On an evening that could have produced explosions in their own political rivalry, Sanders and Warren instead formed something of an ideological tag team to defend their shared agenda, above all on health care. Though each is seen as the other’s chief obstacle in the Democratic race, Sanders and Warren did not at any point clash directly.
Instead, they battled an array of comparatively obscure candidates who used the debate as an opportunity — and for some of them, likely a last chance — to express alarm about their party’s embrace of immense liberal policy goals, like the creation of a “Medicare for All”-style health care system, Sanders’ No. 1 issue, and a broad liberalization of the immigration system.
There was former Rep. John Delaney of Maryland, who accused Sanders and Warren of making “fairy tale” promises; Gov. Steve Bullock of Montana, who lamented liberal “wish-list economics”; and former Gov. John Hickenlooper of Colorado, imploring the left not to overreach and “FedEx the election to Donald Trump.”
With Sanders and Warren refusing to yield an inch, the debate laid bare the stark choice before Democratic primary voters: whether to embrace an agenda of transformational economic change in an effort to motivate young and nonwhite voters, or to proceed more cautiously against a vulnerable president by embracing more incremental appeals that could win over moderates.
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Both Warren and Sanders insisted that their more daring approach would lead Democrats to victory, and depicted their more moderate critics as bereft of ambition and political courage.
Democrats, Sanders said, had to wage a campaign “of energy and excitement, and of vision,” or risk losing to Trump a second time.
The most protracted exchanges of the night concerned Sanders’ signature proposal to replace private health insurance with a single payer system.
This article originally appeared in The New York Times.