Sunday School Extra Credit 3/15/20: Debate Winners and Losers

I'm taking a bit of a different tack for our Extra Credit entry this week. Instead of going with the morning classrooms and more discussion about the coronavirus, I decided to check out how folks saw the winners and losers of last night's (old) mano a (old) mano debate.

CNN's Chris Cillizza (CNN hosted the debate, in partnership with Univisions) picked these winners:

• the women who might be Biden's veep, including former challengers Elizabeth Warren, Kamala Harris, and Amy Klobuchar, and Stacey Abrams, who served in the House of Representatives in Georgia and most recently lost the gubernatorial race, in 1918. Biden, as you probably heard, promised he'd put a woman on the ticket. 
• Donald Trump, who managed to generally escape mention throughout the debate, as Sanders attacked Biden and his votes over the years (OK, decades) in the Senate. Not only was time wasted not going after the real opponent, the debate just handed more ammo to Trump.
• No live audience. Lamenting the reason for not having a live audience, Cillizza "thought this debate was FAR better" than others recently. And, he said, the DNC shouldn't be the ones who get to pick who gets to attend. Hear, hear!
• Sticking with coronavirus influences, the elbow bump was a winner, even though "it looked sort of weird."
• Anf for some reason, The You Tube was a winner, thanks to Sanders telling people to go there. 

And now, the losers:

• That Guy from Vermont and Papa Joe Biden, for attacking each other for two hours in a way that at times caused people to tune out. (Case in point? A friend turned from the debate to American Idol.) And, Cillizza noted, "Both men looked small more than they looked big." Not only that, but neither of them inspired the other guys supporters to come on over - which I'd have to agree with, as did most folks in the Twitterverse. 
• Ambitious male Democratic politicians: similar to his picking the women who dropped out as winners, he picked Mayor Pete, Cory Booker, and Andrew Yang here, saying the best they'll do is being picked for a job on Biden's cabinet should he win. 

The Opinion gang at the NY Times scores the candidates on a 10-point scale. Here's how they collectively saw the debate:

• Papa Joe: 7.6 out of 10: two folks gave him 9 out of 10, with one noting he made rational arguments, didn't stumble, and scored with a comment about Italy having a single-payer system. The other said that, other than promising putting a woman on the ticket, "tying a revolution to disruption" was his boldest move. His two lowest scores were 6 out of 10; one said "Biden is here to assure them that we can... live in 2013 forever." The other said Papa Joe is "selling competence" and that his performance in the debate was, well, competent, but lacking in charisma and charm, things he's been known for.

• TGFV: 7.1 out of 10: he scored five 8 out of 10 scores, for (among other things), his "breadth of interests;" his consistency; his push for "big structural change," mentioned by more than one person on the panel; him turning down the volume and turning up the compassion; and , one said, "he essentially vetted Biden for the progressive wing of the party" because he's going to be their nominee. On the low end, the person who gave him 6 out of 10 said that TGFV has a "command of legislative detail" and of his big picture, but he "hasn't shown he can build coalitions to make his dream real." His worst score (4 out of 10) came from a feeling that"it's not a good time to be an ideologue" and because, now, "his arguments are sounding tired..."

From the Washington Post, here are the winners:

• Papa Joe: TGFV spent a lot of time on things Papa Joe did years ago that, but Biden stayed focused, pointing out repeatedly that he "got things done" and he questioned the whole revolution thing. The lack of an audience likely hurt TGFV, they said, and Biden "drove home the point" that he'd be a "steady, pragmatic hand."
• Harris, Klobuchar and other would-be female VPs: Also mentioned here, as by Cillizza? Warren and Abrams. They noted that TGFV waffled on making the female running mate. 
• Audience-free debates: "Let's hope it's not the last" debate to forgo the studio audience;  the debate "was certainly better thanks to the lack of cheering and booing."

And the losers?

• TGFV on the coronavirus: they faulted him for his always falling back on his whole economic message, something he also did in the '16 campaign, and last night he did it again. When talking about the coronavirus pandemic, Medicare-for-All was his answer. As noted above, Biden scored on that point, and also when he said that coronavirus "has nothing to do with the legitimate concern about income inequality in our country." But...
• Biden's Medicare-for-all attack: while one of the NYT folks thought Biden's attack here worked, WaPo didn't think so, because he started the argument but didn't finish when TGFV pushed back on Biden's support from insurance companies. 

And finally, let's hear from the NY Post, who picked Biden as the winner, saying he "walked out of Sunday night's debate in a commanding position" after TGFV didn't land the punches he needed to, according to the paper's debate expert, Eric Phillips.

Bernie Sanders had to change the trajectory of this race and he did not do it. I think we're talking about a matter of days before Sanders has to give it up.

Phillips also had kind words for Papa Joe.

The Biden we saw Sunday night - when he's rested and put in a position to project steady leadership - can absolutely go toe to toe with Donald Trump. Biden did what he had to do and in a moment when everyone is understandably nervous about leadership, Biden was the one on the state who projected it. 

And that's where we'll leave it.

See you around the virtual campus.