It’s Debate Time and the Candidates are Off!

Hey fellow Americans!

If you didn’t catch it in the news, last night we had the first debate of the 2020 election last night in Miami, Florida. Ten of the total 20 candidates who will be participating in this round of debates had a reasonably calm discussion about policy differences and what they plan to do during their term as president. Quite a few of them switched to speak Spanish mid sentence, which while impressive, a couple candidates failed to answer the question that was asked of them. Either way, the debates continued on.

Here is the list of candidates who participated in the first night:

• Elizabeth Warren
• Cory Booker
• Beto O’Rourke
• Julián Castro
• Amy Klobuchar
• Tim Ryan
• Tulsi Gabbard
• John Delaney
• Bill de Blasio
• Jay Inslee

The candidate who had the most speaking time was Cory Booker, with a total of 10.9 minutes. You can see the full list of speaking length per candidate here. This was really quite unexpected, as most of the questions were directed towards Warren, however, Booker took his opportunities and made his statements with passion that rivaled Warren’s.

While Senator Booker had the most time to speak, if I were going to pick an overall winner of the night, I would say Elizabeth Warren. This is based on how she carried herself, and the responses she gave. She only really dodged a few questions, and came out proudly on those that she believed in. Now that being said, she had the upper hand going into the debate last night, being the poll leader out of the group by far. She is well known at this point, and many in the crowd championed her with her comments.

While Warren came out on top in most cases, someone who made a big impression in my opinion was Julián Castro. He truly was the only one to come out on that stage and present a specific policy that he planned to enact as soon as he became president. This policy being to decriminalize illegal immigration, and to make it a civil issue instead. Castro stepped out and staked his claim on some polling numbers, even with being number 4 in the number of minutes spoken during the debate.

A topic that stood out that every candidate had the chance to speak to was: What is the biggest threat facing America today. Here are their answers:

John Delaney: “The biggest challenge is China. The biggest geopolitical threat remains nuclear weapons.”

Jay Inslee: “The biggest threat is Donald Trump. No question about it.”

Tulsi Gabbard: “The greatest threat we face is that we are at greater risk of nuclear war.”

Amy Klobuchar: “Economic threat and China, but the major threat is what is going in the Mideast with Iran.”

Beto O’Rourke: “The existential threat is climate threat. We have to confront it before it’s too late.”

Elizabeth Warren: “Climate change.”

Cory Booker: “Nuclear proliferation and climate change.”

Julián Castro: “China and climate change.”

Tim Ryan: “China, without a question. They are wiping us economically.”

Bill de Blasio: “Russia, because they are trying to undermine our democracy and they are doing a damn good job of it and we need to stop them.”

The overarching themes among candidates seem to be climate change, nuclear weapons, and China….with one Donald Trump thrown in there. There was also mention of Iran, in which the situation has been escalating and deescalating faster than we can figure out if we need to be worried or not. Which is really due to President Trump, in that case Jay Inslee’s response makes perfect sense.

Overall, there was an air of urgency among the candidates. I felt passion from each of them about their policies and what they fight for. As I’m typing this, the second night of Democratic Debates is on its way. Check back tomorrow to get the highlights!

See the highlights from Night One here.

Want a recap on night two? You can read my take here.