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Winners and Losers of the Democratic DebateSkip to CommentsWinners and Losers of the Democratic Debate
Welcome to Opinion’s commentary for the Feb. 19 Democratic presidential candidate debate in Las Vegas. In this special feature, Times Opinion writers rank the candidates on a scale of 1 to 10: 1 means the candidate probably didn’t belong on the stage and should probably drop out; 10 means it’s on, President Trump. Here’s what our columnists and contributors thought about the debate.
Read what our columnists and contributors thought of the Feb. 8 debate.
Elizabeth Warren
Will Wilkinson (10/10) — The gloves came off and she slayed. Warren sliced Bloomberg’s Achilles before he could get off the line, silenced him with his own non-disclosure agreements, and then rained hell on the rest of the field with a combination of vision, policy acumen and biting wit. She presented herself as a morally centered, hyper-competent, fiercely formidable protector of the vulnerable, and it landed.
Nicholas Kristof (10/10) — She had a great night. She pushed Bloomberg to release people from N.D.A.s, and she was graceful as she skewered her rivals. She gets extra credit for speaking up for Klobuchar when she was under attack.
Jamelle Bouie (10/10) — Unquestionably the winner, Warren was fiery and aggressive in a way we haven’t seen on the debate stage. Given her decline in the polls, perhaps she figures she has nothing to lose. But this is the kind of performance that might give her campaign a second life.
Elizabeth Bruenig (9/10) — Warren’s strongest performance yet. She came bloodthirsty and walked away sated, having repeatedly laid waste to Bloomberg and Buttigieg.
Gail Collins (9/10) — Comeback kid.
Michelle Cottle (9/10) — Liz knew she was fighting for her life, and she brought her brass knuckles, nunchucks, chainsaw, multiple shivs and a big honking baseball bat. Bloomberg took the worst of it, but only Bernie escaped a serious beatdown.
Daniel McCarthy (9/10) — If you like Elizabeth Warren, you’d have to say this was her night: She utterly dominated her rivals. And if you don’t like any of the Democrats, you’d have to say she made a compelling case against them, whether or not she made any case for herself. She earns top marks either way.
Wajahat Ali (9/10) — The Arya Stark of the debate. Recently ignored, Warren came to dominate all, especially Bloomberg, and save her candidacy. The strongest, most forceful presence on that stage.
Brittany Bronson (9/10) — Warren’s offense was unrelenting. Each zinger landed. Her ability to draw clear lines from major policy issues to racial injustices made her stand out. But she spent too much time beating up on Klobuchar and Bloomberg and let Sanders off too easy.
Nicole Hemmer (9/10) — Ignore Warren? Not anymore. She dominated the debate with a deadly combo of righteous anger and unshakable command of her policy and everyone else’s.
Gil Duran (9/10) — Warren needed to shine — and she blazed. She single-handedly popped Bloomberg’s bubble. She also had equal opportunity elbows for Buttigieg, Klobuchar and Sanders. Demanding that Bloomberg release his accusers from nondisclosure agreements was brutally brilliant.
Liz Mair (8/10) — Being the underdog suits her. Unclear whether it will help her, though.
Ross Douthat (8/10) — She found the energy she’d lost in previous debates, positioned herself between the moderates and Sanders, and had her perfect foil in Bloomberg. Her work on him is probably more a Chris Christie-knifing-Marco Rubio scenario than a true campaign-reviving moment.
Peter Wehner (7/10) — She dropped a nuclear bomb on Mike Bloomberg. She won’t win the nomination, but tonight she made sure that Bloomberg won’t, either.
Bret Stephens (5/10) — Every answer contained a pander to a left-wing constituency. What about the rest of the country?
Maureen Dowd (4/10) — She ground her heel into Bloomberg’s trachea from the first minute. “A billionaire who calls women fat broads and horse-faced lesbians and no, I’m not talking about Donald Trump, I’m talking about Mayor Bloomberg.” She won’t be the nominee and she won’t be in a Bloomberg or Sanders cabinet, but she set the tone for the gloves-off debate.
Bernie Sanders
Gil Duran (9.1/10) — Sanders won this debate because no one benefited more from the bloody dogpile on Bloomberg. Sanders gave as good as he got every time someone attacked him. Warren stole the show, but Sanders emerges unscathed and poised to maintain his momentum.
Brittany Bronson (9/10) — Sanders benefited from Bloomberg absorbing the majority of the attacks. His answer on releasing medical records was dicey. But he drew the discussion back to his central issues, and with Blomberg there, they packed an even more powerful punch.
Elizabeth Bruenig (9/10) — Sanders rebutted the fretting about his medical records with youthful vigor and barbed rebuttals, swift dismissals and a special antipathy for Bloomberg. It’s easy to envision this version of Sanders taking on another billionaire.
Nicholas Kristof (9/10) — Sanders didn’t retreat an inch and made solid points, although he evaded some questions like the one about his medical records. He sometimes seemed disconcertingly angry, but to others that ferocity comes across as a positive, as a determination to fight for them.
Bret Stephens (8/10) — His riff on socialism for the rich versus socialism for the poor was demagogic — but effective.
Michelle Cottle (7/10) — Bernie as front-runner is even yellier and crankier than regular Bernie. Did not respond well when confronted about the divisiveness of his candidacy. But Bloomberg drew much of the fire away.
Ross Douthat (7/10) — Impassioned against Bloomberg, same as ever otherwise, barely touched by his opponents and poised to build a big delegate lead very soon unless something changes.
Daniel McCarthy (7/10) — He’s predictable yet unflagging in his zeal. If Democrats want a true believer, he’s unquestionably their candidate. Even his attacks on the interloper Bloomberg were framed in terms of his familiar class-war themes. He represents a real fork in the road of American politics.
Jamelle Bouie (7/10) — Sanders gave a typically solid performance — ably taking hostile questions and making them a pitch for his platform. But his single greatest victory was that he wasn’t the target of most of the attacks.
Nicole Hemmer (7/10) — Ah, this is the problem with Sanders the Front-Runner: He’s tense and humorless. But he handily defended his positions and took no real body blows.
Wajahat Ali (7/10) — Bernie weathered the usual critiques against him, making a passionate case for democratic socialism as an antidote to income inequality, oligarchy and billionaire Bloomberg’s candidacy.
Will Wilkinson (7/10) — For once, Sanders took a little damage. His slipperiness is oddly underestimated, but criticism of his shady concealment of health records (months after a heart attack) and the vitriolic aggression of his online supporters left a mark. But since Bloomberg attracted most of the fire, the socialist front-runner still sits pretty.
Liz Mair (6/10) — Honestly thought he was going to have an aneurysm in the first half. Got lucky that no one kept slugging for two full hours.
Maureen Dowd (6/10) — This was his opponents’ night to take him down, and they didn’t. He stuck to his socialist guns, even when Bloomberg suggested that his anti-capitalist screeds would help Trump. Curiously, he cited the favorite Democratic foil of 2016, the Russians, when asked to answer for the angry digital mob behind him. Senator Sanders, are you suggesting that some of your belligerent Bernie Bros are bots?
Peter Wehner (6/10) — He was angry, moralizing, polarizing, unflinching and unapologetically radical. If you like those qualities, Bernie’s your guy. If you don’t, you fear for the Democratic Party.
Gail Collins (4/10) — Everything’s a yell.
Pete Buttigieg
Nicholas Kristof (9/10) — He had some of the best lines and put himself in the center of the fray. He was often very skilled, but attacks on others periodically left him seeming just mean.
Will Wilkinson (8/10) — He was a rock of calm in the primary’s stormiest debate. His measured bid for the pragmatic unity vote was a beacon in the tempest. His chippy attacks on Klobuchar’s record rattled her, but belied the spirit of his message.
Brittany Bronson (8/10) — Buttigieg was the only candidate to really go after Sanders tonight, and he hit on the right pain points. His unifying message and tendency toward inspirational quotes still came off a bit bland.
Peter Wehner (8/10) — He once again showed that he does everything well: criticize other candidates without being mean, defend his record without being defensive. He was able to weave in powerful thematic themes with policy specifics.
Gail Collins (8/10) — Good one-liners and policy riffs.
Michelle Cottle (8/10) — In the midst of the knife fight, he kept his cool and made his points. He repeatedly hit Bloomberg and Sanders as two sides of the same coin — not real Democrats. But he likely did little to reassure those who suspect that he’s a robot.
Bret Stephens (7/10) — The mask slips: Behind the polished debate champ there lies a polished debate champ.
Liz Mair (7/10) — Had a message and a strategy and mostly stuck to it, except when getting distracted by Amy Klobuchar.
Wajahat Ali (7/10) — Another consistent and effective performance. He positioned himself, at least to white voters, as the “moderate” candidate to heal this country. He also came for Klobuchar’s soul and votes. Will his relentless attacks on her backfire with women voters?
Nicole Hemmer (7/10) — Pablum is his mother tongue and that Klobuchar blood-feud is just weird, but Buttigieg tightened his hold on the centrist vote tonight, which is what he needed to do.
Gil Duran (7/10) — Buttigieg succinctly summed up the main tension on the stage when he called Bloomberg and Sanders “polarizing” and said, “Let’s put forward someone who’s actually a Democrat.” But he was a minor player tonight and failed to stand out.
Daniel McCarthy (6/10) — Polished as always, the best candidate an algorithm can produce. He reversed attacks on his inexperience very skillfully — a Midwestern mayorship is indeed part of the arena, though it may not look that way from Washington.
Ross Douthat (6/10) — Points for being the only candidate, apart from Bloomberg, who consistently treated Sanders as a front-runner and attacked him from the center. Point subtracted for his inconclusive and unpleasant war with Klobuchar.
Elizabeth Bruenig (5.5/10) — For a candidate whose campaign has increasingly taken aim at Sanders for attacking other Democrats, Buttigieg certainly seemed to relish laying into Klobuchar, Warren and Sanders — without making much of a case for his own worldview.
Maureen Dowd (5/10) — Smug but quick on his feet. He tore into Klobuchar for her votes to confirm Trump judges, a fair criticism, and made her verklempt when he pounded her on not knowing who the president of Mexico was. Pity her debate prep team.
Jamelle Bouie (4/10) — The most revealing Buttigieg moment was when he was asked to comment on Sanders’s plan for worker participation on corporate boards. He said it was a good idea, then said he didn’t want to force anyone to do it.
Joe Biden
Bret Stephens (9/10) — Best performance yet. If he’d been this good six or seven debates ago, he’d still be the man to beat.
Gil Duran (8/10) — Biden showed vigor but got eclipsed by Warren. He keeps trying to explain his electability, but voters need to feel power, not hear about it. He’s clearly not the sharpest or most articulate Democrat. His performance was competent but not transformative.
Brittany Bronson (7.5/10) — Biden needed a memorable moment, but never seemed to get enough time to squeeze one in. Delivered on climate specifics but his message as the guy to beat Trump dwindled in comparison to his opponents’ visions.
Will Wilkinson (7/10) — Biden hitched up his sock suspenders and performed, for once, with unflagging verve. But the front-runner luster is gone.
Nicholas Kristof (7/10) — Biden displayed passion and noted his working-class roots, and he didn’t fumble — it was perhaps his best debate. But that’s a low bar. Too often he seemed on the sidelines.
Gail Collins (6/10) — First to use the word “existential”!
Michelle Cottle (6/10) — Extra feisty. But he’s still doing that thing where, a few sentences into his answer, he gets tangled up in his thoughts. Every time he opens his mouth, I hold my breath.
Elizabeth Bruenig (6/10) — Not exactly a poor showing — but not the kind of knockout Biden needed. He did bring welcome levity to a tense, hot-tempered stage.
Jamelle Bouie (6/10) — He did exactly as well as he needed to do to hold on and maybe even benefit from the unexpected weakness of Mike Bloomberg.
Liz Mair (6/10) — Didn’t really say anything, except for his closing statement, and no one could respond. Probably better than getting cut up in the fray.
Ross Douthat (6/10) — Having Bloomberg onstage made him look a little more prepared and effective. But it didn’t make him a natural rallying point for the voters who have drifted from him. He’s still hanging on for dear life.
Wajahat Ali (6/10) — The bar was low for Joe. He needed to hop over it with vigor and a competent performance. He piled on Bloomberg and Bernie, relying upon his experience as a statesman who’s actually gotten things done. Will South Carolina show up for him?
Nicole Hemmer (5/10) — After anemic showings in Iowa and New Hampshire, Biden needs a new case for his candidacy. He didn’t make it.
Daniel McCarthy (5/10) — OK, but failed to make a case he should be front-runner again. His campaign remains mired in nostalgia: a dream of an Obama do-over, but without Obama or congressional majorities.
Peter Wehner (5/10) — His campaign is fading, everyone knows it, and he was almost an afterthought in the debate. His journeys down memory lane are kind of poignant.
Maureen Dowd (4/10) — Increasingly seems like a creature of a bygone era lost in the mists of Trumpism. He caught fire when accused by Warren of being chummy with Mitch McConnell, even though he was chummy with Mitch McConnell. When he hammered Bloomberg for not letting women give their accounts of sexual harassment, he seemed to forget his own role in stifling accusers of Clarence Thomas.
Amy Klobuchar
Bret Stephens (10/10) — She has a winning combination of resilience and vulnerability, intellect and likability.
Elizabeth Bruenig (7.5/10) — After tangling sharply with Buttigieg, Klobuchar seemed to spend the rest of the debate on the defensive, deep in the weeds of her own record.
Gil Duran (7/10) — Klobuchar started off fine, but stumbled badly when confronted about her ignorance of Mexican politics. It got under her skin, leading to some chaos. In a blood-sport debate, she was often playing defense.
Will Wilkinson (7/10) — After a stellar New Hampshire debate, Klobuchar reverted to her mean. She held up under Buttigieg’s unrelenting assault, but she’s proud, and he got under her skin, and her defensive petulance when challenged diminished her.
Brittany Bronson (7/10) — Her humor, usually refreshing, couldn’t deflect from her lack of substantive answers. Pressed by Buttigieg and Warren, she seemed physically rattled and never really recovered. Her answers on immigration reform and Dreamers was weak.
Liz Mair (7/10) — Had a message and a strategy and mostly stuck to it, except when contemplating throwing binders at other people.
Nicole Hemmer (6/10) — She’s shown that debates matter, but that’s bad news going into Nevada. She got lots of airtime, but did very little with it.
Nicholas Kristof (6/10) — Often effective and warm, Klobuchar sometimes became flustered when hounded by Buttigieg or others. Not her best night, at a time when she needed a best night.
Michelle Cottle (6/10) — Almost had to be a letdown from her epic performance in New Hampshire. She’s good when she gets on a roll, but she didn’t distinguish herself in the free-for-all. Spent too much time visibly ticked off.
Gail Collins (6/10) — Last time was better.
Ross Douthat (5/10) — Her weakest debate, with tougher moderator questions and a war with Buttigieg that was more of a vicious, petty stalemate than the victory she needed.
Jamelle Bouie (5/10) — There’s nothing more dramatic in Democratic Party politics right now than Klobuchar’s unambiguous disdain for Buttigieg, and the extent to which she’s singularly focused on taking him down a peg. She tried to do that in Nevada, but couldn’t land a definitive blow.
Peter Wehner (5/10) — She was much less effective in this debate than in the last one because she was much more on the defensive. For the first time in a debate, she was rattled and off-message.
Wajahat Ali (5/10) — After winning the New Hampshire debate with her bold, energetic performance, Klobuchar was brought down by her gaffe of forgetting Mexican President López Obrador’s name. Buttigeg exploited it all night long. She fought back, hiding rage behind a smile, but she was clearly rattled.
Daniel McCarthy (4/10) — Her happy-warrior persona shattered when she was pressed on forgetting the name of Mexico’s president and on her immigration record. She came off as temperamentally ill-suited to take on Trump or serve as president. She’s a legislator out of her league.
Maureen Dowd (3/10) — Her bangs weren’t shaking, but she was, spending much of the night on the ropes, as she sparred with a pot-stirring Pete. She failed to build on her strong performance in New Hampshire.
Michael Bloomberg
Daniel McCarthy (5/10) — He isn’t ashamed of what he is, distasteful as that may be to other Democrats, particularly where his wealth and ugly history with women and minorities are concerned. His lack of defensiveness might let him brazen his way through the primaries as Trump did in the G.O.P.
Liz Mair (5/10) — Worst answer on sexual discrimination and harassment I’ve ever heard. Better second half, though.
Maureen Dowd (5/10) — Got a bloody lesson in debating and needed to stop and frisk himself for a good answer on all his N.D.A.s about his company being a toxic workplace for women. Got in the necessary red-scare shot at Bernie and dinged him for being a millionaire socialist with three houses.
Wajahat Ali (4/10) — Bloomberg’s troubling past with stop and frisk, misogyny and elitism caught up with him. The other candidates slapped him relentlessly with receipts.
Brittany Bronson (4/10) — Bloomberg spent half the debate apologizing for bad behavior. He picked up his stride on climate change and small-business empowerment but lost it all with his smug defense of his fortune. Much better in commercials.
Michelle Cottle (3/10) — This was Mike’s moment to show that he’s more than a massive war chest. He biffed it. He looked peevish and was not prepared for the pile-on by his rivals. Not ready for prime time.
Elizabeth Bruenig (3/10) — By turns smug and wounded, he seemed to expect thanks for entering the race — and was unprepared and taken aback when he was treated like a presidential candidate instead of a billionaire.
Will Wilkinson (3/10) — Bloomberg might have bled out onstage if he hadn’t been so bloodless. Warren eviscerated him seconds after the opening bell, followed by a brutal dogpile on stop-and-frisk, N.D.A.s, industrial-scale influence buying and billionaire arrogance. The mayor’s tone-deaf mix of evasion, back-pedaling and aristocratic hauteur provided no cover.
Nicholas Kristof (3/10) — The clip of Bloomberg refusing to release women from N.D.A.s will be played over and over. The issue will haunt him until he figures out how to handle it — hopefully by releasing people from their obligations. Too often, he seemed sour and snippy.
Nicole Hemmer (3/10) — Bloomberg was the piñata at the Democratic debate party: Every time someone whacked him — and everyone whacked him — another Republican talking point fell out.
Jamelle Bouie (2/10) — If you saw Bloomberg onstage, you might get the impression that he’s never been challenged this way. He stammered and stumbled in the face of withering attacks from his rivals. It was one of the worst performances of the entire primary season and could kill his campaign outright.
Ross Douthat (2/10) — He introduced himself with terrible, fumbling, unpleasant responses to the most predictable lines of attack (race, sexism, tax returns). Some OK moments later against Sanders but the first hour was a real-world demolition of his virtual candidacy.
Gail Collins (1/10) — Likeability moment never arrived.
Bret Stephens (1/10) — Oy. Vey.
Peter Wehner (1/10) — His performance was a catastrophe — stiff, arrogant, tone deaf and intensely unlikeable. His answer on N.D.A.s was among the worst in the history of presidential debates.
Gil Duran (1/10) — Bloomberg’s not a leading candidate — he just plays one in TV ads. When he wasn’t taking blows, he was invisible. His answers on racism and sexism were awful. Money can’t buy charisma — or humility. Historically bad debate performance.
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About the authors
Jamelle Bouie, Gail Collins, Ross Douthat, Nicholas Kristof, Bret Stephens are Times columnists.
Wajahat Ali (@WajahatAli) is a playwright, lawyer and contributing opinion writer.
Brittany Bronson (@BrittanyBronso1) is a Las Vegas-based writer and a contributing opinion writer.
Elizabeth Bruenig (@ebruenig) is a Times opinion writer.
Gil Duran (@gilduran76) is California opinion editor at The Sacramento Bee and a co-host of the FrameLab podcast
Nicole Hemmer (@pastpunditry) is an associate research scholar at Columbia University and the author of “Messengers of the Right: Conservative Media and the Transformation of American Politics.”
Daniel McCarthy (@ToryAnarchist) is the editor of Modern Age: A Conservative Quarterly.
Liz Mair (@LizMair), a strategist for campaigns by Scott Walker, Roy Blunt, Rand Paul, Carly Fiorina and Rick Perry, is the founder and president of Mair Strategies.
Peter Wehner (@Peter_Wehner) a senior fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center, served in the previous three Republican administrations and is a contributing opinion writer, a visiting professor at Duke and the author of “The Death of Politics: How to Heal Our Frayed Republic After Trump.”
Will Wilkinson (@willwilkinson), the vice president for research at the Niskanen Center, is a contributing opinion writer.
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