Democratic debate highlights: Candidates discuss rights and U.S. role in the world – The Washington Post, The Washington Post

Democrats claimed abortion rights as a winning issue b ut mostly dodged a question about how to deal with members of their own party who take a different position – and win.

Warren was asked about John Bel Edwards, the Democratic governor of Louisiana who was recently reelected in a state that favored Trump by nearly 20 percentage points in 2016. Edwards this year signed into law a bill banning abortion after a fetal heartbeat can be detected – part of a wave of antiabortion bills that represent a direct challenge toRoe v. Wade.

“Protecting the right of a woman to be able to make decisions about her own body is fundamentally what we do and what we stand for as a Democratic Party, ”the Massachusetts senator said.

Pressed for an answer on what to do about Democrats like Edwards who have run on in culturally conservative states, Warren seemed to suggest that she wouldn’t seek to draw rigid lines, saying, “I’m not here to drive anyone out of this party. I’m not here to build fences. ”Yet she also vowed:“ I believe that abortion rights are human rights. ”

Biden argued that he has strong support from the African American community, saying “ I come out of the black community in terms of my support. ”

“ I have more people supporting me in the black community that have announced for me because they know me, they know who I am, ”Biden continued. “Three former chairs of the Black Caucus. The only black African-American woman who had ever been elected to the United States Senate. ”

The first African-American woman to be elected to the Senate, Carol Moseley Braun , has endorsed Biden.

The second, Harris, was standing a few feet away from him.

“ That’s not true! ”Harris exclaimed through a smile, as Biden corrected himself to say he meant“ the first ”African-American woman elected to the Senate. Harris and Booker chuckled incredulously as Biden finished his defense, saying he was picked as vice president “because of my relationship, long-standing relationship with the black community.”

Booker pivoted from a question about Trump’s wall to a comment about candidates making meaningful connections with minority communities. “I have a lifetime of experience with black voters,” Booker said. “I’ve been one since I was 18. ”

Booker suggested black voters want“ authentic connections ”with their candidates, and used Biden’s recent comments about the dangers of legalizing marijuana as an example of a lack of understanding of the issues that affect those communities. Biden, unlike other candidates, has said he doesn’t support legalizing marijuana because studies don’t prove it’s not a gateway drug.

“I thought you might’ve been

Biden defended himself, saying, “I think we should decriminalize marijuana, period. I think everyone anyone who has a record should be let out of jail. Their records expunged. … But I do think it makes sense based on data that we should study what the long-term effects are for the use of marijuana. ”

Then Biden issued a somewhat garbled defense of his appeal to African American voters.

“With more African Americans under criminal supervision in America than all the slaves since 1850, do not roll up into communities and not talk directly to issues that are going to relate to the liberation of children. ”– Sen. Cory Booker (NJ)

There are several problems with this claim. First, as Booker framed it, it’s simply wrong. The(census) counted 3.6 million slaves. African Americansmade up 2.3 million, or 34 percent, of the total 6.8 million correctional population in 2014.

A Booker spokeswoman as evidencesent us a link to a 2014 PolitiFact fact checkabout a different claim – that more black men are now in prison than were slaves in 1850. “There were about 1. (million African American men under state and federal criminal justice supervision in) , 807, 076 more than the number of African American men who were enslaved in 1850, ”the fact check said, rating it“ true . ”

But that’s not what Booker said.

Moreover, even if the black men comparison is correct in terms of raw numbers, it’s still misleading because the US population has soared since 1850, asour colleagues at Wonkblog noted in 2015. The census that year found that roughly nine in 10 of the nation’s 3.6 million black people were enslaved. By contrast, one in 11 black people is under correctional supervision today, according tothe Pew Charitable Trusts.

Harris and Biden both used questions about foreign policy to assail Trump for his behavior on the world stage.

Harris put it bluntly. “Donald Trump got punked,” the senator from California said, with respect to nuclear negotiations with North Korea.

Biden put it this way: “This guy has no idea what he’s doing. ”

But neither candidate clearly addressed the question they were asked. Harris did not explain how she would weigh concessions in the interest of conducting bilateral summits. And Biden did not say what he would do differently from former president Barack Obama to move past the decades-long stalemate with North Korea and make progress toward denuclearization.

Sanders was asked about the “lock him up” chants directed at Trump at a World Series game last month. Those chants mimic the “lock her up” chants Republican voters levied at 2016 nominee Hillary Clinton throughout the campaign.

Some prominent Democrats have argued that members of their party should not emulate the practices of their opponents. Sanders did not disavow the chants, which have emerged from crowds at his events in recent weeks. Instead, he expressed empathy for their sentiments.

“What the American people are saying is nobody is above the law,” Sanders said. “And I think what the American people are also saying is, in fact, if this president did break the law, he should be prosecuted like any other individual who breaks the law. But at the end of the day, what we need to do is to bring our people together, not just in opposition to Trump. ”

Biden wasn’t asked about those chants directly. But when asked about whether he would support a criminal investigation into Trump after he leaves the White House, Biden said he would let his Justice Department make that decision.

“I would not direct my Justice Department like this president does. I’d let them make their independent judgment, ”Biden said.

Then he pivoted to the chants. “I don’t think it’s a good idea that we mock that, that we that we model ourselves after Trump and say,‘ lock him up. ’” Biden said. “It’s about civility. We have to restore the soul of this country. That’s not who we are. That’s not who we have been. That’s not who we should be. ”

“I have led the way on voting and I can tell you right now one solution that would make a huge difference in this state would be allow every kid in the country to register to vote when they turn 18. If we had a system like this and we did something about gerrymandering and we stopped the voting purges and we did something significant about making sure we don’t have money in politics from the outside, Stacey Abrams would be governor of the state right now. ”– Sen. Amy Klobuchar (Minn.)

Many Democrats claim Stacey Abrams lost the Georgia governor’s race because of racially motivated voter suppression. Many Republicans claim that there’s no evidence for that assertion and that their candidate won fair and square. In a previous fact check, we talked to experts and took a close look at the data.

Brian Kemp, Abrams’s Republican opponent who is now governor, was basically in charge of running his own election because he was Georgia’s secretary of state at the time and declined to recuse himself.

Kemp oversaw an aggressive effort to purge voters, with nearly 700, 00 0, or 10 percent, removed from the rolls in the year before the election. “For an estimated 107, 00 0 of those people, their removal from the voter rolls was triggered not because they moved or died or went to prison, but rather because they had decided not to vote in prior elections, ”according to a report by American Public Media.

But there’s a counterargument, too. Even if every provisional ballot not counted and every rejected absentee ballot had been awarded to Abrams, it would not have overcome Abrams’s 55, 00 0-vote deficit. The 2018 turnout was far greater than any previous midterm, according to FiveThirtyEight, and more African Americans voted in 2018 than in 2016.

Where you land depends on how you view the wide range of pertinent evidence. Klobuchar suggested her statement was a factual claim, not in dispute, though it’s really more of an opinion.

On a day when the country sharp divides were on clear display in the impeachment proceedings that continued on Capitol Hill, two of the candidates sought to strike unifying notes.

“The next president, whoever they are, is going to have be someone who can heal and bring this nation together, ”said Booker.

“ We have to unify this country, ”Biden said, adding that he was was best positioned to accomplish that.

In normal times, such remarks would not be controversial. But those messages have run into some resistance in the Trump era from Democrats who don’t buy the notion that Republicans would cooperate with the next president if Trump loses.

On the other hand, Biden has held a lead in many public polls by adhering to his message and wagering that voters will want to turn the page on the fierce combat of the past four years rather than waging new battles in their wake.

Gabbard and Harris feuded over the state of the Democratic Party. Gabbard said she wants to rebuild the Democratic party so that it “actually hears the voices of Americans who are struggling all across this country,” and called for an end to regime-change wars. “As president,” Gabbard said, “I will end this foreign policy and these regime change or has worked to end this new Cold War, an arms race, and instead invest our hard earned taxpayer dollars, actually, into serving the needs of the American people. ”

Harris, when asked to respond, threw several punches, taking particular issue with Gabbard’s criticism of the party.

“I think that it’s unfortunate that we have someone on the stage who is attempting to be the Democratic nominee for president of the United States, who during the Obama administration spent four years full time on Fox News criticizing President Obama… who has spent full time criticizing people on this stage, ”Harris said.

She also accused Gabbard of cozying up to Trump adviser and white nationalist Steve Bannon and criticized her long- standing reluctance to call Syrian leader Bashar al-Assad a war criminal.

“The president had to confess in writing, in court, to illegally diverting charitable contributions that were supposed to go to veterans.”– Pete Buttigieg

This is false.

In acivil complaintfiled in June 2018, then-Attorney General Barbara D. Underwood of New York charged that the now-defunct Donald J. Trump Foundation had violated a federal law known as the Johnson Amendment, which bars charities from supporting candidates for office.

Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign “extensively directed and coordinated the Foundation’s activities in connection with a nationally televised charity fundraiser for the Foundation in Des Moines, Iowa on January 28, 2016, ”Underwood charged.

The fundraiser was billed as an effort to“ raise funds for veterans’ organizations, ”but the Trump campaign commandeered nearly $ 2.8 million in donations and “dictated the manner in which the Foundation would disburse those proceeds, directing the timing, amounts and recipients of the grants.”

The president settled the lawsuit, but did not admit liability. A New York state judge on Nov. 7 noted in a court order that “the Funds did ultimately reach their intended destinations, ie, charitable organizations supporting veterans.”

As FactCheck.org reported, “donations totaling $ 2 . 825 million were given to 34 veterans organizations between January 2016 and June 2016. ”Here’s a list of the 34 organizations, w hich includes Amvets and the Green Beret Foundation.

Steyer defended his decision to pour tens of millions of dollars into his own campaign while at the same time criticizing the role of money in politics.

The question has taken on added significance as a second billionaire, former New York City mayor Mike Bloomberg, made moves to enter the race.

Steyer, a former hedge fund investor and an early impeachment advocate, pointed to his support for liberal causes, ranging from youth voter registration to efforts to combat climate change.

“What I’ve done over the last decade is to put together coalitions of ordinary American citizen to take on unchecked corporate power, ”he said. “We have a broken government in Washington, DC”

The Democrat didn’t explain what moved him to pivot from these undertakings to a presidential bid, but he did receive some support from Yang, who piped up at the end of Steyer’s answer to say of his well-heeled rival, “Tom is one of the good ones.”

Viewers got a glimpse of the sharp divisions over health care that have repeatedly roiled the race. Buttigieg, who advocates expanding Obamacare, attacked Warren for favoring a more dramatic shift to Medicare-for-all, cutting her no slack for her recent proposal to ease the country into the system gradually.

“Whether we wait three years, as Senator Warren has proposed, or whether you do it right out of the gate,” Buttigieg argued, it’s not an approach that unifies the country.

The moment highlighted the candidates’ eagerness to stoke fights on health care. Warren underscored her recently unveiled plan, emphasizing the intermediate steps she would take and how she would leave Medicare-for-all for the third year of her administration.

Her pitch represented a shift away from Sanders. Sanders, by contrast, repeated his more urgent calls to pass Medicare-for-all.

Biden, who like Buttigieg favors expanding Obamacare over Medicare-for-all, said Medicare for all “couldn’t pass in the United States Senate.”

Sanders was asked how central President Trump’s conduct should be to the Democrats’ 2020 campaign.

He first said Trump might be “the most corrupt president in the history of America.” Then he issued a warning. “We cannot simply be consumed by Donald Trump,” Sanders said. “If we do that, we will lose the election.” Sanders listed a variety of pressing issues facing Americans, including the vast numbers of people without health insurance and homelessness.

That rhetoric echoed Sanders’s stump speech.

Buttigieg offered a similar perspective when asked the same question moments later. “We are absolutely going to confront this president for his wrongdoing, but we are also each running to be the president who will lead this country after the Trump presidency comes to an end,” Buttigieg said. “We are going to have to unify a nation that will be as divided as ever. And while doing it, address big issues that didn’t take a vacation for the impeachment process or for the Trump presidency as a whole. ”

Biden, who has made his electability and bipartisan record a centerpiece of his campaign , was asked how he would work with the Republicans currently rallying around Trump’s attacks on him and his son.

The former vice president urged voters to think ahead to the general election, when the nominee will have to go to swing states “like Georgia and North Carolina and other places and get a Senate majority.”

At the same time, he acknowledged that he has been a target of Republican ire, trying to pitch this as an asset. He said he has learned from the impeachment hearings that, “Donald Trump doesn’t want me to be the nominee.” The fear of going toe-to-toe with him, Biden said, was the reason he “held up the aid, ”Referring to stalled assistance to Ukraine as his associates were pressing the government in Kyiv to announce an investigation into the Bidens.

Another lesson, Biden said, without going into detail, is that “Vladimir Putin doesn’t want me to be president.”

Impeachment, which has been on the minds of Democrats across the country, was the first topic of the debate. Warren said she would try to convince her Senate Republican colleagues to convict Trump, in part by encouraging them to read the Mueller report.

She also sought to highlight Ambassador Gordon Sondland’s status as a Trump donor, and pivoted to her alternate vision of how ambassadorships would be doled out in her administration.

Warren said she would not “give away ambassador posts to the highest bidders ”and accused Trump of engaging in“ corruption, ”underscoring a core theme of her campaign.

“You’ve got 500, 00 0 people sleeping out on the street. ”– Sen. Bernie Sanders (Vt.)

The way Sanders frames this is exaggerated. His number came from asingle-night surveydone by the Department of Housing and Urban Development to measure the number of homeless people. For a single night in January 2018, the estimate was that 553, (0 people are homeless.)

But the report also says that two-thirds – nearly 360, 00 0 – were in emergency shelters or transitional housing programs; the other 195, 00 0 were “Unsheltered” – ie, on the street, as Sanders put it. The number has been trending down over the past decade; it was 650, 00 0 in 2007