared to be.

What everyone presumably could agree on was that this moment in American history called for a more serious tone than is currently coming out of the Oval Office.

If the former Vice-President’s performance marked an improvement from the earlier debates, it also surely benefitted from diminished expectations.

It’s not that he was absent from the night entirely, but it was hard to see the Buttigieg who had risen to the cusp of front-runner status in the 2020 field.

With the single exception of Elizabeth Warren, all the candidates ended the summer in essentially the same position in which they started the race.

The old tradition of political parties pulling together only after choosing a ticket and adopting a platform may not be adequate to the present occasion.

At the upcoming debate, candidates with the highest poll numbers, biggest campaigns, and most money will be onstage together during prime-time television for the first time.

The Colorado senator, one of more than twenty Democrats vying for the Party’s Presidential nomination, joins Dorothy Wickenden to discuss the race, the Party, and the President.

With Joe Biden and Kamala Harris replacing Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren as the front-runners on Wednesday, the divisions among the candidates won’t be as amplified by ideological contrasts.

The debate generated fresh concerns about the former Vice-President’s preparation, age, grasp of the environment in which he is operating, and basic political skills.

Moments that changed the race, a notable evasion, and analysis and commentary on the contest for the Party’s nomination.