WASHINGTON - A crowded field of Democratic presidential candidates will square off in a second round of debates Tuesday and Wednesday nights in the U.S., with 20 contenders looking for a breakout moment to make the case that they are the party's best of hope of defeating President Donald Trump in the 2020 election.
The two debates with 10 candidates each are occurring six months ahead of the Democratic party's first presidential nominating contests early next year. But the debates on a theater stage in Detroit, Michigan, the heart of the country's auto industry, and nationally televised by CNN could prove pivotal in both winnowing the field, forcing the weakest challengers out of the race before the next debate in mid-September, and in solidifying the list of front-runners.
Just as before the first round of debates a month ago, national polls show former Vice President Joe Biden as the leading choice among Democratic voters. Some party stalwarts say he is the more moderate, center-left, politically safe choice to take on the unpredictable Trump, whose populist base of conservative voters remains strong. A new Quinnipiac University national shows Biden leading the pack with 34% of Democrats and independents leaning Democratic, followed by Senators Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts with 15%, Kamala Harris of California with 12% and Bernie Sanders of Vermont with 11%.
But there are questions about Biden's standing, whether at 76 he is too old to lead the country, even though Trump is 73, and whether Democratic voters want a candidate with more progressive views than Biden on health care, prevention of crime, migrant immigration at the U.S.-Mexican border and other issues. Some analysts think Biden's top standing in national polls is at least partly a reflection of name recognition, from his four decades on the U.S. national scene as a senator, two unsuccessful runs for the presidency and two terms as vice president under former President Barack Obama.
Biden looked like anything but the front-runner in the first debate, a rusty presence, faltering and caught by surprise questioning from Harris. She attacked his opposition three decades ago to forced busing of school children to racially desegregate public schools. Harris said that she, as a black woman and the daughter of an Indian mother and Jamaican father, benefited from such a busing program to attend a better school growing up in California.
Biden struggled to defend himself, even at one point abruptly cutting himself off in responding to her, saying, "My time is up."
Biden, who on Wednesday again will be on the debate stage with Harris, is promising a more robust performance, saying, "I'm not going to be as polite this time."
On the same stage, Biden is also likely to face a challenge from Sen. Cory Booker, an African-American former mayor of Newark, New Jersey.
Booker has assailed Biden's support 25 years ago for get-tough-on-crime legislation that led to the disproportionate imprisonment of black defendants. Biden recently offered a new criminal justice plan, reversing key provisions of the 1994 measure, such as ending the stricter sentencing for crack cocaine versus powder cocaine. Booker scoffed that Biden was hardly the best candidate to lay out a new criminal justice plan and has called for slashing mandatory minimum sentences.
Despite Biden's first debate stumbles, the ranks of the top Democratic candidates changed little in national surveys.
Biden remains ahead of three challengers, all U.S. senators: Sanders, a democratic socialist lawmaker from the northeastern state of Vermont; Warren, a former Harvard law professor from neighboring Massachusetts, and Harris, once the California attorney general. Booker has edged up a bit in the polling, while South Bend, Indiana Mayor Pete Buttigieg has slipped a notch, with the remaining candidates far down the ranks and struggling to gain a foothold.
Biden claims he has the best chance of making the Republican Trump the country's first single-term president in nearly three decades, denying him a second four years in the White House.
National surveys, 15 months ahead of the Nov. 3, 2020, election, consistently show him winning a hypothetical match-up over Trump, whose voter approval ratings remain mired in the mid-40% range. Sanders often defeats Trump as well, although not by Biden's margin, while surveys show the other top Democrats potentially locked in tight, either-or outcomes with Trump.