Democrat primary debates have descended into futile shouting contests

They all came out swinging in South Carolina on Tuesday night, except for Bernie Sanders who clearly didn’t feel the need. It’s not that Sanders doesn’t normally relish a fight. Even in a state of rest he usually has more flailing arms than a Tyson Fury singalong. It’s just that, also like Fury, his overblown performance art tends to distract from controversial opinions that his team work to hide. Not that they usually need to work that hard…

The media has been very quick to discount Sanders and his brand of shouting-very-loudly and promising EVERYTHING FOR FREE but it’s so easy to do. Nobody but a few excitable kids would take the Vermont senator seriously. Nobody who knows or remembers Soviet Russia’s or Cuba’s revolutions would listen too closely to the words of an ageing socialist promising to blow fifty trillion dollars restructuring capitalism.

But then his vote in Nevada hit 46.8% once all the alignments were made and the moderate Democrats suddenly faced a problem. They had to prove that the red-faced shouty guy doesn’t have what it takes to be the Democratic nominee. The result was not, by any measure, a classic of sober argument. It was, however, a pretty brutal teardown of all the candidates. It offered a little more clarity about this deeply flawed field, as well as a reminder of how and why Sanders has surged.

It was clear, for example, that Joe Biden is finally getting good advice. Biden’s problem has simply been that of being too nice. Somebody has obviously told him to shout, point his finger (straight into the camera if possible), and grit his pristine porcelain into something resembling a snarl. The fact he was so transparent that you could see the consultants pulling his strings is a welcome change for a candidate who had spent the first six months of the campaign semi-comatose.

In previous debates, Biden would fall silent the moment a moderator indicated his time was up. This time he fought back. “I guess the only way to do this is to jump in and speak as twice as long as you should,” he said at one point, recognising something other candidates seem to have realised in the first debate. It might have worn thin after the fourth or fifth time but Biden was clever enough to resort to wit and it was enough to make him the night’s only winner. A victory in South Carolina might even make a difference going into Super Tuesday next week.

Biden’s hopes, however, still rest largely on how much damage was inflicted on Bernie Sanders. Much of that damage had already been done by the major news outlets who had spent the first half of the week dredging up Sanders’ support for Castro, the Nicaraguans, and general affection for light fittings in the Soviet subway. Then there was the too-clever-by-half article he’d penned about rape fantasies he’d written as a too-clever-by-half thirty-year-old.

Not much on the night added to these narratives. Sanders again doubled down on his factually-correct-but-politically-naïve views of Castro, responding at one point to boos from the crowd with a “really?” It might (and should) have damaged him but these things are hard to read. The media spin one wisdom, social media another. The truth often lies elsewhere.

The perfect example of that is Elizabeth Warren, who continued with her solo crusade to destroy Mike Bloomberg in what is beginning to look like a desperate attempt to find relevancy or, perhaps, ensure that she’s the second name on the progressive ticket should Sanders win. That’s the only logic that explains why she was the only candidate to swim against the tide and attack Bloomberg.

It also did her few favours. She was booed when she accused the former New York mayor of saying “kill it” upon hearing that one of his employees was pregnant. And to be clear, the allegations haven’t suggested that the baby was Bloomberg’s or that this was anything more than a cruel comment. It rightly earned Bloomberg some sympathy.

Again, pundits keep talking up her performances (The Washington Post predictably cited her as the night’s winner) but they perhaps pander to a media narrative that’s simply not there. There is a reason why her poll numbers continue to fall. Mike Murphy, the non-Trumpian GOP strategist put it best when he Tweeted: “Warren was a crazy lunging death rattle; went ugly/too far”.

The attacks on Bloomberg also seem misguided given that he continues to deliver a third-rate sales pitch for arguably the best product on the stage. Bloomberg remains the real enigma here: the one candidate who could really change the game. He offers the Democrats a chance to put forward a strong ticket that unifies Republicans, independents, and Democrats against Trump, along with a fully-funded campaign that is geared to fight a modern, data-driven election. Bloomberg also seems to be the pragmatic choice, except for the fact he also makes it hard for Democrats to love him. He struggles playing the TV game and would probably be better if he simply played himself.

As it is, Bloomberg’s jokes rarely work and his apologies do him a disservice. The contrition around “stop and frisk” again blunted his record around crime reduction. He allows the progressives to paint his wealth and success as a sin when it should be a virtue. He should talk more about the lives of young black men he saved and the programs he’d developed (and funded) to lift them out of poverty. He can still turn it around and there’s no telling how a huge unprecedented ad-spend will work ahead of next Tuesday.

Yet with Biden bouncing back, it’s hard not to feel that the path will see Bloomberg’s tactics married with Biden’s personality. This would make sense. It is the old struggle between substance and style, in a context that too often privileges the latter.

That is nowhere more obvious than around the performances of Pete Buttigieg, who once again charmed his way through the night. He is, of course, the candidate the media routinely tout as doing particularly well on these nights but, after ten debates, Buttigieg’s performances have started to sound contrived. His made-for-TV stylings, all low reassuring baritone and homely wisdom, is sure to win big with some people but equally not others. He’s a clever salesman but, perhaps, too much of a salesman.

Amy Klobuchar had another good performance which seemed to pass everybody by, largely, perhaps, because she was too often ignored by the moderators. It is all hugely unfair because she has a uniformly strong candidacy. But she doesn’t stand out in any respect. Her delivery is not as dominant as that of Sanders, not as polished as that of Buttigieg, not as headline-grabbing as Warren.

Her record is stronger than most but, again, less than that of a three-time New York mayor or a Vice-President, who most notably here challenged Klobuchar when she claimed to be the author of a bill closing a loophole in the Violence Against Women Act.

In the US it is illegal to buy firearms if you are married and have been convicted of domestic abuse – but until recently, there was a legal workaround in the original 1993 Act on this, meaning that the legislation did not apply to someone categorised legally as a boyfriend or a stalker. This was changed in 2017. It was, in fact, Klobuchar who had introduced the 2017 bill in the Senate to close the loophole, although Biden had written the original bill which became the 1993 Act. She was right but, then, she’s usually right. Unfortunately, simply being right is the least strong selling point in a crowded field filled with big personalities.

The next debate is planned for the middle of March. We should hope they’re down to the last two candidates by then but, judging by the way the DNC is organising this race, don’t be surprised if it’s not back up to fifteen…