from RedState:
Bloodshed in Houston: The Winners and Losers of the Democratic Debate
Democratic presidential candidate former Vice President Joe Biden speaks during a campaign event at Dartmouth College, Friday, Aug. 23, 2019, in Hanover, N.H. (AP Photo/Elise Amendola)
The Thursday night showdown between the top candidates in the Democratic Primary provided very few surprises, but a lot of in-fighting and a little bloodshed was still visible on the stage.
A debate featuring Joe Biden, Bernie Sanders, and Elizabeth Warren front and center, surrounded by Andrew Yang, Pete Buttigieg, Amy Klobuchar, Corey Booker, Kamala Harris, Julian Castro, and Beto O’Rourke, the ABC News event was well-run and did a good job of clearly setting the candidates at one another without goading them into fistfights. The result was a lot of civil disagreement and a little bit of bitterness, all tied together with discussions of policy and the direction of the election cycle.
Here are the winners and losers of the debate. As always, this is from a neutral/objective viewpoint and not through the lens of a conservative perspective.
The Winners: Joe Biden, Elizabeth Warren, Bernie Sanders
It should come as little surprise that the highest-polling candidates are such because they are the most talented politicians, but what makes this top three so appealing is that Warren and Sanders tag-teamed Biden and couldn’t break him. Essentially, Warren and Sanders are the same, and they showed it in the way they responded to questions. This also became the early hurdle for Biden, who actually weathered the storm very well. He did not get frustrated, and maintained his talking points without sounding robotic. Sanders, clearly thinking to rekindle the hot moment from the last debate, used the “I wrote the damn bill” line again, but to substantially less effect than last time. Biden side-stepped the line, and Klobuchar would actually later say that while Sanders did write the bill, she actually read it, and used that to score a point over Biden.
