The PBS NewsHour/Politico debate
- Who was on stage: Elizabeth Warren, Bernie Sanders, Andrew Yang, Joe Biden, Pete Buttigieg, Tom Steyer and Amy Klobuchar
- Their platforms: Here’s where the candidates stand on the issues.
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Democratic debate in Los Angeles
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Who won the Los Angeles debate?
Seven Democratic presidential candidates took the stage tonight in Los Angeles for the sixth debate in the 2020 election.
Here are the winners and losers from tonight’s debate:
Winners: Minnesota Sen. Amy Klobuchar, former Vice President Joe Biden, businessman Andrew Yang and South Bend, Indiana, Mayor Pete Buttigieg
Losers: Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders …. and Buttigieg (yes, he’s a winner and a loser tonight)
Fact check: Yang said life expectancy in the US has declined. Here's what we know.
Businessman Andrew Yang contrasted the strength of the US economy with Americans’ well-being and said “depression, financial insecurity, student loan debt, even suicides and drug overdoses” are at record highs tonight.
“It has gotten so bad that our life expectancy as a country has declined for the last three years because suicides and drug overdoses have overtaken vehicle deaths for the first time in American history,” Yang added.
Facts First: Yang is stretching these sad facts. He’s correct that life expectancy declined over a three-year period and while studies indicate these rates have risen in recent years, it’s impossible to say they’re at record highs.
Depression is hard to quantify, though a Blue Cross Blue Shield study found, “Diagnoses of major depression have risen dramatically by 33 percent” between 2013 and 2016, and a study published in the journal Psychological Medicine found depression rose “significantly” among Americans age 12 and older from 2005 to 2015.
It’s true that student loan debt, which has climbed to $1.5 trillion, has reached record levels.
US suicide rates are the highest they’ve been since World War II, according to research by the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, but suicide rates actually peaked in 1932, during the Great Depression.
Drug overdose deaths increased between 1999 and 2017, but provisional data posted by the CDC earlier this month suggest that rate fell slightly last year – down to an estimated 69,000 deaths from about 70,000 the year before.
Life expectancy decreased between 2014 and 2017, falling from 78.9 to 78.6, according to the CDC, which attributed the slight downtick to drug overdoses and suicides.
A study by the by the National Safety Council found that the “odds of death” for suicide and opioid overdose were higher than motor vehicle crashes. But Yang is incorrect in the way he compared this to all of US history. There were only 36 highway fatalities in the year 1900, for example.
Fact check: Klobuchar's claim on Hillary Clinton's margin of victory
Sen. Amy Klobuchar claimed tonight that in the 2016 US election, Hillary Clinton had her lowest margin of victory in Minnesota. Klobuchar argued that polls have her beating “Donald Trump by 18 points” in 2020 in the state.
Facts First: She’s basically right about the polls, but she’s wrong about the 2016 election results.
In 2016, Hillary Clinton barely defeated Trump in Minnesota, winning by 1.6 percentage points. It was extremely close, but it wasn’t her tightest margin of victory, as Klobuchar claimed. That state was New Hampshire, where Clinton won by about 0.4%.
Looking ahead to 2020, Klobuchar accurately cited a recent poll from her home state of Minnesota.
An October poll from the Minneapolis Star Tribune, the largest newspaper in the state, found that Klobuchar would have a 17-point lead over Trump, which is a larger lead over the President than her Democratic opponents. (The poll had a 3.5% margin of error.)
Fact check: Andrew Yang links Trump’s 2016 victory to shifts in manufacturing employment
Businessman Andrew Yang, whose campaign has focused on the threat automation poses to US workers, claimed that President Trump’s 2016 win was in part because “we blasted away 4 million manufacturing jobs” — and further claimed that 40,000 manufacturing jobs have been lost in Iowa.
Facts First: This is true, but only if you look back as far as the early 2000s. US manufacturing employment actually went up during President Barack Obama’s second term, and that’s continued under Trump.
The US lost 4.4 million manufacturing jobs between January 2000 and November 2019. The sharpest declines during this nearly two-decade stretch happened during the 2001 recession and between late 2007 and mid-2009 – that is, during the financial crisis.
Similarly, Iowa lost jobs during that period, shedding a total of 20,900 jobs, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.
But looking at a more recent time frame, manufacturing jobs increased, improving from a net loss of 5.8 million jobs from 2000-2010. During Obama’s second term, and following Trump’s election, the sector added positions.
The Bureau of Labor Statistics showed 385,000 additional manufacturing jobs were added between January 2013 and January 2017.
Since Trump took office, the sector has added another 497,000 jobs.
Iowa showed the same increasing trend for manufacturing positions, both in the lead-up to Trump’s election and since he took office.
That said, American factories have been suffering this year. The trade war has been weighing on business investment, demand for products and also hiring. The US manufacturing sector contracted for four months in a row through November, according to the Institute of Supply Management.
Here's who spoke the most tonight
At the end of tonight’s debate, Sen. Bernie Sanders spoke the most at more than 20 minutes, followed closely by Sens. Amy Klobuchar and Elizabeth Warren.
See the full breakdown below:
Here's what the candidates said in their closing statements
The final Democratic primary debate of 2019 has just wrapped up in Los Angeles.
The seven candidates made their final pleas to the American public in their closing statements tonight.
Here’s what they said:
- Tom Steyer: “I’m different from anybody else on this stage. Here’s why. I’m running because corporations have bought our government and we need to return power to the people. For the last 10 years that’s exactly what I’ve been doing, taking on unchecked corporate power.”
- Andrew Yang: “I know what you’re thinking, America. How am I still on this stage with them?” Yang said to applause. “Our campaign is growing all the time because we are laser focused on solving the real problems that got Donald Trump elected in the first place. I spent seven years helping create thousands of jobs in Detroit, Baltimore, New Orleans, and other cities, serving as an ambassador of entrepreneurship under President Obama and I saw firsthand what many of you already know: Our country is falling apart.”
- Amy Klobuchar: “This primary comes down to some simple questions. Who has the best ideas, the best experience, mostly who can beat Donald Trump, and how will she do it. So Donald Trump built his fortune on, over time, over $413 million that he got from his dad. My grandpa, he was an iron ore miner, a union member. He saved money in a coffee can in the basement to send my dad to a community college. That’s my family trust. I figure if you are given opportunity, you don’t go into the world with a sense of entitlement. You go into it with a sense of obligation.”
- Pete Buttigieg: “So the nominee is going to have to do two things. Defeat Donald Trump and unite the country as president. It’s a tall order. And in order to do it, we’re going to need a nominee and a president who can respond to the crisis of belonging that is gripping our nation today.”
- Elizabeth Warren: “This is a dark moment in America. And yet I come here tonight with a heart filled with hope. All three of my brothers served in the military. They’re all retired. They’re all back in Oklahoma. One is a Democrat. Two are Republicans. But you know what unites my three brothers? Amazon. They are furious that Amazon reported $10 billion in profits and paid zero in taxes. My brother is a part of why America is ready to root out corruption and fight back. And that gives us a base to work from.”
- Bernie Sanders: “The truth is that real change always takes place, real change, always takes place from the bottom on up, never from the top on down. And that is why in this campaign I am so proud that we have over 1 million volunteers. We have some of the strongest grassroots organizations.”
- Joe Biden: “Look, we all have big progressive plans and the question is who can deliver on those plans? It seems to me we have to ask ourselves three questions, straight up and honestly. Who has the best chance, most likely chance of defeating Donald Trump, who is the one most likely to do that. Number two, who can help elect Democrats to the United States Senate in states like North Carolina and Georgia and Arizona and other states. And thirdly, who can deliver legislatively. That requires you to look at our records. I have a significant record of getting significant things done.”
The candidates were just asked if they would rather ask for forgiveness or give a gift to each other
Things got a little awkward on stage when the candidates were asked if they had to choose would they: ask for forgiveness from a candidate or give one of them a gift.
Here’s how they responded:
- Andrew Yang: He was left speechless by the question, but eventually answered. He said he would love to give each of the candidates on stage a copy of his book. “I wrote a book on it and if you like data, this book is for you. This goes for the people at home too, if you like data and books,” he said.
- Peter Buttigieg: “We know what a gift it would be for the future, for the company, for literally anybody up here to become president of the United States compared to what we’ve got. And we’ve got to remember, there are I don’t know how many, we’re up to 25 something have run for president in the democratic president. The moment we got a no, ma’am nominee, the 24 who aren’t that nominee will have to rally around the one who does. Let’s hope there’s not too much to ask forgiveness for when that day comes.”
- Joe Biden: “And the reason I would give everyone here a gift is because they want to do something like I do, making their lives better because there’s a lot of people who are hurting very, very, very badly.”
- Bernie Sanders: “I think the gift that all of us need to give to the American people is a very, very different vision of the reality of the Trump administration. And the vision that we need to bring forth is to create a government and a nation based on love and compassion, not agreed and hatred.”
- Elizabeth Warren: “I will ask for forgiveness. I know that sometimes I get really worked up. And sometimes I get a little hot. I don’t really mean to. What happens is when you do 100,000 selfies with people, you hear enough stories about people who are really down to their last moments.”
- Amy Klobuchar: “I would ask for forgiveness any time any of you get mad at me. I can be blunt. But I am doing this because I think it is so important to pick the right candidate here. I do.”
- Tom Steyer: “So the gift that I would like to give everyone on this stage, which was the original question, is the gift of teamwork, because the question up here is, ‘how are we together going to change this framework.’ How are we together going to beat this corrupt and criminal president.”
Sanders and Biden spar other over health care
Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders and former Vice President Joe Biden fought over their health care plans Thursday night, with Sanders advocating for his signature “Medicare for All” single-payer proposal and Biden backing a plan that builds on Obamacare and maintains a role for private health insurers.
It started when Sanders was asked if – given the reality that Senate Republicans would oppose his health care plan – he would push any smaller measures in the more immediate future. He wouldn’t play ball, saying, “I think we will pass a Medicare for All single-payer system.”
Biden then advocated his plan, which would add a public option to Obamacare and put lower the caps on how much of their income Americans would pay for insurance on the exchanges.
“You shouldn’t have Washington dictating to you you cannot keep the plan you have,” Biden said.
Sanders responded that Biden’s plan “would essentially maintain the status quo.” Biden then shot back that Sanders’ proposal would come with $30 trillion in new expenses over a decade and would necessitate tax increases.
Sanders pointed out that in exchange for those taxes, Americans would no longer have to pay copays, insurance premiums or deductibles, and would have prescription drug costs capped at $200 per year.
At one point, Biden stopped and said to his animated foe: “Put your hand down for a second, Bernie.”
“Just waving to you, Joe,” Sanders responded.
Biden tells Sanders to "put your hand down for a second"
While discussing the cost of medical care in the US, former Vice President Joe Biden told Sen. Bernie Sanders to “put your hand down” after the Vermont lawmaker was seen waving it, a gesture he commonly makes during debates.
Read the exchange below:
Biden: “I’ve added to the Obamacare plan the Biden initiative, which is a public option, Medicare if you want to have Medicare, reducing significantly the price of drugs, deductibles, et cetera, made by underwriting the plan to a tune of about $750 billion and making sure we’re able to cover everyone who is in fact able to be covered. Put your hand down for a second Bernie.”
Sanders: “Just waving to you, Joe. Saying hello.”
Biden: “I know, I know.”
Watch here:
Biden says he will pull troops from Afghanistan if elected president
Former Vice President Joe Biden says he will pull out all combat troops from Afghanistan if elected president because he disagrees with the “national building notion” the US has engaged in.
Biden added: “The first thing I would do as president of the United States of America is to make sure that we brought all combat troops home and enter into a negotiation with the Taliban. But I would leave behind special forces in small numbers to be able to deal with the potential threat unless we got a real good negotiation accomplished to deal with terrorism.”
Watch here:
Fact check: Klobuchar claims Republicans are suppressing the African-American vote
Sen. Amy Klobuchar accused Republicans of trying to improve their chances in future elections by suppressing the African-American vote, which has historically gone in favor of Democrats by large margins.
“They have made it harder for African-Americans to vote,” Klobuchar said. “As one court said, ‘discriminated with surgical precision.’”
Facts First: Klobuchar got the quote right, and the rest of her claim is largely true. Republican-controlled legislatures across the country have passed laws aimed at preventing voter fraud that have made it harder for African-Americans to vote, and some of these laws have been declared unconstitutional by federal judges.
The federal Commission on Civil Rights said in a 2018 report that there was a surge in state laws that make it harder for minorities to vote. The report highlighted laws signed by Republican governors in states like Alabama, Arkansas, Missouri and several others. Those laws, which were aimed at preventing voter fraud, required voters to show government ID before casting a ballot, scaled back the availability of early voting, and eliminated voter registration options.
Klobuchar got the quote right. A federal appeals court struck down North Carolina’s voter ID law in 2016, and in their ruling, they said the law would “target African-Americans with almost surgical precision.” Alluding to the law’s racial motivations, the court said it “impose[s] cures for problems that did not exist.”
A separate federal court ruled that a similar law in Texas discriminated against black and Latino voters.
Klobuchar said she’d tackle the problem by trying to “stop the purging” of voters from the rolls, which became a major issue this month after purges in Wisconsin and Georgia.
But that might be easier said than done: Elections are run by the states, not the federal government. So if Klobuchar becomes president, she’d have limited influence over state officials who administrate elections and have overseen the recent purges.
Why Democrats are talking about a wine cave
The term “wine cave” was thrown around repeatedly during a debate over how Pete Buttigieg is funding his campaign on Thursday night.
Here is why: Buttigieg headlined a fundraiser this month in Rutherford, California, at Hall Wines, a winery owned by Kathryn Hall, the former United States Ambassador to Austria from 1998 to 2001, and her husband Craig.
Part of the event took place in a so-called “wine cave” under a chandelier of 1,500 Swarovski crystals. Photos leaked of Buttigieg sitting beneath the chandelier, leading the mayor to be roundly mocked for the event and adding to the criticism Buttigieg has taken for headlining top dollar fundraisers.
Klobuchar attacks Buttigieg for critiquing opponents' experience
Minnesota Sen. Amy Klobuchar on Thursday night lambasted South Bend, Indiana, Mayor Pete Buttigieg for denigrating in a previous debate other Democratic candidates’ experience in Washington.
Saying Buttigieg should “respect our experience,” she pointed to Elizabeth Warren’s role in creating the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, Joe Biden pushing his cancer moonshot, Bernie Sanders striking deals for veterans’ care and her own role in negotiating farm bills.
Buttigieg fired back: “If you want to talk about the capacity to win, try putting together a coalition to bring you back to office with 80% of the vote as a gay dude in Mike Pence’s Indiana.”
But South Bend is an overwhelmingly Democratic city – and Klobuchar responded by pointing out Buttigieg’s failed run for Indiana state treasurer in 2010.
“If you had won in Indiana, that would be one thing. You tried and you lost by 20 points,” she said.
Watch the full exchange here:
Fact check: Yang and Sanders cite black maternal mortality rates
In response to a question tonight about being the only non-white candidate on stage, businessman Andrew Yang pointed to statistics on disenfranchisement among communities of color, noting that “if you’re a black woman, you’re 320% more likely to die from complications in childbirth.”
Sen. Bernie Sanders later echoed the claim, asserting that “black women die three times at higher rates than white women.”
Facts First: The candidates are correct — black women die from childbirth complications more than three times as often as do white women, according to government medical data.
According to a report released in May using Centers for Disease Control data from 2011 to 2015, black women experienced 42.8 pregnancy related deaths for every 100,000 live births — 3.3 times as high as the 13.0 such deaths for every 100,000 live births among white women.
The study showed that about 700 women die due to pregnancy-related complications in the US each year.
Why Yang wants more women in politics
Businessman Andrew Yang drew applause tonight after calling for more women in government because “money and men are tied together” in a country struggling with gender inequality.
Watch here:
Pete Buttigieg and Elizabeth Warren clash over how they are funding their campaigns
Pete Buttigieg and Elizabeth Warren delivered the most contentious moment so far of Thursday night’s debate when the two sparred over how they are financing their campaigns.
Warren argued that she does not “sell access” to her time, suggesting that Buttigieg is beholden to the top donors because he is soliciting donations from wealthy Americans.
Buttigieg defended his fundraising by saying “this is our only chance to defeat Donald Trump” and that Democrats can’t do that “with one hand tied behind our back.”
He also faulted Warren for headlining top dollar fundraisers during her Senate campaign and then transferring that money to her presidential race.
But then Buttigieg took it a step further by comparing his wealth to Warren’s.
“So, this is important. This is the problem with issuing purity tests you cannot yourself pass.”
He added: “Senator, your net worth is 100 times mine. Suppose you went home and felt the holiday spirit – I know this isn’t likely, but stay with me – and decided to go on petebuttigieg.com and gave the maximum donation allowable by law, would that pollute my campaign because it came from a wealthy person? No. I would be glad to have that support.”
Warren went after Buttigieg for hosting a recent fundraiser in a wine cave with a crystal chandelier in Napa Valley, California, asking voters to “Think about who comes” to an event were $900 bottles of wine are being served.
“We made the decision many years ago that rich people in smoke-filled rooms would not pick the next president of the United States. Billionaires in wine caves should not pick the next president of the United States,” Warren said.
Klobuchar to Buttigieg and Warren: "I did not come here to listen to this argument"
Minnesota Sen. Amy Klobuchar wasn’t having any of Mayor Pete Buttigieg and Sen. Elizabeth Warren’s heated exchange on stage tonight.
She jumped into their back-and-forth and said, “I did not come here to listen to this argument.”
The candidates had been arguing about how much money they’ve spent on their campaigns, with Warren throwing a shot at Buttigieg, saying, ” So the mayor just recently had a fundraiser that was held in a wine cave full of crystals and served $900 a bottle wine.”
Using the wine cave reference, Klobuchar tried to move the debate forward and said, “I came here to make a case for progress. And I have never even been to a wine cave. I have been to the wind cave in South Dakota, which I suggest you go to. So what is making a case for progress about? That is what unites us up here instead of what divides us, which is campaign finance reform.”
Watch here:
Warren would be the oldest president ever inaugurated. She'd also be the first woman, she points out.
Sen. Elizabeth Warren drew applause tonight with her answer to a question about her age and the fact that, if elected, she’d be the “oldest president ever inaugurated.”
Watch here:
Fact check: Bernie Sanders was speaking imprecisely about global military spending
Calling for an international effort to fight the climate crisis, Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders criticized global spending on weapons.
“And maybe, just maybe, instead of spending $1.8 trillion a year globally on weapons of destruction, maybe an American president – i.e. Bernie Sanders — can lead the world. Instead of spending money to kill each other, maybe we pool our resources and fight our common enemy, which is climate change,” Sanders said.
Facts First: Sanders was speaking imprecisely. The $1.8 trillion figure represents all global military spending in 2018, not spending on weapons in particular.
Upon issuing the $1.8 trillion figure in April, the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, an international authority on military spending, said it “discourages the use of terms such as ‘arms spending’ when referring to military expenditure, as spending on armaments is usually only a minority of the total.”
“Military expenditure refers to all government spending on current military forces and activities, including salaries and benefits, operational expenses, arms and equipment purchases, military construction, research and development, and central administration, command and support,” the Institute said.
Candidates take a pass on taking each other on (so far)
We are nearly an hour into this debate and one thing is crystal clear thus far: The candidates are taking a pass at trying to mix it up with each other.
Perhaps it is the post-impeachment holiday season lull setting in.
Perhaps it is a strategic decision to use their time to simply try and deliver their core messages and policy prescriptions to voters 46 days before the voting begins.
It could also be that there hasn’t been a ton of proof points this cycle of candidates taking each other on directly and benefiting from it in the long term.
But with a pretty crowded field remaining in this race, the reality is that if any of these candidates are going to make a move to be #1 they need to start taking some vote share from their rivals. That is hard to do without drawing clear contrasts for the voters.
Tonight, it’s clear these candidates have largely chosen to step back from driving home a choice and instead are simply presenting their pitches.
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