A whole-ass 12 Democratic presidential candidates participated in the fourth Democratic debate — the largest presidential primary debate in U.S. history. Joe Biden, Elizabeth Warren, Bernie Sanders, Pete Buttigieg, Kamala Harris, Andrew Yang, Cory Booker, Beto O’Rourke, Amy Klobuchar, Julián Castro, Tulsi Gabbard, and Tom Steyer (who made his debate debut tonight) shared the stage for three hours (!) of questions, hosted by CNN and the New York Times.

Here’s what went down:
WARREN PILE-ON
Tuesday’s debate made it clear that the field views Elizabeth Warren as the new frontrunner. In exchanges about health care, income inequality, and the existence of President Trump’s Twitter account (🙄), nearly every candidate on stage tried to take Warren down a peg. Here’s how that played out:

1) How she plans to pay for her Medicare-for-All plan: Pete Buttigieg and Amy Klobuchar ([link removed]) —who have both presented themselves as more moderate candidates—attacked Warren, who consistently refuses to say that Medicare for All would entail middle-class tax increases. Warren has faced this question before, and answered the same way she always has: “Costs will go up for the wealthy and for big corporations, and for hard-working middle-class families, costs will go down.”

Translation: You won’t trap me into saying taxes will go up when other health-care costs families face will decrease by a larger amount.

Nevertheless, Klobuchar zeroed in on the lack of a yes or no answer. “The difference between a plan and a pipe dream is a plan is something that you can actually get done… At least Bernie is being honest here and saying… that taxes are going up. And I’m sorry Elizabeth, but you have not said that."

2) Her support for a wealth tax: In an exchange with Beto O’Rourke, O’Rourke called Warren ([link removed]) “more focused on being punitive or pitting some part of the country against the other, instead of lifting people up and making sure this country comes together around those solutions.” Warren insisted that she has “no beef with billionaires,” but that they should have to pay a larger share of their income: “You built that fortune in America. I guarantee you built it in part using workers all of us helped pay to educate.”

As it happens, there was a billionaire on stage, and he didn’t seem too fazed by this. “I would undo every Republican tax cut for rich people and major corporations,” said Tom Steyer. A chill billionaire! (A chillionaire?) (It’s late.)

3) Her… accomplishments? Joe Biden ([link removed]) tried to claim credit for helping create the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, the agency Elizabeth Warren built from scratch. She replied: “I am deeply grateful to President Obama, who fought so hard to make sure that agency was passed into law.” The audience didn’t miss it.

4) Her… failure to care enough about Trump’s tweets? In perhaps the most bizarre attack of the night, Kamala Harris asked Warren why she wouldn’t call on Twitter to suspend Trump’s account. Harris called it a matter of “corporate responsibility.” (We called it a colossal waste of time.) Warren’s response: “I don’t just want to push Donald Trump off Twitter, I want to push him out of the White House.”
PETE V. BETO
This week we got a glimpse of a more aggressive Pete Buttigieg, who took swings at several opponents, including Beto O’Rourke, whose gun-buyback proposal he’s called a “shiny object.” This led to one of the more heated exchanges of the night over whether it’s enough to ban the sale of assault rifles, or if current assault-rifle owners should also be required to sell them to the government, as O’Rourke has proposed. Buttigieg called this a “purity test” and said he favors a more measured approach.
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PROBLEMATIC FAVES
Anderson Cooper devoted the final 20 minutes of the debate to making Democrats answer the question on everyone’s mind: Which Republican do you like as much as Ellen DeGeneres likes George W. Bush ([link removed]) ? No, seriously. The candidates’ answers ranged from random people they’ve met on the campaign trail to John McCain. Zero minutes on climate change, zero minutes on immigration, but a ton of time on how Tulsi Gabbard hangs out with Trey Gowdy and Cory Booker’s friend who eats meat (and who happens to be Ted Cruz).
* This was the first presidential debate since House Democrats launched an impeachment inquiry, and most candidates agreed with the majority of Americans that Trump should be impeached. The exception was Tulsi Gabbard ([link removed]) , who said impeachment, “will only further divide an already terribly divided country…” Oh well, better let Trump do whatever he wants then!
* Tonight’s debate (finally) included a round of questions about reproductive health ([link removed]) , centering on how the candidates would protect Roe v. Wade.
* Mayor Pete and Tulsi Gabbard, both military veterans, debated the role our armed forces should play in [link removed] Kurdish allies in Turkey and Syria. Gabbard blamed both Donald Trump and the Democrats, and their support for “regime change war” in Syria, for the violence against the Kurds. Mayor Pete instead insisted, correctly, that the violence against the Kurds is the result of Trump’s abrupt withdrawal of U.S. Trumps from the Turkish/Syrian border, and betrayal of a U.S. ally.
* Julian Castro connected ([link removed]) the debate over gun buybacks to the police shooting of Atatiana Jefferson in Fort Worth, TX. He noted that he worries about mandatory buybacks because of incidents like the Jefferson killing: "She was in her own home, and so I am not going to give these police officers another reason to go door to door in certain communities because police violence is also gun violence, and we need to address that.”
* Tom Steyer wore a memorable tie and apparently we’re really grasping for levity in 2019 because it now has its own Twitter account ([link removed]) .

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