'Adios to Donald Trump': Democrats tussle on debate night while vowing to oust the president

The Democratic candidates who took the stage Wednesday for the inaugural debate of the 2020 election cycle offered broad agreement on some of the day's biggest issues, while occasionally bitterly tussling with each other over small differences on others.

But they had unanimous agreement on one thing: Any of the Democrats in the unwieldy pack of White House hopefuls would be better than President Trump.

"On January 20, 2021, we will say adios to Donald Trump," said former HUD Secretary Julian Castro, the only Hispanic candidate among 24 vying to be the party's nominee, drawing some of the biggest applause of the night.

The back-and-forth was sometimes tense as the candidates detailed their vision of America in chunky, minute-long responses and even shorter rebuttals while wading through a rapid round of questions on the economy, health care, immigration, abortion, gun safety, and foreign policy. 

But through it all, the ten White House hopefuls on stage for the first of back-to-back nights of presidential debates seemed most focused on creating a memorable moment that would set them apart from the pack of two dozen candidates vying to take on Trump in November 2020.

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Some did better than others.

“Who is this economy really working for,” Sen. Elizabeth Warren asked rhetorically in her first response to NBC moderator Savannah Guthrie's question about whether her plans to levy taxes on the rich would harm a booming economy. “It’s doing great for a thinner and thinner slice at the top.”

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The debates in Miami mark the biggest showcase to date in a crowded contest where the majority of candidates are struggling to generate much support in the polls in the very early going.

There has been relatively little movement in the race since former Vice President Joe Biden announced his candidacy, making the debates all the more important for the pack chasing him. Biden is set to appear Thursday with nine other candidates on the second day of the debate and has maintained a double-digit lead over all candidates in most polling.

Many candidates marked Wednesday as the moment the race started in earnest.

What they talked about

Warren, who has recently climbed in national polls, offered nods to various issues, including canceling college debt and assisting working Americans with childcare as she continues to try to take the lane as a progressive alternative to Biden. She plans to pay for the programs by raising taxes on individuals and families that make more than $50 million.

Former Rep. Beto O'Rourke showed his eagerness for taking the fight to Trump and broke into Spanish while answering some questions. And Sen. Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota made the pitch for pragmatism, proposing free community college as a more feasible way to help ease college costs and backing calls for a public option instead of a Medicare for all.

Castro, who is trailing in the polls but appeared to have a breakout moment Wednesday, drew big cheers from the audience when he lambasted Trump's immigration policy.

Castro noted the haunting image from the U.S.-Mexico border that went viral in recent days showing Óscar Alberto Martínez Ramírez and his 23-month-old daughter drowned in the Rio Grande. The two were making their way toward Texas in hopes of seeking asylum. 

"It's heartbreaking and it should piss us all off," Castro said. "If I were president today, I would sign an executive order than would get rid of Trump's zero tolerance policy, the remain in Mexico policy and this metering policy."

Washington Gov. Jay Inslee, who has struggled in the polls, landed a punch on corporate titans taking home huge profits while their workers struggle with sub-poverty wages and lashed at Trump for his resistance to promoting alternative energy jobs.

And Rep. Tulsi Gabbard of Hawaii, one of three candidates who served in the U.S. military, slammed Trump as a "chicken hawk" for taking America to the brink of dangerous war in Iran.

Others on stage – New York City mayor Bill de Blasio, U.S. Rep. Tim Ryan and former U.S. Rep. John Delaney – had good moments but struggled to grab the attention needed as they try to shore up their fundraising, broaden their appeal and ultimately maintain viable candidacies. The trio effectively delivered well-honed talking points on policing in America, environmental policy, immigration and health care. But it was unclear if they created the sort of viral moment likely needed to give their campaigns much-needed oxygen.

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O'Rourke also had his unsteady moments.

Castro went after O’Rourke for not endorsing a plan to repeal the immigration code that criminalizes unauthorized entry into the United States. Castro argued the code is what leads to border agents incarcerating parents and then separating them from their children.

O'Rourke struggled to push back, noting that he introduced legislation while serving in Congress that would ensure "we don't criminalize those who are seeking asylum and refuge in this country."

"I don't think it's asking too much for people to follow our laws when they come to this country," O'Rourke added.

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But Castro continued to hammer at O'Rourke that without decriminalizing unauthorized entry, you leave undocumented immigrants vulnerable.

“If you did your homework on this issue, you should know we should repeal this,” Castro said to O'Rourke. 

Castro did not let up after the debate, telling reporters that it was "ironic that a senator from Massachusetts and a senator from New Jersey are the ones who understand this border policy and this law better than Congressman O'Rourke."

De Blasio, who in entering the presidential race said he wanted to push the party further to the left, challenged fellow Democrats to own the role of being the defender of immigrants.

“For all the American citizens out there who feel you’re falling behind, who feel the American dream is not working for you, the immigrants didn’t do that to you,” de Blasio said. “The big corporations did that to you. The 1% did that to you. We need to be the party of working people, and that includes a party of immigrants, but first we have to tell the working people in America who are hurting that we are going to be on their side every single time against those big corporations who created this mess to begin with.”

Health care divisions

Delaney and de Blasio's biggest moment may have come in a tense back-and-forth also with O'Rourke.

The exchange started with de Blasio inserting himself as O’Rourke told moderator Lester Holt he opposes abolishing private insurance in a health care overhaul.

“Private insurance is not working for tens of millions of Americans when you talk about the co-pays … the premiums, the out of pocket expenses, it’s not working,” de Blasio chimed in.

O’Rourke and de Blasio, who is hovering around 1% in most national polls, talked over each other before Delaney, who has been an outspoken opponent of Medicare for All, chimed in.

“I think we should be the party that keeps what’s working and fixes what’s broken," Delaney said.

Troops in Afghanistan

In another tense exchange, Gabbard and Ryan disagreed on whether U.S. troops should remain in Afghanistan.

“If the United States isn’t engaged, the Taliban will grow and they will have bigger, bolder terrorist acts,” Ryan argued.

Gabbard, who served in Iraq and Kuwait with the National Guard, argued that the Taliban were there long before the U.S. engaged in Afghanistan.

“When we weren’t in there, they started flying planes into our buildings,” Ryan said.

“The Taliban didn’t attack us on 9/11,” Gabbard shot back. “Al Qaeda did.”

Ryan was still fuming after the debate, and reminded reporters that Gabbard traveled to Damascus in 2017 to meet with Syrian President Bashar Assad. The visit was controversial because Assad has been shunned by Americans since a 2013 chemical attack carried out by his regime that killed more than 1,500 people, including hundreds of children. 

“I personally don’t need to be lectured by somebody who’s dining with a dictator who gassed kids," Ryan told reporters after the debate. "I know what I’m talking about. I’m right, and we can’t let these areas be wide open."

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Who is a bigger champion on abortion rights?

The candidates tried to outdo each other in championing themselves as champions of abortion rights. With several states passing laws this year severely restricting women’s access to abortions, most in the field have hammered at the issue as a central argument for why voters need to elect a Democrat in 2020.

Inslee noted his record of defending abortion rights as governor.

Klobuchar shot back, “I just want to say that there are three women up here who have fought pretty hard for women’s right to choose.”

“I don’t believe only in reproductive freedom, I believe in reproductive justice,” Castro chimed in.

Warren vowed to enshrine Roe v. Wade into federal law, saying, “It’s not enough for us to expect the courts to protect us.”

No 'JV debate' stage

With a crowded field, DNC officials decided to split the inaugural 2020 debate into two nights with 10 candidates at a time taking the stage. Three major declared candidates who failed to get contributions from 65,000 Americans or hit 1% in three major polls — the DNC's criteria for making the debates— as well as a fourth candidate who announced his candidacy this week were left off the stage.

Four of the top five candidates in national polling — Biden, Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont, and South Bend, Indiana Mayor Pete Buttigieg and Sen. Kamala Harris of California — were slotted for the second night of the debate on Thursday. DNC officials said they picked who would appear on which stage through a random drawing.

DNC chairman Tom Perez pushed against the notion that the Night 2 is more loaded with plausible candidates.

“There’s no JV-Varsity, we’ve got a deep bench,” Perez told MSNBC in an interview.

Ahead of the debate, Sen. Cory Booker set a modest goal for the evening: Introduce himself to a national audience that, for the most part, is just beginning to pay attention to the 2020 presidential race, the New Jersey senator’s campaign manager Addisu Demissie wrote in a memo ahead of his appearance.

Indeed, the vast majority of 2020 voters aren’t paying a whole lot of attention to the next presidential election yet. Only 35% of registered Democrats say they’re paying close attention to the campaign thus far with nearly two-thirds saying they are paying some or no attention, according to an Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs poll published this week.

Booker offered an impassioned plea for why voters should give him a hard look.

“Donald Trump wants us to fight him on his turf and his terms," Booker said. "We will beat him — I will beat him — by calling this country to a sense of common purpose again. This is a referendum on getting rid of him but it’s also a referendum on us, who we are and who we must be to each other.”

Trump, Republicans brand Dems as socialists

Past history would suggest that Trump, who leads the country at a time of low unemployment and modest wage growth, should be in a strong position for reelection.

But the unconventional president has seen his popularity dragged by the special counsel investigation in the 2016 presidential election, constant internal White House personnel intrigue, and criticism from Democrats that he's upended political norms by coarsening the national conversation. Trump's job approval rating stands at 44.3% with 51.6% saying they disapprove of his performance, according to the RealClearPolitics average of the president's national polling data.

Trump has sought to paint the entire Democratic field as being overrun by its most liberal wing. Only one candidate in the field, Sen. Bernie Sanders, describes himself as a democratic socialist, but Trump and Republican officials have sought to cast the entire party as lurching toward socialist ideology.

"Tonight, 2020 Democrats argued over fringe ideas that are completely out of touch with our values and would have a negative impact on Americans’ everyday lives," said Republican National Committee chairwoman Ronna McDaniel. "Voters recognize the success of President Trump’s pro-growth policies, in contrast to the Democrats’ radical proposals like a government takeover of health care, open borders, no protections for human life, and massive tax hikes.

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All the candidates who qualified in Miami should have another chance to make their cases next month at the second round of debates in Detroit.

But many of the campaigns — more than half the field is registering in single digit percentages or lower in national polls—  could be running on fumes by the end of the summer.

The DNC has also set higher polling and fundraising bars to qualify for the third and fourth debates set for the fall, making it likely that the unwieldy field will be smaller before long.

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Since his entry in the race in late April, Biden has maintained a commanding lead in most national and early state polls.

The former vice president is on stage Thursday, but that didn’t stop President Trump from taking shots at him Wednesday.

Trump, who was on Air Force One en route to Japan for the G-20 Summit during the debate, took to Twitter to reference Biden's role during his time in Senate shepherding the 1994 crime bill, which imposed mandatory minimum sentences for some drug crimes. The law has been widely criticized more recently for increasing prison populations and having a disproportionate impact on African Americans.  

“Ever since the passage of the Super Predator Crime Bill, pushed hard by @JoeBiden, together with Bill and Crooked Hillary Clinton, which inflicted great pain on many, but especially the African American Community, Democrats have tried and failed to pass Criminal Justice Reform,” Trump posted on Twitter.

The Wednesday lineup of Democrats made no mention of Biden but threw plenty of darts at Trump.

In their closing arguments, several of the candidates touched on populist themes, arguing that Trump in his 2016 run had vowed to fight for the little guy. His promises proved to be hollow, they argued.

 “Instead, we have a country that is of, by and for the rich and powerful,” Gabbard said. “This must end.”