From the first moments on the debate stage, there were charges of “wish-list economics” and critiques of “massive government expansions,” as the candidates engaged in an unusually substantive discussion of health care policy. Gov. Steve Bullock of Montana, appearing in a debate for the first time, took implicit aim at Sanders by insisting that distressed farmers and teachers could not “wait for a revolution.” And former Rep. John Delaney of Maryland conjured electoral catastrophes of the past to argue that the activist left could not be trusted to lead the party.
The course recommended by Sanders and Warren, Delaney said, was defined by “bad policies like ‘Medicare for All,’ free everything and impossible promises that will turn off independent voters and get Trump reelected.”
Sanders and Warren responded with defiance, rejecting the moderate candidates as offering policies that were plainly unequal to the political moment. Without taking aim at her more centrist rivals by name, Warren used her opening statement to dismiss their ethos of incremental change.
“We’re not going to solve the urgent problems that we face with small ideas and spinelessness,” Warren said.
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Sanders and Warren have largely defined the party’s conversation about policy up to this point, and there were signs of impatience on the debate stage with the admonitions of moderates about how Republicans might brand Democrats in the general election as outside the political mainstream.
Mayor Pete Buttigieg of South Bend, Indiana, drew applause with the prediction that Republicans would brand the eventual Democratic nominee as a wild-eyed extremist no matter what policies that person endorsed.
“Let’s just stand up for the right policy,” said Buttigieg, who has endorsed a liberal health care policy more modest than the one favored by Warren and Sanders.
This article originally appeared in The New York Times.