3:05
- ABC News
- July 31, 2019
Progressives take center stage in heated exchanges
Moderates and progressives drew lines on health care and foreign policy.
3:05
Former Colorado Gov. John Hickenlooper, a candidate who needs a stand-out moment tonight to emerge from the lower-polling group of candidates, joined CNN to preview his debate strategy and talk the road ahead for his campaign.
After tweeting Monday that he plans to \"go after\" Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., Tuesday night, Hickenlooper said: \"I'm not going to go after her. But I do think that this notion that we can have massive government expansions is a sure-fire way to hand the election to Donald Trump. To re-elect who I would argue is one of the worst presidents we've ever had.\"
Despite his criticism of Warren and Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., Hickenlooper said \"oh sure,\" when asked if he would support either candidate if they win the Democratic nomination, but that both would have a hard time winning Midwestern states like Michigan.
\"I think they have a much harder time to beat Donald Trump in states like Michigan where we are. This is a state that cares about jobs and they're not for giant government programs. They're a much more conservative state than California and New York,\" he said.
-ABC News' John Verhovek reports from Washington, DC
![\"PHOTO:](\"http://a.abcnews.com/images/Politics/debate-stage-detroit-rt-ps-190730_hpMain_4x3t_384.jpg\")
After Mayor Pete Buttigieg of South Bend, Indiana, left his walkthrough of the debate stage, he went over to St. John’s Episcopal Church near the Fox Theatre.
ABC News caught up with the small-town mayor, asking how he was feeling about the night.
He replied, \"I’m looking forward to it.\"
-ABC News' Justin Gomez reports from Detroit, Michigan
Hours ahead of the debate, the Trump campaign is out with a fresh tv ad using footage from the last debate highlighting the Democratic candidates who indicated they would provide health care benefits to undocumented immigrants.
The campaign also ran a full-page, color newspaper ad in the Detroit Free Press and Detroit News today criticizing the Democrats plans for healthcare.
The RNC is holding events in Detroit around the debates, including a roundtable on Tuesday with local business leaders promoting the USMCA Trade Deal hosted by RNC Chairwoman Ronna McDaniel.
Both the RNC and the Trump campaign's rapid response \"war rooms\" will be working both nights to clip moments from the debates to send to their massive emails lists and share across their social media accounts.
In terms of what the campaign is looking for during this week's debates, communications director Tim Murtaugh tells ABC News he expects the 2020 field to continue to run further to the left and embrace the four progress congresswomen of color who President Trump . and the campaign have been targeting over the last few weeks.
\"They'll be scrambling to see who can advocate the most big-government socialist programs,\" Murtaugh said. “I’m sure everything they talk about on the stage will be Squad approved.”
-ABC News' Rachel Scott and Will Steakin reports from Detroit, Michigan
The Trump campaign has deployed a number of staffers to Detroit, including national press secretary Kayleigh MceNany, comms director Tim Murtaugh and Director of Strategic Communications Marc Lotter, who plan to each flood the airways with the campaign's reaction to the debates. RNC chairwoman Ronna McDaniel will also be on the ground.
![\"PHOTO:](\"http://a.abcnews.com/images/Politics/night-1-ap-er-190729_hpEmbed_3x2_384.jpg\")
When Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., first learned about the debate lineups during CNN's random live drawing, his campaign manager, Faiz Shakir, described his reaction in an interview with ABC News Tuesday: \"Well I have an ally on many of the fights that I've been waging forever\" of Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass.
The campaign feels he should \"focus our fire and our differences on places where she and I have been allies together and fighting certain fights,\" Shakir added.
With Sanders sharing center stage with Warren, Shakir detailed the senator's strategy for Tuesday's debate, saying, \"Right now the strategy isn't to draw a contrast with everybody in the field, it's for him to make his case about why he's unique… So he'll make the case for himself without denigrating others. Quite frankly, you know this, we have five or six more debates to go before Iowans even vote. There will be plenty of time to draw the contrast. The debate stage will likely narrow down. Tonight isn't going to be the night where he feels like he needs to draw a contrast with Elizabeth Warren.\"
But prior to taking the stage, Warren rolled a new slate of endorsements, announcing she nabbed one of Sanders' 2016 backers: Rep. Raul Grijalva, D-N.M., a leading progressive on Capitol Hill who was one of a handful of lawmakers to publicly endorse Sanders over Hillary Clinton in 2016.
-ABC News' Adam Kelsey reports from Detroit, Michigan, and Benjamin Siegel from Washington, D.C.
The consecutive debates, airing on CNN at 8 p.m. ET on Tuesday and Wednesday, are expected to be more contentious, picking up where the first debates in Miami left off: when former Vice President Joe Biden was relegated to playing defense after a game-changing moment for Sen. Kamala Harris, D-Calif., and other lesser-known candidates saw spikes in fundraising and polling following a much-needed breakout performance.
For the last few weeks, campaign aides and surrogates have been sparring over policy in back-and-forth statements, cable TV appearances, and on social media, but now the candidates will have the chance to speak for themselves on their differences and present their visions for the country.
![\"PHOTO:Democratic](\"http://a.abcnews.com/images/Politics/warren-gty-er-190729_hpMain_4x3t_384.jpg\")
The first 10 candidates who are set to square off on Tuesday are:
But beyond the two sets of polling front-runners potentially squaring off each night –Sanders and Warren sharing center stage on night one and Biden and Harris on night two -- a parade of moderates will have the opportunity to take on the progressive stalwarts and some occupying the lower fundraising tiers will have the chance to directly confront Biden, even as he prepares for attacks from all sides.
\"As the clear front-runner, the attacks will once again be directed Joe Biden's way,\" a senior Biden campaign official told ABC News.
A day prior to the first night of debate, a new Quinnipiac University poll, released Monday, put Biden comfortably back on top of the Democratic field, with 34% support and significant distance between him and the next polling tier of Warren (15%), Harris (12%) and Sanders (11%).
On the first night, with the two liberals flanked by more moderate candidates, such as Bullock, Delaney, Hickenlooper, Klobuchar and Ryan, the ideological divide within the Democratic Party will be front and center.
Sanders and Warren might potentially spend more time teaming up to champion their transformative progressive agendas and similar vision for economic equality against criticism from the middle-of-the-road candidates, who might compete for minutes to take aim at \"Medicare for All\" and free public college.
And for Buttigieg -- who will stand shoulder-to-shoulder with Sanders, putting their age difference in the spotlight -- the debate will allow him a chance to restore the rising prominence he saw in the early months of the primary after several recent polls show stalling numbers among the middle of the pack.
As he prepares for the debate, a senior Buttigieg campaign official told ABC News, he expects to \"put himself more out there\" as he is \"feeling more confident.\"
![\"PHOTO:](\"http://a.abcnews.com/images/Politics/Buttigieg-ap-er-190729_hpMain_4x3t_384.jpg\")
But for most of the candidates on stage, the stakes for this two-night showdown are much higher after the Democratic National Committee announced more stringent qualifying rules for the September and October debates: candidates will need 2% in four qualifying polls and cross the 130,000 donor mark to qualify.
Only seven candidates have qualified for the September debate, according to an ABC News analysis, including Biden, Sen. Cory Booker, D-N.J., Buttigieg, Harris, O'Rourke, Sanders and Warren. The rest of the field has only a month to go before the deadline.
This year's third Democratic primary debate will be hosted by ABC News in partnership with Univision and is scheduled for Sept. 12 and 13 at Texas Southern University, a public historically black university in Houston.
This week's debates in Michigan, the site of the heart of former Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton's loss in the Midwest after then-candidate Trump carried the state by 0.3 percentage points, also come a week after former special counsel Robert Mueller's nearly seven-hour testimony on Capitol Hill, when he raised the specter of Russian meddling in the 2020 election, after testifying that 2016 \"wasn't a single attempt … they expect to do it during the next campaign.\"
In a new ABC News/Ipsos poll, 54% of Americans said that they are not confident in the capability of the U.S. to effectively defend itself from potential foreign government interference in the 2020 presidential election. Only 17% said they were very confident and 27% were somewhat confident.
![\"PHOTO:Democratic](\"http://a.abcnews.com/images/Politics/bernie-1-gty-er-190729_hpMain_4x3t_384.jpg\")
But with concerns of foreign interference looming over the field, squabbles continue over the direction of the party. On Monday, the candidates engaged in an early preview of a debate over health care, after Harris released her Medicare for All plan, an offshoot of the Sanders' bill he introduced and she co-signed, which includes a loophole to allow private insurers to offer Medicare plans during a 10 year period.
Both Biden and Sanders' campaigns immediately railed against her new proposal.
\"This new, have-it-every-which-way approach pushes the extremely challenging implementation of the Medicare for All part of this plan ten years into the future, meaning it would not occur on the watch of even a two-term administration. The result? A Bernie Sanders-lite Medicare for All and a refusal to be straight with the American middle class, who would have a large tax increase forced on them with this plan,\" said Kate Bedingfield, deputy campaign manager for Biden.
Sanders' campaign manager Faiz Shakir, unleashed a sharp attack on Harris, saying in a statement, \"Call it anything you want, but you can't call this plan 'Medicare for All.'\"
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