Sohn: Democrats need to concentrate on beating Trump

Sen. Kamala Harris, D-California and former Vice President Joe Biden gesture during an exchange about his opposition to federally imposed school busing for integration as Sen. Bernie Sanders, of Vermont, looks on during the Democratic presidential debate in Miami on Thursday. (Doug Mills/The New York Times)
Sen. Kamala Harris, D-California and former Vice President Joe Biden gesture during an exchange about his opposition to federally imposed school busing for integration as Sen. Bernie Sanders, of Vermont, looks on during the Democratic presidential debate in Miami on Thursday. (Doug Mills/The New York Times)

They weren't the Trump-focused debates they could and should have been.

Instead, in the words of one candidate on the second night of the first Democratic primary debates, it was a food fight. And, at times, a particularly ugly food fight. Rather than distinguish themselves as the best candidate to displace the worst president in the history of our country, the Democrats on Thursday night descended into attacking each other, and particularly the front-runner among them - former Vice President Joe Biden.

The first debate on Wednesday was calmer. Julián Castro, mayor of San Antonio and President Obama's housing secretary, led the way with talk of ending President Trump's immigration policies and reforming urban police departments. Then Sen. Elizabeth Warren - asked how she could she justify the risk that her many plans might disrupt an economy that is doing well by several indicators - rightly countered: "Who is this economy really working for? It's doing great for a thinner and thinner slice at the top."

On the second night, Biden - with others - briefly commanded the stage with talk about getting health care for all Americans - starting with a resuscitated and tweaked Affordable Care Act.

And South Bend, Indiana, Mayor Pete Buttigieg, though he also was attacked over a recent police shooting in his city, took a prize with Biden and California Sen. Kamala Harris for bringing some of the fight to Trump and the GOP - over morality and religion.

"The Republican Party likes to cloak itself in the language of religion," Buttigieg said. "Now our party doesn't talk about that as much - largely for a very good reason, which was we are committed to the separation of church and state, and we stand for people of any religion and people of no religion. But we should call out hypocrisy when we see it. For a party that associates itself with Christianity - to say that it is okay to suggest that God would smile on the division of families at the hands of federal agents, that God would condone putting children in cages - has lost all claim to ever use religious language again."

Bernie Sanders, normally the one-trick pony for "revolution" in the United States, seemed subdued.

Then there were Sen. Harris' moments. First she quieted the row of squabbling candidates by saying, "America doesn't want ... a food fight. They want to know how we're going to put food on their table." That was great, but later she took a steak knife to Biden over his recent reminiscence of congressional "civility" when he learned to "get things done" with segregationists in the early days of his Senate career.

That Harris "moment" seems to be the lasting taste in the mouths of debate watchers. As New York Times columnist David Brooks put it: "All of the Democrats seem to have decided to run a Trump-style American carnage campaign. ..."

Brooks, one of the original never-Trumpers, began his column Friday stating he could "never in a million years" vote for Trump. "So my question to Democrats is: Will there be a candidate I can vote for?"

Republican moderates like Brooks, as well as many Democrats, have thought that candidate might be Joe Biden - the "electable" one.

Biden seems, on the surface, not to have caught what Brooks calls "the catastrophizing virus that inflicts the Trumpian right. They take a good point - that capitalism needs to be reformed to reduce inequality - and they radicalize it so one gets the impression they want to undermine capitalism altogether."

But now Biden needs to get some humility. And fast. He needs to remind himself over and over that while his 36 years in the Senate and eight years as vice president gave him plenty of experience, they did so because along the way he made plenty of mistakes. He needs to learn to tell the story of how learning the lessons of congressional "civility" was both his and America's evolution - and could be again if Democrats can get their acts together.

Biden could take a hint from Buttigieg. Challenged with questions about the recent police shooting of a black man in his city, and asked why the police force wasn't better integrated, Mayor Pete said plainly: "Because I couldn't get it done." He didn't make excuses. Instead he recognized that between African-Americans and white police officers, "there's a wall of mistrust, put up one racist act at a time. ... We've taken so many steps ... . We're obviously not there yet. And I accept responsibility for that."

Meanwhile, as these candidates were cannibalizing each other, especially the man who might be able to pull the disparate edges of the party together, President Trump was across the world openly joking with Russian President Vladimir Putin about "fake news" and the media - what they have both called the "enemy of the people."

Think about that. Trump is joking about freedoms enshrined in our Constitution with the man who ordered the hacking of our election systems.

Let's not kid ourselves: Electability is paramount in the 2020 election. And therefore electability in this primary election is paramount, too. Candidates need to stop trying to decapitate each other and concentrate on beating Trump, Putin and Sen. Majority Leader (and congressional obstructionist) Mitch McConnell.

On Wednesday, and Thursday - especially Thursday - our candidates mostly ignored that great American need.

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